The few firms that share airflow curves falsify their system performance through testing tricks which they convinced magazine editors to continue. This is why we are here to help! This dust cake initially improves filtering, but as it gets thicker the air pressure increases forcing the finest unhealthiest particles to tear their way the filters. Have has this unit for several months and am disappointed with it every time I use it. ATTACHES TO 5 GALLON BUCKETS IN SECONDS - The dust separator clips to a 5 gallon bucket in seconds making for incredibly fast and easy setup. They assumed without checking their facts that because it takes so little airflow to move airborne dust, that the much higher airspeeds required for "chip collection" were more than ample to also pull in the fine dust. If you cannot do that, then I recommend buying commercial independent laboratory certified 0.5 micron or better cartridge filters to protect your health. This is why I strongly recommend using a pair of the 300 square foot poly blended filters on my cyclone design when we could get by with just one. Many have written that their sensitive particle counters show almost every hand tool and other woodworking operation generates lots of fine dust even when we produce little or no larger sawdust particles. He shared the health risks of wood dust exposure and gave me a list of immediate to dos (see "Health Risks and Doc's Orders"), and pointed me in some directions to start my research. This fine invisible dust lasts for years unless it gets wet. Patent pending. Worse, the dust collector test allowed one winning vendor to supply a test unit with an oversized impeller larger than they ship on that model tested. OSHA testing shows on average every twenty pounds of sawdust makes over 151,197 milligrams of fine dust which is enough to cause 15,119 typical two car garage sized shops to fail an EPA air quality test. LONGER LIFESPAN - Prevents fine dust and large debris from reaching your wet/dry vacuum's filter, reducing the need for cleanings and prolonging the lifespan of your filter. Contact our teamto learn more about how our tools can craft anything you have in mind. Submitted by toolreviews@woo on Mon, 08/06/2012 - 21:10. Welcome to your destination. They are commonly used as the first stage in multiple stage dust collection systems, or as a product separator in air conveying systems. When that fine dust escapes, it becomes near impossible to capture and it takes many hours for typical air cleaners and exhaust fans to bring the dust levels down safe enough to remove our masks. Dust piles in the mains are a fire just waiting to happen and pose a potential explosion risk. They made no effort to improve this product and it continues to be sold exactly as was still being advertised as one of the best and most efficient. A baffle type muffler typically used on cars, large air compressors, etc. Our tools mostly lack designs and hoods that will control the fine dust before it is captured so spray fine dust everywhere driven by the air from our blades, bits, cutters, belts, motor cooling fans, etc. This resistance moves through a considerable swing. The reasons are simple. A little algebra shows CFM = FPM*Area. Even "old salts" meaning long time woodworkers don't have a clue as to what is really needed for fine dust collection without doing a bunch of homework. Fortunately, the dust collection and filter makers for large commercial facilities shared their designs for better fine dust collection hoods for our smaller stationary tools (see the dust hoods on my ducting page); Almost all small shop vendors only offer 4" diameter ducting and tools with 4" diameter ports, yet most large stationary tools found in small woodworking shops need 6" diameter ducting for good fine dust collection. Almost all air engineers say the only way to provide good fine dust collection for most hobbyist and older tool designs requires us to replace the hoods, sometimes remake the tools and provide nearly double the air volume to collect the finest dust as it did to collect the heavier chips and sawdust. Consequently, spending a lot of money on a product that has no real value is also not a good idea. This makes for a mess for small shop woodworkers trying to make an informed purchasing decision. That amount is decided by the capacity of your blower and how much you choke down its inlet and outlet. Laguna Tools uses cookies to improve your experience on our site. that control, protect, and direct the fine dust for collection. My own shop while using the "best" rated cyclone with fine filters tested with over double the daily allowable maximum average and a 12,000 times higher than medically recommended particle count. Medical studies of commercial woodworkers in facilities that