Best DC compromise for cramped hobbyist

[Randy Klein]

Brian, you run 2-1/2" hose off the 50-760. How's that working for you? Are you getting enough suction at the tool? Would you rather be using a shop-vac?

[Vic Damone]

My Craftsman 16 gal shop vac gave up the ghost and since I'm extremely space challenged I attempted to transform the carcass of the dead shop vac into a portable cyclone.

I began by removing the motor from the lid and installing a galvanized vase/champaign bucket (funnel shape) to the self clamping top of the old vac. I cutout the bottom of the bucket and attached a plastic 2 1/2" angle fitting ($5 Rockler) to the upper side of the bucket and connected the 2 1/2" hose coming from my contractor table saw to the angled fitting.

I then added a ten inch portion of a vacuum wand through the center of a 3/4" plywood doughnut that seals the top of the bucket, on down the center of the cyclone. Connecting the vacuum hose from the new quiet running Ridgid model 1850 ($150) shop vac to the female end of the wand creating a functional cyclone. Plugging the vac into a tool and vacuum switch ($35) simplifies its use.

For less than $50 I have a self sealing cyclone on wheels that keeps up with the dust collection needs of the saw and many of my other small machines. the amount of waste that enters the Ridgid vac is minimal and the upgraded filter stays clean. I can actually pull both units by the vacuum hose when cleaning the work area.

I apologize for the lack of a photo and the long description, my son has the camera on vacation.

Vic

[Randy Klein]

Dave, one more thing, you have the 50-760 with trash can separator, I can't tell if you just have the DC or DC with separator? If you do, does the DC suck everything through anyways or are the chips left behind?

My option #2, was using the Veritas Cyclone lid (4" ports) with my 50-760 (still not a dust collector, only chips). If I remove the filter and rig up some sort of hose attachment to vent outside, do you think this would increase air flow to the point that it sucks the chips all the way through the trash can?

Maybe I should just learn to 4 square lumber by hand...

[Randy Klein]

Vic, do you run this on a planer or jointer?

[Grant Wilkinson]

Randy

Enough has been said about portable vs stationery, etc. I have a 2 hp Craftex on a duct system, and a 1.5 HP on my table saw. They work well, but not as well as I would like.
One of your considerations seems to be size. On my duct system, I have the Veritas cyclone lid on a large 55 gallon translucent plastic barrel. It works great, but it takes up a lot of space. The barrel has almost as large a footprint as the DC.
Just FWIW.

Grant
Ottawa ON

[Randy Klein]

Grant,
Luckily the 50-760 has the motor mounted up some, so there is space below for a trashcan separator. There shouldn't be an increase to the overall footprint if I can fit in there.

On your veritas lid, do you have the 4" ports?

[Wilbur Pan]

Randy,

I have a small basement workshop, and pored over Bill Pentz's website when planning dust collection. For what it's worth, my day job is being a pediatric oncologist, so I know "too much" when it comes to the health hazards of wood dust.

To get to the punch line, I have a small basement workshop, with no way of venting outside. My dust collection consists of a 1.5 HP bag type dust collector with an 8' run of 4" flex hose that I move from machine to machine, and an air cleaner in a small basement workshop.

Bill's site has a lot of excellent information, but I think he focuses too much on the issue of collecting dust at the source. This is obviously the best option, but his own measurements have shown that even with very large high powered cyclone DC systems, that there is always some dust that escapes.

There has to be a way of dealing with this, and that is some sort of air cleaner system. The trick is to size the air cleaner to the room. Conventional wisdom says that an air cleaner should circulate the room volume 6-10 times an hour. I went for 25 air exchanges per hour, which should clear out 99.99% of the dust in ~30 minutes. Luckily, it's not too hard to do this -- just add in more air cleaners. To give you an idea, my workshop is 20' x 10' x 8', and one JDS 750-ER hits this number.

In addition, you can get a lot of performance by keeping the duct runs short. If the duct runs are short enough, even 4" flex hose can give you acceptable results. I have a 1.5 HP bag type dust collector with an 8' 4" flex hose that I move from machine to machine. According to a dust collection spreadsheet on Bill Pentz's website, this setup has quite a low resistance, allowing my DC to pull adequate CFM for dust collection.

But the bottom line is:

1. Venting outside is by far the best solution.
2. Keep your duct runs short.
3. Because trapping 100% of the dust at the source seems to be impossible, you NEED a back up plan (air cleaner).

