Here are a few of the techniques that vendors use to make their outrageous claims. AGET Manufacturing Company Is A Minority-Owned Business. With typical 30-micron all polyester filters appropriate only for use on outdoor dust collectors and cyclones that return no air into our shops, we need about one square foot of filter area for every 25 CFM of dirty air. DIY product contains the cyclone separator, gasket, and mounting hardware. I learned that we need to capture the fine dust at its source and get rid of it, but our hobbyist tools and dust collection equipment does not do either well. Dust collection manufacturers provide dust collection design firms with both Air Volume Requirements tables and Airspeed Requirements tables so these firms can design commercial air systems that will carry materials without plugging or building up piles in the ducting. In spite of a need for good ducting designs, small shops are not subject to government oversight, standards, or testing so many vendors offer designs and products based upon articles, books, and even experts on small shop woodworking that recommend older chip collection standards that move half the air needed for fine dust collection. This means you can use the cyclone separator with your planer, jointer or router tables without having to empty the bag or vacuum containers nearly as often. He also said forget relying on vendor help, we each must do the work ourselves to assemble ample protections to minimize the fine dust exposures. For any given CFM you can measure the resistance of each component or entire ducting runs. To better understand think of wood as made up thin glass tubes lightly glued together. Heavy pressure remains on the politicians who run the Department of Labor, Occupational Health and Safety Administration (OSHA). Of course not! As a result, most tables, tests, product comparisons, magazine ratings, on and on are based on chip collection, not fine dust collection. This 4000 FPM has become an industry standard that is well tested and proven solidly to work to move the dust, but it does not collect the dust. Putting your dust separator on the list involves evaluating what you get for the money you spend.
Amazon Prime. When that reading drops enough we need to clean our filter.
Any restriction, small machine port, obstruction, or even sharp bend kills airflow just like opening a water faucet a little. Shoot, I can even sell you an old clunker saying it has a brand new motor and tires by buying a new electric toy car with new tires and tossing it in the glove box. Although this explosion risk is small, these piles slam around hard so can ruin our ducting, separators, blowers, impellers, motor bearings and filters. 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. Save my name, email, and website in this browser for the next time I comment. a part time hobbyist woodworker in a few hours work gets exposed to far more dust than most workers in larger commercial facilities receive in months. HVAC ducting leaks air badly, is all engineered for the air to flow the other direction so the joints collect shavings that lead to plugs and piles, plus all the fittings were designed for much lower pressures so use such sharp bends and angles they kill airflow at typical dust collection volumes and pressures. The reason is simple. To use this table we look down the column with the resistance calculated for our shop until we find an entry that meets our required airflow of generally 800 CFM. This means they captured about 85% of the dust created by weight and sent that remaining 15% airborne dust into the filters saving lots of time and trouble emptying dust bags and collection bins. Most small shop ducting designs are inappropriate downscaled versions of large commercial designs. To make sense of this on my other pages I share a simple game that tries to use air and two straws to move a balloon.
There is a lot of information out there, so to make an informed decision, find a reputable source with a variety of options before committing. Products that received mainly negative ratings are discarded from our top rated dust separator list. There are a lot of concerns with the airfoils that need considered before going that direction. An open filter that freely passes 30-micron sized dust only needs about one square foot of filter area for every 50 CFM of dusty air run through the paper blended filters and about one square foot of filter area for every 25 CFM run through the all spun bond felt filter material. All Rights Reserved. Your design must use large enough ducts to support the needed air volumes without being too large and killing the air speed needed to prevent clogs. The real peer reviewed medical studies show wood dust is very unhealthy and damages all exposed. Our small shop vendors claim that shops and garages represent outdoor rather than indoor use so advertise outdoor filtering levels, yet deliver equipment that can only be used in covered indoor areas. Updated: July 22, 2020.
This is not good news for small shop woodworkers. Adding horsepower and a bigger impeller is not an efficient way to gain capacity. To stay competitive many firms engage in an ugly advertising war. Verifying these calculations with testing is expensive and takes lots of work. National Fire Protection Association (NFPA) rules require collecting the heavier sawdust, chips, shavings, and wood strings that fall to our floors and work surfaces. Others, including me at one time, foolishly believe that if we buy and install a good dust collector or cyclone with fine filters that we will end up well protected. For instance a 1.5 HP blower rated at 1100 CFM will give about 550 CFM at a working level. This is a lot! This creates very impressive graduated ducting designs which work terribly in small shops that only use one machine at a time. Filter resistance changes as the filters get dirty. I have it coupled to a portable shop vac. That one cyclone was so dismal that it put close to one third of the material it collected right into its filters. Although this provides the airspeed needed at each specific tool, what happens when this severely reduced airflow hits a larger main is bad news. 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.
