This is an interesting balancing act. It takes a typical small shop filter about a year to get fully seasoned during which time it spews fine dust all over. That hood needs a dust port big enough to support the required volume of air. Although many small shop vendors have come out with their own cartridge filtered dust collectors and cyclones, most small shop cartridge filters have serious problems from not having ample surface area and being made with filtering material that is so open it freely passes most of the finest unhealthiest dust. For nearly a century agricultural cyclones have separated things like grain from husks or dirt and sand from cotton fiber so they are well studied. Unlike our dust collector and cyclone blowers vacuums use much higher pressure blowers that can pull enough through our smaller tool ports to get good collection without these risks. Look at the Dust Collection Introduction followed by Medical Risks and Doc's Orders for more information. Typical small shop trashcan separators work well until you have a system that moves more than about 450 CFM. Agricultural engineers use seven variations of cyclones that all work very similarly to separate heavier than air materials. Dust Deputy deluxe cyclone separator kit, no. When we connect our vacuum hose to the blow outlet we get a strong stream of air that will blow sawdust all over our shop. This cake of dust does not normally go away with normal filter cleaning, so a new filter that starts will end up building about five times its initial airflow resistance. Many still wrongly say that we must blow from the outside into our cartridge filters, but that is mostly a hold over from the days when cartridge filter manufacture required this approach. They make lots of low frequency noise that is tough to control. Dirty air comes in through the inlet. Those with 1 HP to 2 HP will support 5" diameter ducting. With cyclones their lack of knowledge of either airflow or cyclone design has created a mess of more than a dozen vendors who keep copying each other all producing the same two inappropriate commercial outdoor designs. Even when protected by a cyclone our impellers can be hit with heavy blocks and debris whenever we have a bad air leak or full collection drum. Do you want to protect yourself from the very fine unhealthy dust? Almost any blower shroud will work to move air. Airspeed is measured in feet per minute (FPM). A few instead put some form of restriction on either the blower inlet or outlet to limit how much air can pass. It takes more work to push air in smaller circles, but tighter circles create better separation. I trusted what I believed to be reputable small shop vendors to provide a cyclone and filters that worked as they advertised. Most stock filter bags that come with this equipment are made from open filtering material that freely passes airborne particles up to 30-microns in diameter all day long turning our indoor dust collection equipment into dangerous "dust pumps" that recycle the most dangerous dust in our shops as long as they run. So, as the bin fills, it becomes less effective at separating the dust. Fine airborne dust is mostly made up of particles sized about 30-microns and smaller. If we let our collection bin get too full (about once a month for me), or you have a bad air leak, all shoots right through the cyclone into the blower. Trashcan separators then use some combination of three different techniques to separate off the heavier dust and chips. Early dust collection systems used bag filters where the dirty air was blown into the bags and the bags were kept clean with a shaker that turned off the airflow for a bit and shook the bags out. Almost all dust collectors instead use material movement blowers with impellers that only get a maximum of about 45% power efficiency. That's about 1/20th of a vacuum. 45556, $80, Rockler, 800279-4441. A cone too long ends up plugging because the airflow keeps the dust from dropping. These tough steel impellers can take hits from blocks of wood and other debris without getting hurt explaining their name "material handling" impellers. With either too much resistance or too little air, the airfoil blades stall creating destructive vibrations and all kinds of other serious problems. Older style trashcan and most small shop cyclones are designed to save us from having to clean our filters so often, and to keep blocks of wood, sharp chips, etc. If you do not care, then ignore all the rest and go buy at least a 1.5 hp dust collector or larger depending upon your shop size and ducting. The lid models cost $25$80, and have 24" ports. Garbage cans aren't designed or built to precise standards, so the can-topper separator lid you buy might not fit or seal well on your existing can. In spite of most moving half the air needed for good fine dust collection, these units work so much better than our shop vacuums that few of us realize we have a problem until someone gets ill or we buy a bigger tool that the small collector cannot keep up with. Engineering spreadsheets share how to size and optimize each of these seven cyclone types. Unfortunately, this fine dust problem does not just go away after we finish our woodworking, but instead builds to often very dangerously unhealthy levels. Caution, vacuum impellers cannot take material hits so never run a vacuum without its filter. Dust collection blowers come in two flavors, material movement blowers or clean air blowers. Which hand planes should a power-tool woodworker buy first? The cone on the bottom of the cyclone is angled just right to keep the airspeed constant to keep the heavier particles pressed tightly to the cyclone walls. The higher pressures in cyclone based system even more quickly ruins our fine filters. They are designed to work with open systems where they will have a constant supply of air and not too much resistance. These