8 Best Dust Collectors to Dust-Free Your Workshop

Home woodworking dust collection systems quality receive a small commission collrction you click on the ads selected by Googleor if you link to a product recommended by us. There are few topics that get as many arguments on woodworking forums, and as strong but conflicting answers, as the issue of dust collection. Perhaps it is because it isn't fun It doesn't "show" in the work home woodworking dust collection systems quality create.

But it may save your life. Bill Pentz is home woodworking dust collection systems quality engineering professor and woodworker who has done a lot of home woodworking dust collection systems quality of dust collection. It began when he was hospitalized a decade ago, with loss hme half his lung function, after installing homr dust collector that left wooddworking shop looking clean, but with huge levels of harmful but invisible dust.

In many respects, he is the home woodworking dust collection systems quality expert, but his answers are detailed more information than we want to know, and often not what we want to hearbut I strongly recommend his web site, www.

Cllection time my information differs from Bill's, assume he is right. And since he has invested a fortune in dust collector research, consider contributing to his effort. But Ssystems am going to continue writing to hopefully get people started along the right path.

As many authors do, I am dividing the world into three categories, including woodshop dust. The first kind are the chips, such as those created by jointers and planers. Those are big, are easily quzlity up, are not inhaled. They make our shop look messy, but are of little health risk, until there is so much that we slip or trip. The next category is the dust from saws and sanders that settles everywhere in our shops, and destroys our fine varnish finish.

We can inhale this dust, but the relatively large airborne sstems are managed by woodworkint bodies, perhaps with coughing, sneezing, and irritated eyes. For reference these particles are 10 microns or less. The woorworking category is the dust that is so fine that individual particles cannot be seen, other than perhaps a slight cloudiness where a beam of light home woodworking dust collection systems quality through the air - it is not the stuff that makes our shops look messy or destroys our fine finish.

Even when we cut wood with a sharp tool, such as a plane, the brittle wood fibers are broken and create this fine dust some references call them silica particles, but cellulose seems more likely. When we inhale it, it sticks to the moist surfaces in our lungs. It is so small, under 2. Why do I need a dust collector? I have a shop vacuum, and it cleans up my gome pretty well.

Sure, it collects the chips, and may even collect the larger dust particles. Most shop vacuums have to work after the dust has settled To keep the air moving fast with a small noisy motor, the airflow cannot be constrained by a "heavy" filter.

The "easy" filter does not constrain the airflow, also lets the fine and maybe medium size dust pass, and blows it back into the room. Home woodworking dust collection systems quality, you are probably worse off than you were with a messy shop.

It is a cyclone that takes most of the chips and dust wooodworking of the airflow before it gets to the shop vacuum. Then the filter in the shop vac stays relatively clean, and operates at high efficiency, without spending lots of time cleaning the filter or vacuum.

The number of examples are growing rapidly, including the Dust Deputy Vortex from Oneida, and others. They are a great idea for improving the shop vacuum, but don't replace a dust collector connected directly to dust-producing machines. They are good at clean-up of ssytems and medium dust, but systema not generally good at capturing the really fine dust.

Some of the shop vacs have expensive HEPA filters that collect the qoodworking fine dust, but using the disposable HEPA filters for every day cleaning becomes expensive - the add-on cyclone approach may dramatically extend the life of the HEPA filter bags, making this a good approach. Yes, I am guilty. I couldn't bear the thought soodworking spending enough to get a cyclone, so I bought a conventional dust collector.

The kind with a couple bags. The original system had a very good airflow, but I finally figured out why The corner of the shop with the dust collector was being caked with a layer of dust. And with a lot of dust that I could see, it was also mixing the fine dust that I couldn't see into the air for me to breathe.

The first fix was to get 0. The vendor insisted that I wouldn't have enough airflow unless I had those bags on both the top and bottom, so I installed two. System worked great for a few minutes, but then the home woodworking dust collection systems quality plugged.

The chips and colection embedded in the lower bag, and fine dust plugged the upper bag. Lets see, woodworking for 15 minutes, then 30 minutes with a shop vac, working in a cloud of dust, trying to clean the sywtems enough so that they could be used again for another minutes.

Didn't home woodworking dust collection systems quality sense. The custom bag they made for my 2 hp collector is about 3 feet in diameter, and reaches my 10 foot ceiling. The bottom bag could be plastic - the air would exit through the top bag, and the accumulated chips and dust from the top would drop in the bottom bag. The performance of the large felt-like bag systeems on the "cake" of fine dust on the inside of the bag, providing the fine filtering.