Thank you for your support! At first it was assumed the workers getting ill had problems from previously high dust exposures. Both objectives are met.
To get more filter area in a given space, vendors fold the filter material into pleats and put the results into a cartridge form. Rather than provide this much expensive fine filter material, most small shop vendors instead provide roughly thirty square feet of far more open filter material. Current weight based industrial testing all but ignores the finest lightest 2.5-micron and smaller airborne dust particles now known over time to cause significant health damage. Since 13" impellers are very difficult to find, we mostly end up buying 14" or larger impellers turned by a motor smaller than could handle an unrestricted airflow, or just use a larger more appropriate motor as I recommend and get even better fine dust collection. This unit will not be mobile, and only works for stationary use. For wood dust and chips, careful testing shows airspeed of between 3700 to 3800 FPM is needed to pull in the chips and heavier sawdust from our machine hoods.
Our dust collectors come in multiple sizes so you can find a system that meets your needs. Years of experience have taught chairmaker Russ Filbeck a few steam-bending secrets: It takes careful engineering to balance impeller size and resistance to get maximum motor performance without moving so much air the motor overloads and burns up. The European community has already adopted these medically recommended standards. 2022 HOME | Conch House Marina | St. Augustine, FL Built with. They did not care about how well their product works, only that nobody know how bad it works. In summary, the fittings, attachments, flex hose, ducting, fine filters, shop vacuums, air cleaners, dust collectors and cyclones we buy to protect our health that do such a good job of chip collection create a bad false sense of security. Specifically, the top magazine rated small shop dust collector provider who continues to pretend an authority role in dust collection which is not borne out by either their information or actual performance of their products said the CFM numbers to meet "chip collection" standards were more than enough to pull in the fine dust. Because it can take months to years for a filter to fully season, to amply protect our health ASHRAE requires that all filters for indoor use get rated when clean and new. 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. He said air engineers long ago learned they had to modify our tools, often very extensively to protect, control and capture the fine dust at the source right as it is made at each tool. (1) Dust Right Separator
They used oversized pipe to give marginal performing units good tests and normal sized test pipe leaving the best performers looking bad. 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. Rockler also sells the fittings/hardware with your supplying the catchment container but I agree, the transparent container with the kit lets one see how quickly the add on picks up and fills up! They are commonly used as the first stage in multiple stage dust collection systems, or as a product separator in air conveying systems. These tables are not provided by the standards organizations, but instead like tool hood designs are closely guarded industry secrets as the hood designs and these table values are what permit a professional dust collection firm to ensure their systems will meet a particular standard. For those with small roughly one-car garage sized shops who have ducting but no cyclone, they can barely get by with a good quality 1.5 hp dust collector that turns at least an 11" impeller, but really should use a 2 hp dust collector with at least a 12" impeller. Most large woodworking facilities have long blown their fine dust away outside, but most small shop woodworkers trap that fine dust inside. In most even very clean looking small shops just walking around without doing any woodworking stirs enough fine dust airborne to fail EPA air quality tests. If at all possible just blow the dusty air away outside. Although perhaps provable, the information provided fails to give the facts needed to make an informed decision. Those with shops sized about the same as a one-car garage with ducting end up with about 6" of resistance for their ducting. EASY VIEWING: Clear polycarbonate material allows for viewing of separation. The resistance of our pipes can kill the airflow we need for good fine dust collection because a small pipe diameter acts just like a water valve.
This difference in speed means if we don't have hoods that either catch the dust or block it from getting launched it will escape. At typical dust collection pressures air will hardly compress at all, so we need to think about airflow being far more like water. The fine dust takes a very long time to dissipate, particularly in closed shops. Most small shop vendors offer dust collectors that move too little air volume to provide the needed airflow to keep our ducts clear with a hobbyist system designed to only run one machine at a time. Have you ever been unsure what model to buy when considering the purchase of dust separator in general?