comply with current government standards show these OSHA standards do not work. Meanwhile, I continue to agree with and support the standards from those who want to replace the hoods and move more air because my pocketbook is not up to replacing my tools. We can launch this much fine dust by beating our shop apron. We all know when we put on vacuum hose on the blow port we can blow dust all over but that same hose when sucking will only pickup next to the nozzle. At least three of the most popular magazines have recently shared dust collection articles recommending use of HVAC pipe to make complex ducting solutions with multiple down drop sizes. Look over the reviews, then make an informed purchasing decision based on this ultimate guide. Most sell their dust collectors with a length of plastic flex hose. Dust Cyclone Separator: Turn any shop vacuum with a 2-1/4 ID outlet into a 2-stage dust extractor. At the same time, this is not rocket science and hundreds if not thousands have already been through this exercise. We dont choose the products at random. They also learned they had to move far more air to capture this fine dust with our older tool designs than is required to just capture the heavier sawdust and chips. Contaminated air is drawn into the cyclone where the centrifugal action forcibly pulls dust from the airstream, dropping collected particulate into the dust storage container. The more open filters appear to work just as well as they filter off the visible dust but they freely pass the invisible dust. Have you ever been unsure what model to buy when considering the purchase of dust separator in general? We also must use a blower large enough to ensure moving ample air at our tools. You can do lots of homework, or make it easy on yourself and just look up the answer by using a CFM requirements table designed to capture the fine dust. I have hooked it up to a router table to my Incra fence and it does a good job. As a result, most small shop fine filters end up turning our dust collector and cyclones into "dust pumps" that fill our air with dangerously unhealthy dust levels. Filters used outdoors where the fine dust that escapes the filters just blows away harmlessly outside are rated by the filter material makers based upon reaching their maximum seasoning. This also helps prevents any unnecessary damage to dust collector impellers. Efficient Dust Collecting: Our 10-gallon translucent workshop vacuum system bucket is easy to empty and easy to tell when it's full. Many vendors also forget that we are filtering very dirty air and size their filters based on manufacture recommendations for filtering the relatively clean indoor air that only calls for about one square foot of the all poly filters for every ten CFM of air and double that for the paper blended filters. Sucking pulls air from all directions, so airspeed drops off at the same rate as the area of a sphere. Laguna Tools cyclone dust collectors remove high volumes of dust and other impurities from the air, working efficiently to keep your work area safe. This means a typical 1.5 hp dust collector with a maximum airflow of 1100 CFM and real airflow of about 550 CFM needs at least 275 square feet of fine filter area if we use a real fine filter. Is this all there is to it? Compatible with any make/model shop vacuum; Tapered ports fit standard 1.5" to 2.5" hose fittings. Worse, in the last few years there have been at least three major magazine articles rating dust collectors and cyclones. From lots of experimenting and engineering tables we know we need 800 cubic feet per minute (CFM) air volume at our larger tools for proper dust collection. I redid the testing done by two hobbyist magazines on dust collectors and cyclones.
They approve and oversee independent testing labs to provide filter testing and performance certification. The Dust Deputy DIY will save you money on expensive replacement filters and dust bags, and time, allowing you to focus on the task at hand. Cyclone collectors are low in cost, require little or no maintenance, and effectively collect most particles over 10 microns in size, allowing less material to be sent to a second stage collector. Almost all small shop vendors sell much smaller filters than filter makers recommend which depends upon airflow and dust loading. It takes a lot of work on our part to get good fine dust collection with our current tools. The high dust concentrations in these piles can explode if ignited. Good filters will have about the same meter reading after each cleaning. all act just like a water valve and kill airflow. (1) Flex-form Hose, Monday-Saturday: 9AM-5PM CT
Includes a 36'' flexform connect hose. The table then shows the impeller diameter, required horsepower,and gives the ideal blower opening.
