Which dust collector would you get?

[Robert Marshall]

Unused (sitting around someone's shop) ShopFox W1685, 1.5 HP, 1280 CFM, 2.5 Micron bag, $225 (no tax), an hours drive away (craigslist)

OR

New Harbor Freight 2 HP, 1550 CFM, 5 micron bag, $250 (incl. tax and freight)

Thanks.

[Michael Stein]

Unused (sitting around someone's shop) ShopFox W1685, 1.5 HP, 1280 CFM, 2.5 Micron bag, $225 (no tax), an hours drive away (craigslist)

OR

New Harbor Freight 2 HP, 1550 CFM, 5 micron bag, $250 (incl. tax and freight)

Thanks.

Well, first thing first, if you spend $250 for the HF collector, you have done something wrong. It is constantly on sale, and with a 20% off coupon, can be had for around $170, sometimes less. That said, I have the HF unit, and have been pleased with its performance/price. To answer the question, I would buy the HF, but not with a $250 price tag.

Don't forget to add in fittings and hose/pipe to the cost. What starts as a ~$200 purchase, can turn into $500 very quickly.

[Mike Chalmers]

New Harbour Freight. Warranty.
2.5 or 5 micron.... neither are 1 micron, so upgrade is necessary.
Proven product used by many.

[Steve Roxberg]

Harbor Freight but not at $250, I paid about $170 for mine. It works fine for my planner but it fills up pretty fast. 20% coupon alone saves you $50 and they mail those out every week around here.

[John Hollaway]

Robert, can you tell us where you are located?

John

[Prashun Patel]

I'd get the HF and add a Thien baffle.

[J.R. Rutter]

HF with larger, better filter bag.

http://www.americanfabricfilter.com/...oodworking.php

[Jim Dwight]

HF with better bags or a cartridge filter from the start. I did not do it with a little 1hp Delta and put fine dust all over my shop. You want shaker felt bags at a minimum. If I put a DC in my current shop I will put a super dust deputy cyclone on it and discharge what the cyclone doesn't get outside. I am tired of cleaning filters. My shop vac dust deputy combination is working well currently and I may just live with that (it has a HEPA filter that I haven't had to clean since installing the cyclone).

[Johnnyy Johnson]

Two things I bought from HF and love. One was the alum. pocket hole jig and the green Dust collector. I have owned both for several years. The only two things I do not like about the DC is the stretch out hose to connect to machines. (I don't have it hooked to a piped in system and just have to move it a few feet to the big machines.)I hate all the pull and stretch hoses. The second thing is it will only wire up to 120 volts. Without getting into a lot of electrical stuff the more 240 volt machines you have on your recpt. panel the more balanced it is and less unbalanced amps goes through the natural. I wish I had wired my T5 lights 240. Also replacement T8 bulbs cost much less. However no failures on any T5 bulb in 5 years and I have 24 in a 14 X 40 building. It's like working with the sun in the ceiling. However I did wire them so I can only turn on two per fixture. The DC is about 5 feet tall or more.
Thanks Johnny

Will check into better top bag for safety.
Thanks
Johnny

[Ian Moone]

What material are you machining with it? Solid timber? or Particle board, Melamine product and MDF (Medium Density Fiber board)?.

The thing is - the former & your good to go with either option.

The latter (composite boards) - are all made with urea Formadehyde glue - the out gassing from which when machined - will pass straight thru those filter bags and back into your shop for you to breath!.

When your dead from Esophageal cancer, it won't matter which one you bought!

A better option would be a cyclone - where the air gets plumed outside your shop to open air... and your not breathing the formaldehyde gas.

http://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/c...yde-fact-sheet

In 1987, OSHA established a Federal standard that reduced the amount of formaldehyde to which workers can be exposed over an 8-hour workday from 3 ppm to 1 ppm. In May 1992, the standard was amended, and the formaldehyde exposure limit was further reduced to 0.75 ppm.

its not possible to maintain the OSHA Federal Standard PPM counts, when sawing compressed wood particle products in a workshop without adequate dust extraction - that vents outside of the workplace - to fresh air. There are some minimum airflow requirements also to meet clean air regs within the workshop...
This excerpt info copied from Bill Pense Dust Cyclone page (link here:- http://billpentz.com/woodworking/cyclone/cyclone_plan.cfm…) gives the minimums required to achieve clean air regs.

