DC Question. Generic & Applicable to Dust Gorrila.

[Steve Clardy]

Whew. I couldn't imagine me having to dump barrels. That'd be an everyday occurance around here.
Mine is all blown outside. Collector sits outside also, very little noise in shop.
But I don't have a cyclone. Just a 3500 cfm blower.

[Jamie Buxton]

What I think we all need is a briketting press

Maybe you don't need to go all the way to a briketting press. Maybe all you do is squeeze most of the air out the bin full of planer shavings. That means you get to empty the bin less often, and there's less volume to dispose of.

A conceptual starting point is a kitchen trash compactor. There, a motor squeezes the trash. You could do a similar thing with shavings, or you might get by with muscle power -- a lever and the weight of a human body exerts lots of force. A related machine is the garbage truck which services my neighborhood. The garbage man throws in a few containers full of garbage, and then a big blade compresses the new loose trash into the old compacted trash. I could imagine running a chip collector for a while, stopping for a moment to compact the chips, then collecting more chips, then compacting them, and so on.

A even wilder version could take off from those vacuum-bagging systems intended for storing sweaters and the like. You somehow put all the shavings in a plastic bag, and suck all the air out. After all, you do have right at hand a free vacuum source -- the chip collector. Maybe all you need is some clever re-piping.

[Frank Chaffee]

Dev,
I think you are really onto something here with your idea of briquette production from wood chips and dust. Using the wheels already chipped out in the log splitter (as tod has suggested), and trash compaction industries, combined with material level sensors that Larry Browning points to on Bill Pentz’s site, I imagine that you could design a system that produces sized/shaped/req’d density “fuel units” (how’s that for newspeak?), that could be easily transferred from your collection system to your burner. Domestic Hot Water is a gimme, and air and hydronic distribution possibilities abound.

As you seem to be in the design stage of a new shop, this could certainly be a good time for you to consider efficient and integrated heating of your shop and home.

I heated solely with wood for many years here in Wisconsin. Until the early eighties I was involved in the design and production of woodburners. By that time the wood heat industry had evolved to the point where water, a byproduct of combustion, could be drained as a liquid after heat was extracted from flue gasses, and flue gasses could be vented thru PVC pipe (latent heat of vaporization, recovered as latent heat of condensation). From what I have seen of your abilities, I am sure you could not only produce such a system for yourself, but also create a valuable manufacturing concern (in your spare time, of course).

I have not kept up on the woodburning industry since then, but I watch your posts closely, and will chime in on this interesting thread when I feel I have something to contribute.

Frank