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insulating dust collector

H

herb

Joined
Mar 4, 2007
Messages
56
Likes
8
Location
Lakewood, Colorado
Hi,

I have a jet dust collection system. And like others it is pretty loud. I don't have the luxury of moving it out of my shop. Any tips on sound insulation?

herb
 
I also have the Jet 2hp dust collector in my basement shop. Yes, it is very loud. Two years ago, I purchased a muffler made for it, from Penn State Industries (you can 'Google' the name to get the web address). If you chose to purchase one, I also suggest you purchase a short section of 6-inch hose to replace the rather stiff hose that already is on your dust collector. My experience has been that the muffler significantly reduced the noise from the dust collector.

Matt Clarke
 
I boxed it

When my Oneida 1-1/2hp cyclone was in the open and hanging on the wall my wife was outraged. Her office was on the other side of the wall. When I first turned it on she was in the shop in 3 seconds. So I built an mdf box about 2x2x7 and put it on wheels to isolate it. I lined it with insulation board and used a muffler. Still a bit loud in the shop (blocks normal speech) but my wife is happy because she isn't living on the inside of a drum. A lot of work for maybe a 50% improvement. I suspect if I routed the exhaust pipe to the outside that would make a big difference, but in the winter my heat would be shipped outside.
 
I was going to put a silencer on mine but I divorced her instead. PaDa Boom.
My good friend who shares a shop with his wife put his dust collector in a seperate closet that he built. He able to store a lot of things in there to keep them out of the way and the dust collector is very quiet even though it's kind of in the middle of the room. The closet sort of breaks the shop up into a his and hers area.
My dust collector is loud but the really obnoxious thing is my air compressor. I have a sort of attic in my shop so I'm thinking of putting the air compressor up there and putting some insulated panels around it.
My long term goal is to build an addition onto the shop that will hold the lawnmower bicycles and and other tools as well as the air compressor and dust collector. That should keep the noise down a lot.
 
Joe Greiner said:
I ain't gonna touch this one. But I'll be checking later to see who does.:D

Joe
Click to expand...

I do (but I admire the humor). It makes quite a bit of difference. Like a muffler, since the exhaust is the loud part on a cyclone.
 
My wife has gone in the other room

so it is somewhat safe to quickly answer your question: To be clear, the DUST COLLECTOR did have a silencer on it when hanging on the wall. I believe noise is conducted mechanically and reverberates thru the wall when mounted on the wall, and the wall resonates as well making it worse in the shop also. Isolating it in the floating cabinet made a noticeable difference. There is motor noise, vibration, chip noise in the cyclone I believe that was quieted by the cabinet. The high speed exhaust of air and the fan noise remains, dampened by the muffler.

Jerry (married these many years, and planning to stay that way)
 
Acoustical insulation

My approach to dampen dust collector noise was to make plywood and 2x4 panels on three sides of the dust collector--I left the back side by the bag open for my access and also to allow air to the motor that is essential. I attached the most efficient acoustical insulation to the inside of the panels facing toward the collector---it is a blackish egg crate shaped 2 inch foam purchased over the Internet from an acoustical foam vendor. I also stuffed the insulation between the basement ceiling joist beams.

A big noise improvement. I wired a heavy duty on-off button switch to the outside of the panel closest to my lathe so I could just move over and hit the switch on or off.
 
You can get 1-2" hard foam insulation panels at Home Despot or BLoews. Build a box around the collector with this. It's realy amazing how much sound this absorbs.

My brand spanking new collector is going on the opposite side of a dividing wall from my shop (will lengthen the ducting by a whole 3 feet) with a barrier of this insulation in a U around it.

dk

P.S. (you can leave a vent hole on the side opposite where you work)
 
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