[Randy Klein]

Wilbur,

Thats very useful information, thank you. I think your bottom line is right on.

Do you know if the air cleaner calculations is affected by the garage door being open? This kind of messes with the room volume.

My new thinking (and it changes a few times a day):
1. Use my 50-760 with short ducts and cyclone trash can lid (veritas) for chip collection and whatever dust it can get. I may try to vent it outside or upgrade to a cartridge filter.
2. Wear a respirator for as long as I can stand it.
3. In the summer months, open both doors in garage and use fans to move air.
4. In winter months, keep both doors closed to conserve what little heat there is and use an air cleaner.

I could use the air cleaner in the summer as well, but with both doors open (for cooling) I'm assuming its not circulating, thus not cleaning, the air. I could be wrong.

[Jim Becker]

Further, the Oneida does not separate out any of the fine dust.

I believe this is a very misleading and untrue statement. Different generation of product, even...by two or three iterations. I do agree with the premise that a 1.5 hp cyclone system (from anyone) is marginal in CFM performance outside of very small shops with pretty much direct connection to the tool.

[Vic Damone]

Vic, do you run this on a planer or jointer?

Randy, Short answer, no. My planer is a DeWalt 735 and I user their accessory Waste Hose into a medium sized can. No jointer on hand.

Vic

[Dave MacArthur]

Randy, I have the 50-760 by itself, no separator. Like you, I was/am considering the exact same questions for improving my setup. I used the google search SMC option, then just read every thread on these forums concerning DC. This led me to reading many posts from Bill Pentz, and then on to his website.
I should make it clear to you that my entire reply up above was not my personal experience/knowledge/opinion, but was merely an attempt to paraphrase and compress a lot of reading of Bill Pentz for you, to at least be sure you were aware he does address some of your questions.

As Jim Becker points out, many of the products out there have surely changed since Bill wrote his info--indeed, he states many times that his hope was that his engineering changes would be adopted/incorporated into DC manufacturers product. He also someplace in there states that Oneida had made some changes (maybe on an update page). We do know that several competition factors entered the market after Bill Pentz began his research (clearVue, changes by other manufacturs), and a strong player in the market like Oneida would surely begin incorporating technical improvments into their product. Again, I have absolutely no firsthand testing or knowlege of various cyclones, and was merely doing a "book report" for you, but I in no way intended to personally disparage any product. I do know that many of the extremely knowledgable folks on these forums have decided on the Oneida (Sasha Gast has a nice shop tour showing his new setup, very impressive!), and I must believe they (like you and I) wrestled with these issues before their decision too.

What is difficult to know is information on this 2.5 micron and less "fine dust" issue. FWW I believe did a DC comparison in the last few months, and they did not address it at all, concentrating on static pressure and CFM. The unwritten assumption in the review seemed to be 100% collection of the dust with no filter-clogging ramifications. The concept that invisible bad-stuff was just being blown right through the filters never even occurred to me until reading Bill's site, and frankly it has set my DC plans back to square 1. The only place I have found where a reputable and seemingly technically proficient tester discusses fine dust comparisons, is Bill's site itself. Of course there may be thousands of technical sites for air-engineers, which I just have not read, but I found no links to such data in my SMC reading. While independant corroboration would be nice, it just may be that no one else is doing the onerous work that Bill Pentz is. One thing I am sure of is this: it would absolutely be great if DCs were tested and rated on these health-factors by something like OSHA, in addition to the more mundane CFM, using controlled standards so one didn't have to rely purely on manufacturs statements without testing conditions and data being known.

This would surely drive additional competition and improvments by manufacturers in the same way that magazine reviews do for other equipment--as Jim points out, some of these machines may have completley changed. These guys are in business, and that usually means constantly working to have the best product in so far as that drives profits.

Good luck!

[Wilbur Pan]

Do you know if the air cleaner calculations is affected by the garage door being open? This kind of messes with the room volume....

I could use the air cleaner in the summer as well, but with both doors open (for cooling) I'm assuming its not circulating, thus not cleaning, the air. I could be wrong.

Hi Randy,

Your strategy is exactly what I would do.

For your garage, I'd just calculate the volume of your garage with the doors closed for planning for an air cleaner.

The best thing by far is to open the garage doors and use fans, as you plan to do. If you set up the air cleaner so that the intake points into the shop and the outflow side points out toward one of your open garage doors, it will work as a fan as well. But there's no sense in wasting your filter if you can exhaust the dust outside.

