Dust Collector Upgrade

Brent Dowell

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Reno NV
Well, I went ahead and upgraded my old stand alone thien baffle in a trash can seperator to a Super Dust Deputy.

The key improvements I think was instead of a 4" hose going to the seperator, I now have a 6" hose direct from the dc to the cyclone.

I don't have any empirical evidence of the improvment, but I can tell there seems to be much more air movement at each of the machines it's all hooked up to.

I'm thinking of doing a few more upgrades, the first being reconfiguring the whole DC so that the impeller is directly connected to the cyclone. That will require a bit of engineering and welding.

The other would be to run 5" ducting from the cyclone to the rest of the shop, getting rid of a bunch of the flex hose.

But for now, this seems to be helping quite a bit.

dcupgrade.jpg
 
I think both of those are good ideas (along with the 6" change) but I'd bet the 5" through the shop and elimination of as much flex as possible would be more bang for the system.
 
Glad to hear you are happy with your choice as I purchased the XL model for my system. I'm hoping to run a 6" main trunk dropping to 4" as close to the tool as possible. Also working out the puzzle of using hard pipe back to the collector as far as possible to minimize flex tubing. Would be interested in seeing how you address that.
 
Glad to hear you are happy with your choice as I purchased the XL model for my system. I'm hoping to run a 6" main trunk dropping to 4" as close to the tool as possible. Also working out the puzzle of using hard pipe back to the collector as far as possible to minimize flex tubing. Would be interested in seeing how you address that.

I've spent some time puzzling that one out. I think ideally, I'd like to move the DC out of the shop to a little attached shed so I could make the lines as short and straight as possible. I've had my cart at oneida filled a couple times with different configurations, LOL, just need to pull the trigger one of these days.
 
I've spent some time puzzling that one out. I think ideally, I'd like to move the DC out of the shop to a little attached shed so I could make the lines as short and straight as possible. I've had my cart at oneida filled a couple times with different configurations, LOL, just need to pull the trigger one of these days.

With the efficient cyclone setup, I'd think about abandoning the bag/filter setup and just using the motor/fan assembly and venting it straight outside. The only time you'd ever see chips or dust is when the cyclone container overfills.
 
With the efficient cyclone setup, I'd think about abandoning the bag/filter setup and just using the motor/fan assembly and venting it straight outside. The only time you'd ever see chips or dust is when the cyclone container overfills.

That would certainly making putting tearing it apart and putting it back together with the cyclone attached to the motor/fan assembly easier....
 
I know the science of going to bigger diameters is right but I just can't get my head around not having smaller diameters with more suction:dunno::huh:

Think of it as a series of pipes with water. The blower provides a given amount of "head" (height, pressure) so if you have a 6" pipe it will allow more water than a 2" pipe .. with the same amount of head (pressure). If you take a 6" pipe and neck it down to a 2" pipe the absolute flow volume will be reduced but the flow rate will go up (less water moving faster). With airflow its about the same.

Vacuum cleaners provide more "pressure" than bigger dust collectors, you can think of them as similar to house water line pressure boosters - they move a lot of water (air) through a small pipe.. but not nearly as much as the big mainline pipe in the street - which moves more water but more slowly.

You're basically working on that trade off. The smaller pipe will move air faster, but moves less of it. The larger pipe moves more air but does it more slowly. So you have to find a balance in that tradeoff where you are moving the air fast enough to keep the chips afloat (and grab the dust as it comes out of the machine) but are moving enough volume of air that it encompasses the area where you are collecting the dust from.

You also have to keep the pipe small enough that the air speed is high enough to keep the material suspended so bigger is not always better... its just better right up until the point its not ;)

The capturing material at the source point brings up the other challenge and also helps explain why _more_ air is sometimes better than _faster_ air. The pressure on the air coming into the hose diminishes as the square of the distance from the opening (yes there are tweaks to help/hinder that plus or minus.. working in generalities here please just play along :D). You can observe the same behavior with a hose siphoning water out of a pond/tub, if you hold your hand right over the end of the hose there is a lot of pressure, if you move a little bit away from the opening the pressure drops substantially and increasingly so over distance. A bigger hose - and more volume at a slower rate - diffuses less at a given distance because the initial flow rate is higher. Again you can see this in water a small hose has great point application but a larger hose can move the whole pond in a hurry. A simple science experiment with a bucket, a couple of hoses of different sizes and a few drops of food coloring can make the diffusion distance very visually apparent. You can also see how you can get more pressure out of a smaller hose by raising the height of the bucket versus having the bucket lower with a larger hose - but the overall flow rate can still be higher with the bigger hose.

A contrary point to the more air is better than high speed air is when you have a very effective point collection. For instance the Festool routers have a very well designed dust shroud and since you are collecting from a very small space a lower flow but higher speed collection is more efficient there. For something like a table saw though you just can't get the collection system laid out to be that small very easily and for things like jointers and planers its pretty much impossible.

I've somewhat intentionally ignored friction loss thus far - the short version of that is that smaller hoses loose pressure much much more quickly due to friction loss than larger hoses (and corrugated much much quicker than smooth). So if you're trying to plumb the pipes for any distance the accumulated losses tend to consume the airflow capacity. Again water works the same way. Try a 1/4" hose and you'll never get very much flow through it no matter how high you raise the bucket and a 3/4" hose will have a lot more flow than a 1/2" hose from what you might naively expect the difference to be.
 
brent i go from pickups to the blower and out side with everything. it works much better than when it had a bag attached. you need to drop over some time to see it in action.. bring sharon along to:) the table will come sharon, just build it:)
 
... I've had my cart at oneida filled a couple times with different configurations, LOL, just need to pull the trigger one of these days.

What system are you considering? I bought the 3hp Super Dust Gorilla when I built my shop 10 years ago. It has performed great! The only issue I've had is the remote receiver in the main switch had to be replaced.
 
What system are you considering? I bought the 3hp Super Dust Gorilla when I built my shop 10 years ago. It has performed great! The only issue I've had is the remote receiver in the main switch had to be replaced.
Not considering a new system, but rather their 5" duct work and fittings.
 
Yeah, I got my 5", 6", 7" pipe 8/7/7 wye and all other wyes from them. By the time I was down to 4" runs and connections, the stuff from the borg was fine.

Time to fill up the cart again, but every time I do I come up with a new idea of where to put the DC, LOL
 
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