impellers were a heavy caged backward inclined impeller that moved about the same air volume with its 2 hp motor as do most other cyclone vendors with a 3 hp motor. Unlike the material movement impellers used in dust collectors, caged impellers require far more regular inspection and cleaning to ensure there is no buildup of wood strings, shavings, and other stuff that will clog them and put them out of balance. We should only filter when forced to do so by either local laws, very hot temperatures in air conditioned shops, or extreme cold where a radiant heater cannot keep up with air losses. AXD002030A, $169.95, Oneida Air Systems. As awareness of the dangers of long term fine dust exposure increased, many vendors of this equipment began offering finer bag and cartridge filters. Running the dirty air directly outside is best for our health, but is illegal in many areas and unless we provide a source of make-up air can be dangerous as it can suck the carbon monoxide fumes from gas water heaters, heaters, stoves, fireplaces, and other appliances. Doing so ends up with a cyclone too tall to fit under an eight foot ceiling. They know that if they plug a filter enough they can "prove" any level of filtering they want. pages) I now only recommend buying a well made impeller from a reputable company. Blowers do the most work with an open unlimited amount of airflow and the least work when all is closed off and there is no airflow. It also can be expensive to blow our heated or cooled shop air outdoors, so most use filters to return cleaned air to the shop. Regardless, almost all dust collectors and most cyclones use material movement blowers because of the problems with caged impellers discussed previously. Our blades bits and cutters launch dust often at over 100 miles an hour but our dust collection systems only move air at about 45 miles an hour. This lets you see when the bin needs to be dumped. Dust collector makers use very tough but inefficient heavy steel or aluminum impellers built to take hits from blocks of wood and other shop debris that might get sucked up. The tiny blocks of wood that our chip collectors could pick up turned into sawdust when they hit our heavy impellers. Blowers are a special type of fan. Many small shop workers need to use a good exhaust fan in their shops to quickly blow out high concentrations of dust. A cone too short causes the airflow to dip into the collection bin and suck the dust right out. Sadly, my personal testing and testing by a number of other university professors shows most small shop vendor fine filter bags and cartridge filters freely passed between ten to twenty times the sized particles claimed and stop passing the air we need for dust collection long before reaching a third of their claimed filtering levels. AXD002040A, $219.95, Oneida Air Systems. Building a filter box is fairly easy. Commercial woodworking firms and air engineers have long known the best and least expensive way to get rid of the fine dust is to separate off the heavier sawdust and chips with a cyclone and then blow the remaining fine airborne dust outdoors where it quickly dissipates and settles. If we blast an incoming stream of dusty air on a filter surface, that filter will soon become history at least where the air first hits. Air is sucked into the side of a blower and hits the impeller. Prevents unnecessary damage to your dust collector by separating out large wood chips. Another important difference is small shop dust collectors move a large amount of air at a relatively low pressure. Heavier particles get trapped in the slower moving air and gravity slowly pulls these heavier particles down. Dust collectors and cyclone need a tough blower housing and impeller that can take material hits. I understand that the upgrade will help quite a bit. For instance a typical so called 1-micron bag filter starts off with a resistance of about 0.5" or less then as it becomes "fully seasoned" meaning builds up its permanent dust cake, the resistance will typically be about 2.5" after every cleaning. That unit had even more airflow problems than my first, plus the filter soon self destructed as it needed cleaned constantly. A cone with walls either too wide or too narrow creates a wandering vortex like the bottom of a tornado that sucks the separated dust off the walls then pushes it right into our filters. These can be replaced as they wear over time. Worse, that clogging increases the pressure which forces the fine silica (glass) particles that make wood strong to cut and tear their way through the fine filter strands soon leaving even a really good filter a useless sieve. Unlike commercial units, most small shop dust collectors use a lower bag that is also a filter to help make up for the filters being so small in area. To get that you need a 5 hp motor coupled to a 15" or 16" diameter impeller. Rather than cover every type of fan, this only touches on the most common and those most used by woodworkers. For more information see the Jet Cartridge dust collector write up on the Cyclone & Dust Collector Review page. Basically, I had to start over from scratch. If you want to find out more about cyclones and cyclone design do a Google search on cyclone design followed by a search on swirl tubes because cyclones are a special class of what researchers call swirl tubes. The increased pressures as these filters get dirty pushes the fine dust through the filters tearing open the pores. Items shipped directly from the manufacturer cannot be returned in store. Fewer chips in the filter means improved filtration and efficiency. Take a look at Noise control under the ducting section then look at Muffler under Projects. More than 40 lbs. Dusty air builds up a cake of dust that will overheat the motor resulting in eventual motor failure and possibly a fire. For us, we have to clean our dusty air before returning it into