The Environmental Protection Agency also declared fine wood dust a carcinogen, meaning our intake of this dust also leaves us with increased risk of cancer. A 4" duct that only supports 349 CFM at 4000 FPM only gets 50 FPM about 8.94" from the center of our duct. Our tools lack the hoods needed to contain and control the faster moving air streams so they spray the fine dust away and miss collecting much of the fine dust. If you look closely at this table, you will see that we really need about 350 CFM at most of our larger stationary tools to get good "chip collection", meaning picking up the same sawdust and chips that we would otherwise sweep up with a broom. The following is a comprehensive guide to buying dust separator. To get more filter area in a given space, vendors fold the filter material into pleats and put the results into a cartridge form. Because of this range of performance, we need independent filter evaluations. Thank you for your support! The more of this finest dust we take in, the faster we become sensitized. Most single station small shop dust collection systems need to all use the same sized pipe, tool ports, and flex hose to prevent these problems; Small shop woodworkers are known to make their ducting from anything that carries dust. Most incorrectly think we can eliminate our fine dust problems by wearing a good dual cartridge filtered mask whenever we make fine dust. Worse, most filters contain large amounts of polymer materials that build up large amounts of static as we run air through the filters. He said most of our tools use older designs that need considerable modification to keep from spraying fine dust all over. Most small shop vendors provide dust collectors and cyclones with either inappropriate wide open outdoor filters, filters with outdoor ratings that freely pass twenty times larger particles, and or filters sized far too small so they soon self destruct. Fortunately, both materials come folded and made into cartridges that enable us to get this much filter area in a small space. 2022 HOME | Conch House Marina | St. Augustine, FL Built with. Filters used indoors are rated based on their worst case filtering when brand new with no dust cake. Right? My measurements of my standard 30-micron felt bag type filters when new was about 2.5", yet after "seasoning" that resistance rose to over 4" of resistance with a "clean" filter due to that buildup of fine particles embedded in the filter material. A real vacuum operates at the pressures to do just this. Of course not! When used with most power tools and shop vacuums, the Dust Right Separator captures sawdust, wood chips, and other debris before it enters your vacuum, preventing the loss of suction power caused by a clogged vacuum filter. Our 6" that supports 785 CFM at 4000 FPM only supports 50 FPM out to about 13.42". Additionally, as this resistance rises it causes the pressure inside the filter to increase. Every 1% missed lets enough fine dust escape to fail 151 typical sized shops, yet OSHA testing shows most small shop dust collectors and cyclones miss collecting at least 15% of the fine invisible airborne dust. The information you seek can come from many sources buying guides, ratings websites, word-of-mouth recommendations, online forums where users give their personal experiences, independent product reviews found throughout the internet, and even YouTube channels. A typical new filter on a cyclone or dust collector will start with a resistance of anywhere from a low of 0.25" to about 1" of resistance. Just knowing what level of filtering we want is not enough. The best way to vent outside is to have a strong commercial fan blowing out a back door or window with your main door cracked a little to give good flow through ventilation. If you are uncertain where to start your research, do not worry; we have you covered. These designs sell well because they look pretty. This is not good news for small shop woodworkers. Festool and a few other brands have shown with their special tools engineered from the ground up with good fine dust collection built in that totally controls the airflow around where the wood is being machined actually get good fine dust collection with an oversized shop vacuum. hardware pack and 2 ea. Unlike commercial shops that have a huge blower sized to run all ducts open at once hobbyist blowers are mostly only big enough to collect from one machine at a time. To protect fine filters and address the clogging, you can either buy an expensive graduated filter with automatic cleaning system, or use a cyclone separator. When we cannot control that dust, we should take that tool and woodworking outside while wearing a good dust mask. We mostly use two types of filter material in dust collection, all spun bond man made felt filter material used on most dust collector bags and the same stuff blended with cellulose (paper) fibers. Fortunately air engineers long ago addressed these problems for smaller commercial tools that are identical to larger hobbyist tools. These piles grow