The "circulating the dusty air" thing as a reason to not use air cleaners is really overstated. It's possible to model dust removal behavior with two situations. The first is that you bring in fresh air as you filter the dirty air inside the room. This is what you get with exhausting the air outside or bringing in fresh air with a window. The second case is where you cannot exhaust air or bring in fresh air, as in my workshop or your garage, if the doors are closed, so that the air cleaner really is circulating the same air around. In this case, the air cleaner still will be able to remove dust, just not as efficiently as in the first case. But if your air cleaner moves enough CFM relative to your room volume (again, my goal is 25 exchanges per hour), you'll still be able to get good results. In my case, assuming reasonable efficiency, it's the difference between clearing 99.9999% of the dust in 47 minutes in a closed room vs. 23 minutes with the windows open.

Boy, I which I had windows I could open.

Wilbur

[Ralph Barhorst]

2hp HF on sale and with discount coupon on $135.

Get the 0.5 micron retrofit filter kit from Wynn Environments for $91 vs the 30 micron bags its comes with.

I have this system and I would also recommend it. It is on wheels and can move from one machine to another. I works very well. The Wynn filter does a good job and when the airflow decreases you just need to whack the filter a few times with a board and the dust drops into the bag and the flow is back to normal.

[Joe Jensen]

Joe, I appreciate your contrary view (keep them coming) and I really have no basis to determine who's more correct. Bill's reqt's may be extreme and overkill, but its also probably the more safe (expensive) than sorry solution. You say the 1.5 HP machine should be plenty, is that with filtering or venting outside?

What I am saying is;
1) a Cyclone is much preferable
2) 2HP Cyclone with filter is MUCH better than nothing in my shop. There is a lot of fine dust in my canister, and very little in the filter.
3) Bill's approach will certainly yield better fine dust collection, but a higher capital cost, more noise, and more operating cost. In my situation, I only have a 50 amp 220V service to the garage. I would have to run a new 100amp service to use a 5HP collector and my larger tools.

I have the Onieda cartidge filter on my collector. There is very little dust in the filter except when I overfilled the canister

Is my setup good enough? Depends on how much you are in the shop and how sensitive to dust you are. Realistically, with work and fatherhood, I get maybe 100 to 200 hours in my shop a year, and most of that is not spent with tools hooked up to the dust collector. I do fill the 35 gal canister more than once a day when using the planer and jointer a lot.

The biggest improvement in fine dust collection was the switch to a very high quality vacuum and Festool sanders. I have a WAP drywaller vac with HEPA filter (now Alto) that cost around $1K 10 years ago. This vac pulls more volume at a higher static pressure than the Festool vac or the Fein vac, and it only generates 56db. When I bought it, the Fein and Festool vacs were not available. The Fein is similar in specs and is 59db. The Festool is similar and is 72db. Any of these vacs and a Festool sander will keep most of the fine sanding dust out of the air. Before trying the Festool sanders, I was using the WAP vac with Porter Cable sanders. This was an improvement, but not enough and I was getting ready to buy a $2500 Denray downdraft sanding table to keep the sanding dust down. A friend suggested trying a Festool sander first. Recently I sanded fro 2 hours solid wearing a black cotton shirt. After 2 hours, there was no dust visible on the shirt at all.

Since switching all sanders to Festool, not sanding without the vac, and getting the Oneida setup, I can work all day and not have any buildup of dust/crud in my nose by the end of the day. I should have done this years ago...joe

One more thing, I work in a 3 car garage and 99% of the time, the doors are open so one long side of my shop is open most of the time.

[Randy Klein]

Dave,

This forum is a wealth of information. The only downside is knowing when the older posts are no longer or less relevant. I did not know that Oneida had made any changes in response to Bill Pentz and Clearvue. I guess I hadn't read that yet. I wonder if anyone has more specific information regarding that.

I understand that you were providing a book report, and I appreciate it greatly. My questions back to you were hoping you had could recall more information from Bill's site before I could find it myself. As you know, his site is liking drinking from the firehose and I got a lot of water up my nose the last time I went there...

I agree that it would be nice to have standardized testing, but that probably won't happen. Maybe all the home hobbyists should unionize and demand it...

I just don't want to go down another road to good dust collection to find out it has potholes. That's why I'm trying to get good directions...