Larger dust collector question

[gnlman]

Hi. I am going to upgrade the dust collection in the larger part of my garage. While the question of what to get (cyclone, one stage, two stage, is difficult to decide on...lol) my concern is more about my existing lines I have run to machines now....
Presently I have 2 blast gates mounted on the wall one going to my drill press, and the other going to to a line that travels up the wall and midway across the ceiling at the end of my cutting table. This is all 2.5 inch blast gates and hose....
I have a 200 cfm shopvac with a dust deputy inline, and it works great for the drill press, and for the most part I could insert my festool hose in the line on the ceiling and it did a fine job of collecting the dust from my festool track saw sanders ect....
I just finished my router table, and am trying to collect dust from the fence, as well as a dust box I built around the router under the table. The shopvac system I have in place is not as effective as I'd like it to be hence the thought of upgrading.....

My question is.....If I buy say a 1200 cfm dust collector to replace the shopvac and cyclone, I don't see any way of lowering the cfm's ( unlike a festool vac you can turn down) other than choking back the blast gates.....I've never had a large dust collector before, am I on the right track??
Thanks in advance for any advice!!
Greg.

 

[bruegf]

2 1/2" runs will be far too small for a real dust collector, you'll need somewhere between 4 and 6" depending on the size of your collector.  I went with a Harbor Freight 2hp dust collector and put a thien baffle in front of it and ran 5" ducts that stepped down to 4" blast gates before connecting to the table saw, band saw, etc.  I still use the CT22 for the festool tools.  You'll want the higher static pressure of a vac for the festool dust collection as opposed to the higher CFM of a dust collector.

Fred

 

[greg mann]

Agree. I wuld leave what you have in place and add the larger system alongside. The small one will work well with high static applicants as you referred to and the new one will work with larger machines; jointer planer , table saw, etc.

 

[gnlman]

Hi. Thanks for the reply.
I kind of wondered what would happen....thinking the lines would collapse....lol
So if I run a header with 5-6 inch pipe, and take off with 4 inch blast gates could I use a 4 to 2.5 inch adapters to my machines?
The machines I am referring to are a portable table saw, spindle sander, and my router table. They all have 2.5 inch inlets....
Having said that, I could convert the box under my router table to a 4 inch port, and adapt a 2.5 inch hose from the router table fence to a 4 inch tee,  as it's port is only 2.5.....does that make any more sense??

Thanks again for the real world advice....
Greg

 

[jmarkflesher]

You need both systems.