in height until they restrict the airflow enough that the speed climbs back up where it will pull the dust along. For generations most wrongly believed that other than a few toxic woods all wood dusts are only an irritant. Meanwhile it quickly spreads getting carried in any shared air and on our skin, clothes, and hair into our homes, offices, and vehicles to also expose all close to us to significant fine dust. Although this explosion risk is small, these piles slam around hard so can ruin our ducting, separators, blowers, impellers, motor bearings and filters. Both objectives are met. Our dust cyclone separator captures sawdust, wood chips, and other debris before it enters your vacuum, reducing the loss of suction power caused by a clogged vacuum filter. As this dust cake builds it can take up to twelve cleaning cycles before the filter fully "seasons" achieving its maximum filtering. Every time we clean our filters by blowing them down or shaking them we leave some of this cake embedded in the filter fibers. The original and still the best! Here are a few of the techniques that vendors use to make their outrageous claims. A 3" duct at 4000 FPM airspeed only supports 196 CFM which turns into less than 50 FPM at about 6.71" from the center of our hose. Most can get by with one 300 square foot blended filter, but will have far longer filter life, less cleaning, and much better performance by buying a pair of filters. What about the rest of us with garage size workshops who dont want the noise, space consumption or simply the large cost of such a system in their home workshop? This cyclone kit will help protect your dust collector from unnecessary wear and tear. Knowing youre not alone is sometimes all you need. Turn your shop vacuum into a 2-stage dust extractor with the Dust Right Vortex! The one who blows always wins because they move a directed stream of air that can push that balloon all over. Most hobbyist dust collector and cyclone filters are made from this same filter material, so are too open and pass airborne dust right through turning most hobbyist dust collection systems into "dust pumps" that keep our shop air filled with fine dust as long as they run; The fine hobbyist filters that we buy to address the fine dust problem are still too open and end up creating a false sense of security. Thats also something we consider! All rights reserved. Wish they made some sort of multitool connector and built it into the top for say 3 tools. Theres no doubt about it, large cyclone dust collector systems are great! This should terrify small shop woodworkers and hobbyists because OSHA testing shows small shop woodworkers including hobbyists who vent our dust collection systems inside get more exposure in a few hours than large facility woodworkers get in months of full time work. Dust collector blowers generate about one tenth the pressure leaving the air more like water, hardly compressible at all. Likewise, many wrongly believe that a good air cleaner will provide good fine dust protection, when in fact many air cleaners make things worse. Filter makers also provide the airflow and filtering levels for fully seasoned filters so air engineers can properly size outdoor filters. To do so, you need to: Learn and use the right tools to make a minimum of dust. AGET manufactures a complete line of cyclones, so the right sized collector can be chosen for different air handling performance needs. Stops dust from reaching your vacuum's filter/bag, eliminating filter clogging and suction loss. An average small shop holds less than 100 cubic meters of air, so the EPA limit is exceeded as soon as 10 milligrams of dust gets launched airborne. MAINTAIN AIRFLOW: By deflecting chips and large debris inline, the JET Cyclonic Separator frees up dust collection filters to trap finer particles. The sheer number of options out there makes going through thousands of reviews extremely frustrating. Airborne dust when vented outside settles slowly enough in typical outdoor breezes that it dissipates without a trace. When I built these web pages our small shop vendors were throwing a wide range of numbers around with little to no clue as to what those numbers meant and they badly confused the different airflows needed to provide good fine dust collection. Many try to use a garbage can separator, but quickly learn these units that worked so well with their smaller blowers, get almost instantly emptied of all but larger pieces of wood at airflow rates much over 400 CFM. Scrollsaw, Carving, and Decorative Projects, Good separation, twice the storage, at a reasonable price, Oneida Ultimate Dust Deputy Kit for Festool vacuums, Makita 1/4" Tilt Base Laminate Trimmer 3708FC. that will blow unprotected fine dust all over. Amazon Daily Deals
