Quote:
Originally Posted by HemiEd
Hmmm, that is interesting information, and food for thought, thanks. Last year I stopped at a church sale that had this HUGE industrial shop vacuum dust collection system for $100 and I just thought it was too big for the space I have allocated for my woodwork shop.
Probably a bad decision.
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That Grizzly that KC has above is a perfect jumping off point; a simple 1-stage unit. The problem is that rig puts the big pieces in the same bag as the little stuff and the 'sock' on top clogs quickly. So if air can't get out, air can't go in and the suction drops in a hurry. There's a little bit of a separation in there but really not that much. It's better than nothing but a 2 stage is a MASSIVE improvement, especially with hard plumbing and a proper filter cartridge.
You can take that same motor and plum it into a Cyclone chip separator. It will pull the material into that separator, spin it for a second and the heavy stuff will fall out the bottom. I ran a static free tube into a sump sleeve with a hole cut into the top of the lid since the top would be air-tight and keep the pressure up.
The light stuff then gets sucked out the top of the separator, through another tube and blasted through a corrugated filter cartridge. The cartridge, as opposed to the sock, has FAR greater surface area. Now since it only has the small stuff in it, it gets very little work and with the significant surface area improvement, air has a lot of room to escape. It also has finer filtration so it captures a lot more; it has something like .5 micron filtration vs. the 5 micron on your average filter sock. It's just better at everything.
So your vacuum pressure stays at peak capacity. I think I have some photos of my rig in here somewhere.
I used the HF model to keep the cost down since all I really cared about was the motor and the impeller looked plenty strong. Some people suggest replacing or even reversing the impeller but I've never done it and mine will suck large shavings from about an inch away all around the plate on my table saw.
It will be a miracle worker if you plum your jointer into it. A clogged jointer pretty much won't do a damn thing. By having a constant source of suction on the bottom for those massive shavings that come off, you'll fly through mill-work.
It's a headache and it seems like money wasted because it's not a tool or any work product, but it makes all your tools run better.