what dust collection system works best in a 2 car garage + 200 sf room?
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shop dust collection
- Thread starter Ed Jarvis
- Start date
Best can be big $$$. I'd settle for effective and reliable. I believe I have effective and it has been very reliable, but...
This is a timely question, because I'm considering, due to general service life, upgrading from my 20-some year old 650cfm 2-bag Jet dust collector with then-upgraded felt bags. Doubling the CFM would be a good starting point for my thinking. I don't care about chips- things that drop to the floor are easy, it's the stuff that hangs in the air that I want to control and capture. My Raffan-inspired dust hoods (seach me for that over the past year of so) have been working wonderfully, but my current collector won't live forever, that's why it is on my mind.
I used to use a metal trash can and separator lid to pre-filter the air stream of heavies. I took it out- I wasn't sending much heavy stuff to it, it added greatly to the noise in the shop, and after removal I noticed the suction went up. And I saved a few square feet of floor space.
Here's a link from a recent discussion mentioning a couple custom fabric bag companies. I want fabric, not pleated filters. I feel high quality top and bottom fabric filter bags will provide more filter surface and less suction drop than a single pleated filter and plastic lower bag.
Post in thread 'Cleaning DC filter' https://www.aawforum.org/community/threads/cleaning-dc-filter.24755/post-278901
This is a timely question, because I'm considering, due to general service life, upgrading from my 20-some year old 650cfm 2-bag Jet dust collector with then-upgraded felt bags. Doubling the CFM would be a good starting point for my thinking. I don't care about chips- things that drop to the floor are easy, it's the stuff that hangs in the air that I want to control and capture. My Raffan-inspired dust hoods (seach me for that over the past year of so) have been working wonderfully, but my current collector won't live forever, that's why it is on my mind.
I used to use a metal trash can and separator lid to pre-filter the air stream of heavies. I took it out- I wasn't sending much heavy stuff to it, it added greatly to the noise in the shop, and after removal I noticed the suction went up. And I saved a few square feet of floor space.
Here's a link from a recent discussion mentioning a couple custom fabric bag companies. I want fabric, not pleated filters. I feel high quality top and bottom fabric filter bags will provide more filter surface and less suction drop than a single pleated filter and plastic lower bag.
Post in thread 'Cleaning DC filter' https://www.aawforum.org/community/threads/cleaning-dc-filter.24755/post-278901
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To add...
-Avoid flexible plastic duct. Use 26ga. (not lighter 28ga.) smooth sheet metal duct and elbows for as much of the system as possible, should be available from your local big box stores. Use 3 equally spaced sheet metal screws per joint to hold them together. Support the duct along its length with plumbing J-hooks or metal strapping.
-I avoid height changes in the duct runs. I have my ducts running along the walls at the similar height of the source of the dust. Why fight gravity if you don't have to?
-In the direction of air flow, the crimped end of the duct goes into the uncrimped end of the next downstream duct section. This lessens air leakage at joints, and less clogging of debris.
-Seal all duct joints, at connections and along the length, with UL181 labeled metal foil tape or paint-on duct mastic (messy). Even tape the joints of elbows. Sealing prevents air leakage and suction drops at the points of use.
-2 elbows forming a long-sweep bend may(?) be more efficient than a single elbow making a short-sweep bend. 90° elbows restrict air as much as 5' of straight pipe. Plan your layout carefully.
-Blast gates leak air. Cheap gates leak more air. Buy good blast gates. Good ones are expensive. Or, turn tapered wood plugs to jam into the ends of branch openings when a branch is not in use, think a cork in a bottle. They won't leak any more air than blast gates, and maybe less if you build them well. And they cost almost nothing.
-Keep branches as short as possible to maintain suction efficiency. Consider where the collector and machines are located relative to each other.
The thread of my dust hoods at each lathe. They have proven to be very effective at grabbing airborne dust before it can leave the area of the lathe. Just today, on my long bed lathe, I was sanding spindles 24" away (down the bed) from the duct inlet, and dust was still being pulled into my hood enclosure. More about them in this thread-
There are probably other things I'm not thinking of, but these points, building a good duct system, will go far to make any collector as efficient and effective as possible.
-Avoid flexible plastic duct. Use 26ga. (not lighter 28ga.) smooth sheet metal duct and elbows for as much of the system as possible, should be available from your local big box stores. Use 3 equally spaced sheet metal screws per joint to hold them together. Support the duct along its length with plumbing J-hooks or metal strapping.
-I avoid height changes in the duct runs. I have my ducts running along the walls at the similar height of the source of the dust. Why fight gravity if you don't have to?
-In the direction of air flow, the crimped end of the duct goes into the uncrimped end of the next downstream duct section. This lessens air leakage at joints, and less clogging of debris.