our shops. Properly sized vacuum filters that provide good filtering are expensive, plus they clog very quickly. The blower housing outlet then directs the collected air and chips into a bag tree where it spins in a center separation ring. Air engineers name blowers based upon the type of impeller blade used. That machine has a hood that needs to be placed and shaped just right to control then capture the dust as it is made. Rigid plastic drums (larger than a bucket) also work well, and generally prove light enough to lift and dump. Even the best small shop vacuums only move about one quarter of this needed airflow. Only those willing to do regular maintenance should consider using a caged or airfoil impeller. Many said making my design to use a smaller motor was a waste of time because fine filters only need cleaned a couple of times a year with existing cyclone designs. Likewise, larger cyclone diameters and outlets provide less resistance but worse separation because their size drops the air speed needed for separating off the particles. They force dirty air to turn a sharp corner forcing the heavier particles to be slung off for collection. These inline containers make your shop vacuum or dust collector work more efficiently. Many also use a cooling fan to blow air on them when they work to keep away the fine dust as it is made. During this time you should either stay out of your shop or wear a good cartridge filter dust mask. That makes airfoils inappropriate for any shop with considerable ducting, an inefficient cyclone, or plugged filters. Be careful of the advice you get on these forums, much of what you will hear is from people who are still on their first round of dust collectors and so enamored that they will defend their relatively ineffective designs and systems nearly to the death. The dust port then connects to either ducting or a flex hose that is large enough in diameter to move the needed volume of air. This permits these three phased motors, known as industrial motors, to be made without the complex starting circuits and to run with far less vibration. Worse, we often use much more toxic woods. that can make a typical small shop vacuum move just about twice the total airflow that it will move in real use. Almost all dust collectors and cyclones use a special fan known as a centrifugal pressure blower. That makes sense because the more air a blower's impeller pushes against, the harder the motor has to work. This means unlike commercial shops where the ducting carries the air for all machines running at once, the ducting in small shops should stay the same size as the blower inlet all the way to each machine and the machine ports need to be sized the same. It turns out that same blower housing is used on the Jet 2 hp DC-1200 blower which uses a 12" diameter instead of your current 11" diameter impeller. Most commercial dust collectors have multiple bags arranged into what is known as a bag tree. The spinning air throws the heavier materials outward to the cyclone walls. The reason your cyclone works poorly is you used a standard dust collector blower to power your cyclone. One pair of plastic elbow and coupler components serve as infeed and outfeed points when you install them on either end of a box, bin or other fixture you wish to use to catch large wood chips. Starting at One of the main reasons that our woodworker magazine tests never report on separation efficiency is these magazines rely on vendors for advertising money and they don't want to upset their advertisers. Vacuums show us an important difference between blowing and sucking air. A blade letting go from a 3450 RPM motor can generate in excess of twenty tons of force for an instant. A fan uses a motor to turn a blade that pulls air in then pushes it out at a higher speed. Super Dust Deputy 4" deluxe cyclone separator kit, no. Although many now choose the convenience of using one of the new cartridge filtered dust collectors, many woodworking operations will quickly clog the filter pleats making for continual maintenance problems and the cartridges wearing out fairly quickly. If you had to recommend three, which hand planes should I start with? My airfoil had incredible suction and the stalling was not a problem until I added a full set of ducting in my shop. That door opens when the air pressure goes over 7". These designs don't even do a good job of chip collection. Most small shop "fine" dust collector bags pass between twenty to thirty times larger particles than small shop vendors advertise until so clogged they barely pass air. On average airborne dust makes up 15% by weight of the woodworking byproducts we collect, so virtually all commercial woodworking cyclones blow this 15% by weight of airborne dust right through. In addition to the airborne dust cyclones also blow right through things like strings and long shavings that have lots of surface area. But you can upgrade your system affordably with an inline dust separator to provide the same benefit at a lower cost. Normal airfoil impellers replace the flat vanes with airfoil shaped vanes. The sucked air generally enters the side of the collection tank and is often directed to swirl around inside the drum causing a little cyclonic action that minimizes the amount of dust that goes to the filter. Almost all small shop dust collectors use an electric induction motor with its shaft directly turning an impeller that turns at about 3450 rotations per minute (RPM). Most fans look like common table, box and ceiling fans that use fan blades to push air through the blades. All can simply load up their filters to get whatever level of filtering they want. If the blower is on the clean side of the filters, a much more efficient clean air caged or airfoil blower can be used. Unless you have oversized impellers like I use you need a 7" diameter duct to carry 1000 CFM. I did so myself for my