Dust Collection Basics

[Jonathan Dormody]

Folks,

I'm sort of a dust collection novice, so I need a little help. I have 1/2 of my shop in the garage and 1/2 in the basement. In the basement, I built a closet to house my dust collector (keep the noise down). I have a 1 HP Delta Shopmaster. Its too underpowered so I just ordered a 1 1/2 HP 1200 CFM Delta 50-760 which has two 4" outlets or one 5" outlet port. I already have installed 4" hose to the walls of my shop. My questions:

1. Do I go from the one 5" outlet down to the 4" hose? Or, do I just attach the 4" hose to one of the two 4" outlets and cover the other 4" outlet? Does it matter?

2. Should I ground the unit (run grounding wire through the hose)? I'm debating whether its really needed.

3. If I should ground it, do I just run the wire from metal tools back to the collector (not from my router table or dust sweep as there is no metal on those)?

Thanks in advance for any help you can provide.

- Jon

[Cecil Arnold]

Go to the bottom of the screen and check out the list of topics there. There is one from Bill Prinz (?sp) which you may want to read, then go to Bill's web site and read all you can absorbe on dust collection and collectors.

[Lee Schierer]

I agree with Cecil's recommendation.

As far as grounding the hose, there is probably no need to do that. Ground each machine and you should be fine. If you do a search of the archives you will find other threads where this topic has been well discussed (several times). I use pvc duct work in my system which is a bit too smal for best performance, but I do not have a static problem. I collect dust from my drill press spindle sanding table, my router, my TS, my planer and sweep the floor with my system. The total static in the pipes won't even raise the hair on your arm from an inch away. The only "grounding" on my piping is the dust collector power cord which is wrapped around the pipe about 3 times.