Why did we make this buying guide? The American Society of Heating Refrigeration and Air-conditioning Engineers (ASHRAE) set the U.S. standards for indoor filters. A number of things reduce filter life. We can get by with smaller filter sizes, but doing so causes the filters to wear out and fail far quicker.
Fortunately again we can address these concerns by borrowing heavily from work long ago done and shared by air engineers (see my ducting page); and. Filters used indoors are rated based on their worst case filtering when brand new with no dust cake. We do a resistance calculation to get a reasonable approximation of the overall resistance of our system. Each collection hood, piece of flex hose, duct pipe, duct fitting, separator, and filter has its own resistance at any given CFM. This causes these piles to get "topped" and simply grow longer and longer. This resistance moves through a considerable swing. Sadly, with far too little filter area many hobbyist filters in our dust collectors, vacuums, and even air cleaners quickly clog and stop moving the air we need for good protection. Buy well made tools with built in dust collection that controls the fine particles without spraying them all over. 4" Ports (for top side of separator) 2 ea. Vendors then offer the same diameter ducting and much more expensive smooth interior walled pipe, but the result still works terribly. 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.
Most tools have fast moving blades, cutters, belts, cooling fans, etc. In use filters build particles in the filter material that do not come out with normal automated cleaning. It sickened me to find that the winning dust collector vendor used an over sized impeller that will make their dust collector burn up if a hose gets knocked loose. In practical terms adding 1/2 horsepower (HP) and a bigger impeller typical 1.5 HP blower only adds 10% more air volume!
Also, this dust collection separator holds twice the capacity of competitors. That pressure can be how powerful your blower is, or how much resistance is created by each component in your dust collection system. The sad part of this is the better quality Jet and Delta units that actually move more air, tested below the "best" rated units that were burning up their motors. The actual sizing according to the top filter makers should be at least one square foot of 0.5 or 1-micron fine filter material for every two CFM of airflow. Again with larger hobbyist stationary tools identical to smaller commercial tools we can use their same recommendations. Likewise, after every thorough cleaning these too open filters freely pass the fine unhealthiest invisible dust. After about nine cleaning cycles most fine filters are at their maximum dust cake and provide their best filtering. Every exposure to fine dust causes some measurable loss in respiratory function and some of that loss becomes permanent. Most small shop owners should go through using that calculator to verify their shop needs. Woodworking makes huge amounts of fine dust compared to how little it takes to cause us harm. These visible airborne dust particles ruin freshly painted finishes. Almost all small shop vendors advertise maximum airflow which moves enough air for good fine dust collection. In summary we did not find one single small shop dust collector or cyclone with advertised fine filter that did not freely pass through a majority of the finest invisible unhealthiest dust. They also tend to fill any down drop between the pile and blower with a closed blast gate. Designed to efficiently separate dust, debris, and liquids from an airstream and collect the material in a general purpose recovery bin reducing the materials which reach the vacuum, 8 upper housing with curved surfaces insures the debris entering the separator travels freely past the center baffle and smooths the airstream path which minimizes its impact on the performance of the vacuum and raises efficiency, Designed around industry standard vacuums and hoses to make connecting the separator easy and efficient with minimal need for adaptors or duct tape. This resistance climbs until it builds a dust cake that provides maximum filtering with good airflow, known as when a filter becomes fully "seasoned". Collapse-proof buckets won't fold under high vacuum pressures. Air pulled by a vacuum comes from all directions at once so airspeed drops off at over twelve times the distance squared. 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. For these smaller tools we often need a powerful shop vacuum with fine filter, sometimes a down draft table, and often a portable hood connected to our main dust collection that we can move to where we are making sawdust and chips. It is a bit top heavy, but I haven't installed the casters so its not a problem for me. CFM (Cubic Feet per Minute) provides the amount of air your blower puts out. Over many years of too much exposure to this finest dust most develop health problems, many serious. We can then measure the area of each machine that needs collection, convert to square feet and then multiply by FPM to get the required CFM. 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. Dust in these piles and filled down drops pose a potential explosion hazard and a serious fire hazard. Airspeed also needs to stay high enough to keep what we collect from building up piles of chips or plugging our ducting. Patent pending. Most incorrectly think we can eliminate our fine dust problems by wearing a good dual cartridge filtered mask whenever we make fine dust. 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.
The particle counts for these same shops that use indoor hobbyist dust collection equipment are scary. As filters plug they kill the airflow needed for good collection, but cleaning rapidly breaks down the filter pores and so does clogging.
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