own early system. For maximum health protection we need to use cartridge filters rated by a certified lab with ample surface area. Fortunately, most shop vacuum brands can be reconfigured with these somewhat pricey fine cartridge filters. Unfortunately, making repair becomes our problem because even buying the best recommended solutions leave you just where I was, getting far too much fine dust exposure. Most small shop woodworkers wrongly believe that these vendors are subject to government oversight and controls. Without protection the odds are close to 100% that you and even those close to you will eventually develop some fine wood dust related health problems. Finding these units too rapidly ruin filters and knowing I cannot blow the air outside, I went back to the physics and engineering to build a better cyclone. Inexpensive ( These heavier particles continue to slide downward and eventually exit out a dust chute into the collection bin. With the rates to ship larger items by truck up to five times higher than through the post office, FedEx and UPS, most small shop cyclones end up being compromised in both size and weight to conform to the lower cost shipping restrictions. Moreover, because most stationary tools leak dust careful testing by air engineers shows we need closer to 1000 CFM for effective fine dust collection at our larger and dustier tools to pull in the slow moving dust before it gets dispersed by normal room air currents. Putting a fine filter on an outdoor cyclone design built to push almost all the airborne dust outside quickly loads up even a large filter. Not wanting that to ever happen again I stupidly threw money at the problem letting the highest rated cyclone vendor configure my shop with their top of the line cyclone, filters, and ducting. This system will save wear and tear on your dust collector, and you won't have to empty it as often. Now I use the same fan I use for exhausting my shop just turning it around. My plans use different gore point clearances depending upon blower type. A large item slamming into an impeller can cause the impeller to break, warp, or bend out of balance. It is a real shame to buy a top notch piece of equipment and suddenly have to make a big 6" hole in it. Ducting includes the pipes, fittings and flexible hoses that carry air and sawdust. Smaller bins fill faster, but handle easier for dumping, so decide which is more important: frequency or convenience. Fine filters need far more area, so they plug more quickly. Everyone else is also looking for the same single phase 3 or 5 HP motor-blowers. In small shops cyclones provide a false sense of security in terms of filter protection. Most blower induction motors turn at 3450 rotations per minute (RPM) and use an external cooling fan. Chicago Fan, Cincinnati Fan, and Continental Fan responded with quotes. The best you are going to get from this gravity based cyclone is good "chip collection" and the cost to get that could be high. Tilting the vanes away from the direction of rotation creates what are called backward inclined (BI) blowers. My 1.5 hp system with a trashcan separator worked fine until I upgraded to 6" ducting after realizing my 4" ducting was strangling dust collection airflow. This explains why our shop vacuums that on blow will stir and move dust all over our shops can only vacuum up dust up from a couple of inches away. A small shop blower will provide between 4" and about 15" static pressure. These fans sit inside ducting and push the air through. Are you saying I need to get a blower to run 1000 CFM at every tool in my shop? A properly sized trashcan separator will separate off roughly 85% of the dust by weight. Collect and store dust in metal cans to avoid fires. With fire and building codes requiring placement of most dust collection outside, these filters simply let the fine dust blow away into the outside air. Then the internal airflow and turbulence is maintained to keep the light material airborne so it can blow out the top of the cyclone. The huge cyclones we see outside of almost every large commercial woodworking facility are agricultural cyclone variations. Moreover, even though the trapped dust increases filtering, the trapped dust constantly migrates through turning most shop vacuum filters into dust reservoirs that badly contaminate our shops every time we use our vacuums. Cyclones blast incoming air onto the cyclone wall to knock the light material apart from the heavier. Airflow on the cyclone walls is slowed by friction. Even so I still had to make sure I always ran my airfoil with at least one 6" blast gate open. All blower impeller housings should be an expanding spiral also known as a volute that starts from the center of the impeller. To maintain efficient separation, dump the bin before it reaches 34 full. The small shop vendors took their outdoor cyclone copies, made their units with indoor parts, and put finer filters on these units so they can call them fine dust collectors. Because most of these tool designs use very large open areas that need a high volume of air for good collection, good fine dust collection often takes almost triple the airflow that it does to just collect the chips. Almost any buildup of materials immediately throws our impellers out of balance and that can quickly ruin motors and motor bearings, plus lead to our impellers exploding. Soon, instead of the fine dust being a shop problem, it becomes a twenty four hour a day seven day a week problem for us, all close to us and our pets. In addition to these being the wrong cyclones to copy, the vendors have made these cyclones work even more poorly by adding additional compromises to address a few small shop realities: Most small shop users have limited money to spend on their cyclones. Why did you pull them down? You have me so confused I don't know which end is up. Vacuums only provide good dust