This is way way OOD as of January 2020. It would be a good place to have a nice write up about dust collection in the shop.

~ Crafty Rachel

”’9 October 2012”’

I fixed the motor on the dust collector a week or two ago.. Sry I neglected the wiki page!

Everything is working now tho I recommend opening the closet door when running the dust collector for two reasons:

1) So the vacuum doesn’t have to work against blowing air out of the closet door.

B) So that people will remember to turn off the dust collector, keeping it from overheating and me from having to fix it again.

-atom

Several members have commented about the hazards of sawdust and fine dust generated by tools. A group of us have begun getting improvements in place quickly while we develop plans for a more capable system. Here’s Aaron M’s link to a very thorough discussion of how we should plan our future system: [http://billpentz.com/woodworking/cyclone/DCBasics.cfm#Hereisthegoal Dust Collection Basics].

”’Monday 9 April progress report”’
Aaron, Stefan, Mike, and I made good progress tonight, finishing the 6″ runs and attaching hose to 2 drops. Unfortunately all the local stores I tried were out of the PVC to hose splices other than the two pieces I found in Concord. So we hooked up the vacuum and the floor sweep as an initial test. This way it’s easy to sweep up the debris. Mike’s comment was “This makes cleaning up fun!” Turn on the vacuum, close all but the far left blast gate and sweep all the dust/chips on the floor into the dust port!
[[File:Mikecleansup.jpg|RTENOTITLE]]
Please note, this will not pick up heavier items like nails and blocks of wood. These larger items are not good for the pipe or the impeller, please don’t abuse the system!

Here’s a rundown of the additional parts I’ll acquire to complete what we have:
3 4″ pvc pipe to 4″ hose splices (ABS with slightly different OD measurements to fit snugly inside PVC pipe and inside 4″ flex hose.
1 4″ Y connector for the vacuum motor so we can connect the main and a flexible hose to cover use in that corner of the shop.

We also determined we would like to use the closet to hold the vacuum motor as it dramatically reduces the noise and further protects against very fine dust being blown into the main space. If we put a vent in the metal duct at the top, we can move most of the very fine dust the blower throws out directly into the exhaust out of the space.

”’Additional projects related to dust collection:”’

– Build a cyclone extractor that can be mounted in the closet or on the wall next to the exhaust box.
– Build tool ports at each tool so dust hose can be connected directly to the tool
– Make a vent opening (with blast gate) in the closet to vent air expelled by the blower (this air will contain sub 2micron dust that isn’t caught by the filter bag
– Design and install remote control actuators for each blast gate (solenoid, servo, spring, anything!). Extra points for putting it on the network!
– Design and install a wireless remote for the vacuum (can be tied to the actuators)
– Determine if we have sufficient vacuum strength for the size of the space and volume of dust/chips created

”’Saturday 7 April progress report”’
Mike, Stefan and I (Anup) made some progress on improving dust collection downstairs. A huge thanks to Stefan for stepping in, I doubt Mike and I could have managed nearly as much without a third person.

Like many projects, progress was slower than we had hoped. But we managed to turn a bench top covered with parts
[[File:Pvcparts.jpg|RTENOTITLE]]

into
[[File:Ductingleft.jpg|RTENOTITLE]][[File:Ductingright.jpg|RTENOTITLE]]

Mike, being the tallest of us, got ladder duty wrestling PVC pipe, strapping, a drill and ceiling joists
[[File:Mikedrilling.jpg|RTENOTITLE]]

while Stefan came up with a good use for our scrap wood to make impromptu “pitchforks” which substituted for additional ladders/hands:
[[File:Stefanfork.jpg|RTENOTITLE]][[File:Forkasfourthhand.jpg|RTENOTITLE]]

We’ll be finishing up in the next couple days. If anyone is interested in helping with the final assembly, please contact Mike or myself.

Also, a request for crafty Rachel and anyone else that has items on the floor against the walls. We need to move things around a bit in order to put the final drops from the ceiling and put tool ports in place. So I’d like to move the pop-up book frame and we’ll be moving some tools around. Mike and I plan to be back Monday to finish the upper runs. If you have any immediate objections to some things moving around, please let me know asap.
[[Category:Equipment]][[Category:Projects]][[Category:WoodShop]][[Category:WorkShop]]