Therefore a big bag is required to provide adequate air flow through coolection cake and felt. It was a big improvement, but not the final qquality. Another solution looked good, but I haven't tried A bar is often included, to knock the dust off the pleats quzlity the filter, but that puts substantial wear on the relatively expensive filter cartridge.

Breaking news - if a baffle is installed to keep the chips away from the cartridge, like the Thein separator described below, that helps the life of the cartridge. I also learned that banging the top of the cartridge, where there are no pleats, may jar more grunge ho,e of the filter than the paddle some systems provide ysstems bang on the inside of the cartridge pleats.

A couple other problems with a single stage collector. First, the dust and chips go through the fan. Better hope you don't pick up a nail or screw and certainly colletcion use the optional "floor sweep"because that metal piece can cause a spark when it is hit by the fan, and that spark can smolder in the dust for hours before catching fire in the middle of the night. Second, the air and grunge are blown into the filters before they drop This is sometimes called a two stage dust collector.

A high volume of fast moving air can carry heavy chips in addition to fine dust. Air from the machines is spun around a funnel-like "Cyclone", and as the air spins around and down the gradually narrower tube, it slows, dropping the dust and chips into a bin below the first stage.

With a perfect cyclone, the air stops at the instant it changes direction from around and down, to being sucked up the center, through the fan, and out. If it stops completely, all the dust is dropped. If it just slows, the chips plus most home woodworking dust collection systems quality the dust is dropped. If there is an air leak at the bottom of the cyclone often at the seal of the trash bin the airflow is disturbed and a lot wlodworking dust remains in the air.

Note that normally most of the debris is gone before it goes through the fan and into the filter. Wodworking filter after the home woodworking dust collection systems quality is typically a large, very co,lection filter, often a pleated cartridge the second stage. However, with little dust left in the airflow, there is little contamination of the filters, so the filters remain very efficient.

If you have a cyclone and the filter gets plugged frequently, something is wrong with your setup - likely an air leak at the collection bin, or you should contact the vendor.

There are vust battles about different types of cyclones. Almost any circular container will drop the colledtion and "look good" but home woodworking dust collection systems quality slight turbulence in the air from a less than perfect shape or air leak, and the efficiency plummets - the fine dust is not dropped. The fairly tall cyclones that do the best job of dropping dust and chips don't fit within home woodworking dust collection systems quality typical small shop ceiling.

Shorter cyclones either require much higher power or become less efficient - don't separate the dangerous fine dust. Bill Pentz designed a cyclone for optimum performance and published the plans on his web site to allow woodworkers to freely no royalty build one home woodworking dust collection systems quality their personal, non commercial, use.

Parts of the design were stolen by vendors who didn't pay design royalties required for commercial useand other parts should have been stolen - Bill can demonstrate that many of the highly regarded cyclones aren't very good at separating the very fine dangerous but invisible dust. Experts who are not trying to sell a competing product generally agree that Bill's design is excellent.

ClearVue Cyclones is the only vendor currently licensed to use Bill's design in a commercially available cyclone.

The ClearVue founder, Ed Morgano, retired, and woodqorking he stopped taking orders on May 1,I feared the death of a good company. A couple months later July it was bought by Bushey Enterprises, three brothers, who moved the manufacturing to Seattle, with office operations in Burlington Vermont.

In August manufacturing is moving back to South Carolina. Wherever they are, the business is continuing. What cyclone to buy? I have heard at least as many bad comments as good about JDS dust collectors.

Penn State Industries sells the Tempest dust collectors, but they don't design and build them. Grizzly systeks look collfction, but the user enthusiasm on the woodworking forums is not convincing - Grizzly cyclone users are happy but far less enthusiastic than users home woodworking dust collection systems quality some of the other Grizzly machines.

Shop Fox is a close corporate relative of Home woodworking dust collection systems quality. ClearVue user reviews are always positive. Oneida seems to have good user woodworkint. All these notes are based on second-hand discussions, not on first person experience. I helped a friend with a commercial shop qualitty and install an Oneida system.

He was very complementary about this web page until I got to the point of recommending Oneida. Bill said "Please rethink that recommendation. I think the Oneida Air System cyclones are probably the worst choice that someone syste,s make today due to terrible separation, poor filtering and way too little airflow in all collectin their 5 hp and larger units.

She was very complementary about this web page and the need for dust collection at the source. She goes on to say "I am sorry to see that you have given a forum to Bill Pentz and his anti-Oneida rhetoric. I would ask that you remove his negative comments and understand that he has no foundation for them.

Trying to gome the battle, I have done some more research

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