Almost all small shop vendors advertise maximum airflow which moves enough air for good fine dust collection. Adapting Mounting: The five-caster base of the dust collection system makes it exceptionally stable and easy to maneuver around the shop. Not really believing that my owning and using the very best in cyclone and air cleaner put me in the hospital, I had my shop tested and the results scared me into getting serious about learning about fine dust collection (see my Introduction). I would not buy another one. In practical terms adding 1/2 horsepower (HP) and a bigger impeller typical 1.5 HP blower only adds 10% more air volume! Because air at typical dust collection pressures will not compress, this requires that each main and branch be sized large enough to carry all air coming from downstream. Too little area also requires much more frequent filter cleaning. Works with most materials: wood dust, drywall dust, concrete dust, clay/silica dust, blasting soda, cooled ash & soot, water, metal shavings, baking flour, grass & leaves, pet/animal hair, pharmaceutical waste, and much more! Air engineering testing shows that even with the best recommended changes, we really do have to move this additional air if we are going to have successful fine dust collection. Finally, most hobbyist woodworking stores and tool vendors reinforce these poor ducting designs by mostly only carrying inappropriate ducting and dust collection equipment. The fine invisible fugitive dust we miss collecting just keeps building in shops that vent inside. Every joint, curve, turn, or Y connection will hurt your efficiency. Download the SC Series Pull-Through (with Bag-Type After Filter) product brochure for more information. He said I would have been better off without any of those units as they just stirred up and kept the fine most dangerous dust airborne and trapped inside my shop. Again with larger hobbyist stationary tools identical to smaller commercial tools we can use their same recommendations. A fan table is critical in helping us size both our blower impeller and motor for an effective dust collection system. Hobbyist hand power tools are the worst with tiny dust ports that will not work with a dust collector and are often too small for shop vacuums with ten times the pressure. But isnt it not always easy to do that? Both the hoods and ports often need rebuilt or replaced to be more efficient. US Pat. That same test killed the performance on the best dust collectors by choking their airflow with too small a test pipe. They are so fine and light they also almost never break the surface tension enough to harm our finishes. Only those who buy from reputable vendors are going to get home with a motor that actually delivers its promised advertised horsepower; Filters can simply build up enough dust cake to prove any level of filtering desired as long as they don't also have to pass any air. Paying more for your product will reward you every time you fast open the lid with increased your speed, better quality accuracy and a sweet view. An excellent one is provided on my web pages, but after going through the work to do this calculation, most end up with the same results. I no longer clean filters every few hours of woodworking and always have tons of suction power. Sadly, most hobbyist dust hoods are poorly engineered permitting the fine dust to escape from all over. CONSTANT SUCTION: Heavy debris is pulled down to collection drum before debris stream reaches the filter. If we have a good dust collection that only misses 1% of the fine dust we still contaminate our shops with enough fine dust to cause 150 typical small shops to fail their air quality tests. CFM Experiment At this point many are not quite ready to believe that we need to move more air volume to collect the finest dust. This resistance climbs until it builds a dust cake that provides maximum filtering with good airflow, known as when a filter becomes fully "seasoned". To stay competitive many firms engage in an ugly advertising war. A number of concerns combine to create to this small shop problem: Most small shop dust collectors and cyclones move roughly half the air volume needed to capture the fine dust at our larger tools as it is made. The same thing happens with our fine dust collection. We need to replace our tools with ones that control that dust or modify our existing tools with hoods, ports, etc. Continued exposure over time causes us to become more and more sensitized with ever stronger allergic reactions leading to health problems that eventually become chronic and potentially very serious. Using our same formula putting in our 4000 FPM and the area for a 4" duct show this sized duct will reduce 800 CFM airflow to only 349 CFM. Keep the air speed (FPM) fast enough to move the dusty air so we do not get plugging or dangerous dust piles in our ducting. To capture the fine dust at the source the air engineering firms who deliver systems guaranteed to meet air quality standards found most tool hoods need upgraded. So instead of just being a mild irritant, every fine wood dust exposure causes a tiny, almost unnoticeable amount of permanent damage. The goal is to capture the fine dust at the source and get rid of it. Also, Wood Magazine, Wood Central, the Oak, Saw Mill Creek, and other woodworking forums