Dust collecting explained?

[Bob Gerritsen]

Hi, does anyone know of a site, blog, post, book or whatever really that explains dust collecting in all it's details?

I'm thinking about redoing the ducting in my shop but really want to do it right this time. Meaning I want to get the best suction possible at every machine but I've never quite understood what to pay attention to. For instance, I have my Felder dust collector hooked up to the Festool Precisio 70 but it is clear the step down in diameter 'chokes' the vacuum (for lack of a better word) and I want to understand that.

Cheers, Bob.

 

[Chrisem]

This one's quite handy.

http://billpentz.com//woodworking/cyclone/index.cfm

 

[stvrowe]

This one's quite handy.

http://billpentz.com//woodworking/cyclone/index.cfm

+1
This is the best site I have found on the subject.

 

[jc]

This one's quite handy.

http://billpentz.com//woodworking/cyclone/index.cfm

That was what came to my mind too when I read your question.

 

[Bob Gerritsen]

Nice! Thanks guys, that should keep me occupied for a while.

 

[jmarkflesher]

Oneida will size you're duct work and blast gates if you send them a layout. My gates are manual so if I am using a 4 inch gate I must open another gate as not to "choke" the system. The best solution is to buy a system that monitors the CFM's and open or close gates as needed. This is $300 to $400 a gate , to rich for me. The spiral pipe is nice but expensive and with silicone you can get just as tight of a system. MARK

 

[Bob Gerritsen]

Man, that's an impressive amount of text... You cannot accuse mr Pentz of taking any shortcuts.  [laughing]

In short it seems I'm best of building a cyclone and upgrading to 150mm ducting. Not really what I was hoping to hear but I'm thinking it might not be such a bad idea to raise the bar a bit and go for zero dust. That seems quite impossible now but it is a really nice goal to aim for.

To be continued it seems!...

Cheers.

 

[Alan m]

iv read all the pentz info over the years and started to build one of his cyclones. i dont have  a way of welding the sheet metal  together. its still sitting there in pieces.
i  heard about the thien baffel and thought it was a gimick  compared to the pentz  cyclone. in th emean time i wanted a small seperater for my ct22. i  had a small blue  barrel so i tried the thien baffel . i didnt build it exactly as for the plan but it worked  amazingly well. (barrel full and a cup in the ct22 bag) so well that i am building a large full scale version. i have a 4"version as well and it works great. im building a 6 inch version now
over ont he thien forum there are loads of different designs and styles. some 2 ",4",6" .
it is worth a look as it can be build from scapes around the shop and it nice to say you did it yourself.

 

[Bob Gerritsen]

Well I seems to me the challenge is to first of all understand the info Pentz provides enough to be able to come up with my own opinion on the matter. And to tell you the truth I am certainly not looking forward to that but I will give it a try.

Right now I have the Felder AF14 for the bigger machines and although it is ok for the money, I'm wondering how much improvement is possible with tweaking the ducting, maybe try anothr filter and maybe use just a cyclone separator before it. Eventually, if I'm convinced building a proper Pentz cyclone is the way to go I wouldn't hesitate. Right now though I am simply not sure if his definition of good dust collection is even close to mine or if I'd be happy with (way) less.

Will see, for now ill continue reading some more.

Cheers!

 

[jmarkflesher]

I'm always amazed at the travel of the wood chips. The machine the furthest away is my thickness planer. It has a short piece of 5" clear plastic hose connecting it to a 5" blast gate. While feeding boards I can see all the chips in a spiral going through the hose. This also occurs with chips right as they drop into the drum. MARK