Airspeed
Airspeed measured in feet per minute (FPM) defines what size and weight of chip we can pickup. Because woodworking makes a range of chip sizes we normally pick the airspeed for the largest type of material we use. During normal woodworking we make fairly large chips all the way down to very fine dust particles that are so small they are invisible. Major blower makers that provide equipment to use air and ducting to transport different types of material provide charts that tell us how much airspeed and the minimum pressures needed to transport various types of material. For fine wood dust such as created when using fine sandpaper we only need about 50 FPM airspeed to overcome normal room air currents and move this dust. For typical sawdust we need to move the air at about 3800 FPM and for larger chips we need to move the air at about 4500 FPM. Ideally we should move right at 4500 FPM airspeed for picking up the normal range of wood chips. Many air engineers design instead at 4000 FPM because this airspeed is ample to pick up the material most fire marshals consider dangerous.
Air Volume
Air volume measured in cubic feet per minute (CFM) defines how big of an area we can collect over. Air speed and air volume are tightly related by the air formula where FPM = CFM/Area where area is in square feet. In short if we know what air speed we need and the size of the area we need to cover we can compute how many CFM we need. To just collect the same sawdust and chips we would otherwise sweep up with a broom, known as "chip collection", most large stationary small shop tools can use existing hoods and tool ports and get good "chip collection" with about 350 CFM. Tool makers like Fein and Festool have shown us we can get excellent fine dust collection with a big shop vacuum. To do so our tools must be built from the ground up to totally contain the dust.
Unfortunately, most large stationary tools found in small shops are older designs that only have good "chip collection" built in. Air engineers have spent decades figuring out how to fix our older tools to get good fine dust collection. To collect the fine dust on our typical older tool designs we must upgrade hoods, often provide larger dust collection ports, and provide a bubble of air around the working areas of the tools that pulls in the fine dust. Although that bubble only needs the air moving at 50 FPM and faster to overcome normal room air currents and pull in the fine dust, the size of this bubble is large, almost fifteen inches in every direction. This large area is bad news because airspeed for sucked air drops at about the same rate as the surface area of a sphere expands meaning about four times Pi times the distance squared. So we need to move lots more air for good fine dust collection than is required for "chip collection". A moment of thought about how our vacuums work makes this pretty obvious. A vacuum nozzle only picks up right next to the nozzle and just moving a tiny bit away so reduces the airspeed we get no collection. Air engineers calculated the minimum airflows at each size and type of large stationary tool then refined these values over decades of experience to create CFM requirement tables for each size and type of tool. These tables show our larger stationary small shop tools need to move about 800 CFM to meet the OSHA air quality standards, about 900 CFM to meet the five times tougher ACGIH standards, and only about 1000 CFM to meet the fifty times tougher standards set by the EPA, medical experts and the European Union.
Ducting Size
Ducting size is easily calculated once we know the FPM airspeed and CFM air volume requirements. Again our air formula FPM = CFM / Area shows a 4" diameter duct is near the ideal ducting size for our 350 CFM needed for good "chip collection". A 5" diameter duct is just about perfect for carrying 550 CFM and a 6" diameter is near ideal for 800 CFM. We need a 7" for the ideal size to carry 1000 CFM. If we use an oversized impeller and a little stronger motor we generate enough pressure to let us move this 1000 CFM in a 6" diameter duct. Knowing that 6" duct is readily available and inexpensive but larger is not available or readily available, I designed my blower to have enough pressure to move a real 1000 CFM in a 6" diameter duct.

For anyone interested, you CAN build your own cyclone dust extractor using the plans online at Bill Pense web page above OR watch this series of U tube vids on how to build your own from wood.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IXc4sH7VS1E
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ug7F5NW33UQ
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XX_naeLwv8E
Or just buy one of the Clearvue units made to Bill Pense specifications - here's a review of one.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EvALTgZOJRI
I am playing with a couple of dust deputy's for now but may end up either making a BP cyclone of my own or buying a Clearview in the end.
The important thing is - you can't ignore dust extraction if you own and use a machine like the Roblands X&K26 & X31's that turn these man made compressed board products into harmful fine dusts & release Formaldehyde gas into your workshop.

Probably not what you wanted to know!.

Like I said if its just solid timber you work with no issue!

Why bother to post all this?

My father & wood working partner of 20 years died a decade ago of Esophageal cancer. My own lungs were badly damaged.


YMMV (Your Mileage May Vary).

[James Gunning]

I'm going against the grain of the responses and say get the Shop Fox. It has a larger impeller and the motors of the two units are roughly equal in power. There is no way the Harbor Freight unit makes 2HP with the amp rating it has. More like 1.5, maybe even less. The Shop Fox will move much more air, and that is the important number you want.

[Wade Lippman]

I'm going against the grain of the responses and say get the Shop Fox. It has a larger impeller and the motors of the two units are roughly equal in power. There is no way the Harbor Freight unit makes 2HP with the amp rating it has. More like 1.5, maybe even less. The Shop Fox will move much more air, and that is the important number you want.

I agree, unless the 1 hour drive is a problem.
The SF is 16a. I've never owned a SF product, but Grizzly's specs are always accurate.
The HF says 20a peak; which probably means as it is burning out, or about 10a in normal use.
(They used to claim 14a; don't know why they have changed...)