have many excellent homemade dust collection hoods in their archives. With almost no oversight, many claim whatever they want. I'm planning to add a similar item, but larger inline ahead of my dust collector. Verifying these calculations with testing is expensive and takes lots of work. Sadly, even professional small shop dust collection system designers do a lot of reductions and strange things that reduce the volume so much that the mains end up plugging because without the volume they also don't see enough airspeed. In the late eighties commercial woodworking concerns had to make change to meet government air quality standards, but our hobbyist market failed to follow. We also tested the separation ability of the various dust collectors and cyclones. Those with shops sized about the same as a one-car garage with ducting end up with about 6" of resistance for their ducting. We can wear them even more quickly if we use vacuum cleaners or compressors that generate so much pressure they tear open the filter pores; It takes months for airborne fine dust to blow away and break down. And, our 7" duct which supports 1069 CFM at 4000 FPM only gives our needed 50 FPM out to about 15.65". This same magazine then did the same in reverse on their cyclone tests. As the filter plugs resistance rises and we lose the airflow needed for good fine dust collection. These trashcan separator lids work well and separate off almost all but the airborne dust. Those commercial firms that guarantee customer air quality long ago through careful testing and decades of experience developed tables that show exactly how much air we need to move near each of our stationary tools. Wanting to ensure good dust collection without buying and paying for running too large of a blower, most air engineers recommend we design our dust collection systems to maintain a duct speed of 4000 FPM in our mains to keep our ducting clear and keep the chips and sawdust entrained, meaning airborne. We do a resistance calculation to get a reasonable approximation of the overall resistance of our system. Privacy Policy | Terms of Use. You can look at the AAF dust hood examples (click here) for more information. There are 28349.5231 milligrams in each ounce so every twenty pounds of sawdust we make contains about 5 1/3 ounces which is over 151,000 milligrams. All other small shop cyclones except for my design separated little better than the trashcan separator lids. A good respirator mask like this is a must because some shop activities create more dust than we can control. Because the spun bond filtering material is quite a bit thicker, the thicker material requires twice as many cartridges to equal the same area as cartridges made from the thinner less expensive blended material. Because too many people still get ill at OSHA air quality levels the American Conference of Governmental Industrial Hygienists (ACGIH) recommends a five times tougher standard which needs about 12.5% more dust collection airflow. Most vendors sell their dust collectors with what they call a 10' length of 4" flex hose that is really about a 7' long and closer to 3" in usable diameter. It probably has some new features, it may have been modified somehow. Air engineering testing shows we need to maintain an air speed of at least 2500 to 2700 FPM in horizontal ducting runs and at least 3800 FPM airspeed in our vertical runs. Although this tells us what we have to do, it does not tell us how to get that job done when almost none of the existing hobbyist tools, dust collectors, cyclones, ducting, ducting designs, and filters will do the job providing good fine dust protection. At 350 CFM all but one small shop cyclone separated almost identically well as the trashcan separator lids. Many round this to 9" and use this as the standard for 4" duct. Using a little algebra with our 4000 FPM and 800 CFM requirements and this formula shows we need almost exactly 6" ducting to move enough air at ample duct speed for good fine dust collection at most larger hobbyist tools. Unfortunately, most small shop vacuums, dust collectors, cyclones, and air cleaners create a bad false sense of security because they get rid of most visible dust to leave clean looking shops while freely passing the fine invisible unhealthiest dust. Airspeed and air volume are related by a simple formula FPM = CFM / Area where area is the ducting cross sectional area measured in square feet. The cheapest thing is never the best. Please read it over in terms of an overview and then go to my other pages for more detail.
Both the math and testing show we need to provide close to 800 CFM air volume movement to get good fine dust collection. Knowing that FPM = CFM/Area where Area is the area to be collected from in square feet, we can calculate this volume. This means our 800 CFM needed for good fine dust collection at our larger tools requires 200 square feet of fine all poly filtering material and at least 400 square feet of the blended filtering material.
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