-Seal all duct joints, at connections and along the length, with UL181 labeled metal foil tape or paint-on duct mastic (messy). Even tape the joints of elbows. Sealing prevents air leakage and suction drops at the points of use.
-2 elbows forming a long-sweep bend may(?) be more efficient than a single elbow making a short-sweep bend. 90° elbows restrict air as much as 5' of straight pipe. Plan your layout carefully.
-Blast gates leak air. Cheap gates leak more air. Buy good blast gates. Good ones are expensive. Or, turn tapered wood plugs to jam into the ends of branch openings when a branch is not in use, think a cork in a bottle. They won't leak any more air than blast gates, and maybe less if you build them well. And they cost almost nothing.
-Keep branches as short as possible to maintain suction efficiency. Consider where the collector and machines are located relative to each other.
The thread of my dust hoods at each lathe. They have proven to be very effective at grabbing airborne dust before it can leave the area of the lathe. Just today, on my long bed lathe, I was sanding spindles 24" away (down the bed) from the duct inlet, and dust was still being pulled into my hood enclosure. More about them in this thread-
There are probably other things I'm not thinking of, but these points, building a good duct system, will go far to make any collector as efficient and effective as possible.
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Oneida dust collectors work better than just about anything out there, and they have very small footprints. Depends on how packed your shop is. For pulling the fine stuff out of the air, you can get away with a box fan and a HEPA fliter. Depends on your budget.
robo hippy
robo hippy
The best system is one that picks up dust at the source and leaves the air clean enough to breathe without making you sick, all at an affordable cost. Not a simple question.
In a small space with few machines you can get by with a mobile dust collector and a single flex hose, but it sounds like you need a fixed duct system. Start with a floor plan showing your machine locations and use the planning guide found at airhandler.com. With that you can decide how powerful a blower you need. Look for a manufacturer that supplies fan curve data, because without that it is just marketing bafflegab. Oneida and Clearvue are a couple of reliable sources, and they want to sell you cyclone separators and filters as well
If you live in the sticks in a favorable climate you can blow everything out into the bush or an enclosed trailer. A proper tall cyclone will separate out the big chips from the fine dust and drop it into a sealed container. If you need to conserve heat now you are looking at a return air system and you need reliable filters to keep that fine stuff out of your lungs, whether cartridge or bag filters, with enough area for the air volume passing through.
Without getting into the weeds you should probably be looking at a system that will support a minimum 6" duct at the lathe, with an adjustable intake to pick up dust as close as possible to the work.
For reference I have an 1100 sq ft shop with 10 drops serviced by a 3 hp Oneida cyclone and about 150 sq ft of tube filters. I also have an ambient air filter with a 1/3 hp squirrel cage fan to catch what the central system misses.
I've used a 2hp DC from Harbor Freight for years - Not a fan of a lot of their power tools, but it's the best electric tool I've ever found there...change the bags for a nano cartridge filter from Wynn Environmental and add a cyclone and it's a great, affordable system that's served me well for nearly two decades. My shop is a little under 900 sq. feet; the DC is used for all power tools with a permanent drop for the table saw and movable flexible drop shared by lathe and all other tools as needed.
Cartridge filters are great until they get clogged, and they will. Rule of thumb is 10 sq ft of filter area for each 100 cfm actual air flow. I had one industrial designer comment that he doubled that for systems using cartridges rather than bag filters. A cheap "dust collector" with undersized coarse filter bags is in effect a combined chip collector and dust pump.
Keeper info, thanks.
If I do an upsized collector with custom bags (sources you ref. in another thread back on Oct 23, '25), I'd spec the top bag to be extra tall by 2-4 feet, or more if possible, and support it from the ceiling, to provide extra filter bag surface.
I have clogged my filters up many times. They get clogged up when I am not paying attention to the level in the chip barrel. Many systems do have lights that come on to let you know when that level is reached. I take my cartridge outside and hose off the inside with a low pressure hose. No problems thus far, and once you turn the dust collector back on, it is dry in seconds.
robo hippy
robo hippy
I think a clear answer to your question would depend on how many machines you want to connect.
To fine tune that, it's not how many machines you want to connect, it's how many machines need suction simultaneously. I'm guessing in a one-person home shop, it is likely never more than one machine needing dust collection at any given moment. Good quality blast gates can provide the service of isolating machines from the greater system. With good blast gates controlling each branch, you could effectively have as many branches as you need.
If a home shop has two machine operators in the shop at the same time, both operating a machine that requires dust removal, now the dust collector machine specs become very important. A small collector (the typical "1-hp 650cfm" collectors) are probably going to have a hard time providing effective collection to two machines simultaneously.
I’ve read the goal is 1200 to 1500 CFM at each tool. That much air movement seems to require about a 2 1/2 to 3 hp machine.