collection for tools engineered from the ground up with good fine dust collection built in, meaning the tool protects, directs, and delivers all the fine dust right to the vacuum connection before it can be blown away by air streams from our blades, bits, cutters, belts, motors, sandpaper, room air currents, etc. Copyright 2000-2022, by William F. Pentz. We like steel collection drums for their durability, but they're costly and can be heavy to dump. This enables us to clean out our filters without having to take all apart or get a "dust bath" while cleaning. Designing a good fine dust separation into a cyclone compatible with indoor use with fine filters requires a whole different design and considerable work. It also explains why we have to move so much air to get good fine dust collection because it takes a lot of air to ensure pulling in the fine dust before normal room air currents disperse it. As of late 2005 not one mainstream small shop cyclone vendor offered a 2 hp or smaller cyclone that moved the air needed for good "chip collection". Unfortunately, like dust collectors and cyclones, vacuums get even worse bad advertising. For lots more information visit my Ducting Page. It was not until 2005 that these vendors finally started selling cyclones with larger motors, but most only stepped up to 3 hp motors that are too small to support the cyclone and overhead found in average sized shops. That prevents them from having their speed adjusted for optimum impeller performance, so we have to adjust impeller diameter to get optimum motor performance. Fire codes and building codes generally require commercial dust collectors to be placed not only outside, but in strong containment because fine wood dust when mixed with the right amount of air not only burns, it can explode violently. Sadly their dust collectors and cyclones are so bad most will not let our shops pass even easy air quality tests. My Cincinnati material handling blower leaves a clearance of about 1.3" from that same closest point, sometimes known as Blowers use a tangential outlet for the air. Indoors, using this kind of material even in fine filter bags is not very wise. Many write asking if they can use Heating Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) blowers for dust collection because these blowers are so common and inexpensive. Once it is captured, I recommend using a cyclone separator just like the large commercial woodworking facilities then blowing the fine dust away outside. A good vacuum will be large enough with the right sized hoses, of the proper type for your uses, and have enough suction to do the job. Even if the impeller survives, the heavier chips and blocks punch cartridge filters full of holes and can ruin them in seconds. Skip to the beginning of the images gallery. The connection from your machine to your ducting is often a problem with small shop equipment. To fit a cyclone with its blower and dust drum under an 8' ceiling vendors build very short cyclone cones. All Rights Reserved. The impeller turns in a spiral shaped blower housing that needs to be very smooth to minimize the disruption of airflow. Much of the safety and efficiency of a blower as well as how much noise it makes depends upon the shape and design of its housing. Most sized with 3 hp motors do not move the air needed for good fine dust collection at our larger tools. We still need larger dust collectors and cyclones because vacuums do not move enough air volume to be good for capturing dust from machines that emit dust over a larger area. As a result most commercial woodworking cyclones end up being about 84% efficient by weight. Vacuums are unregulated so the truth in advertising laws let them vendors advertise anything they want so long as they can prove their claims even for an instant. Although dust collection blowers are fairly simple, as many small shop workers have found out, mistreating one or making your own incorrectly can be dangerous! Sucked air instead comes from all directions at once, so the airspeed for sucked air falls off very quickly. Mechanically vacuums are fairly simple systems. Heavy impellers are hard on motors when coming up to speed. Industrial blower makers change pulley sizes to speed up the rotation of the impeller. That means any dust collector over about 1.0 HP will have problems with a trashcan separator unless the airflow to that collector is strangled by using far too small 4" ducting that limits the airflow. Knowing what a mess it is when an impeller blows, I moan when I see vendors offering light aluminum and even plastic impellers. With too much resistance dust collector blowers become "air-starved", meaning they can't get enough air to operate effectively. This plugging kills our needed airflow, plus drives the pressure up enough that the fine silica (glass) particles that trees use for strength end up getting pushed to cut and tear their way through turning our fine filters quickly into wide open sieves that pass most of the finest unhealthiest dust. I believe all small shop woodworkers should protect ourselves and those close to us from fine dust. This is terrible news as most small shop dust collectors come with the very same wide open filtering material designed to pass almost all of the fine airborne dust right through. Separators also protect our blower fan wheel, known as an impeller, from getting hurt from hitting wood blocks and other heavy materials. So the secret to picking a good vacuum has to do with what real pressure does it generate. For those unable to afford the time or money to invest in a cyclone-based system with good cartridge filters, I recommend buying one of these cartridge filtered based dust collectors, or better yet, modifying your own dust collector to use a better cartridge filter (see Adding a cartridge filter to a dust collector).
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