Dust collector vs air cleaner for shop?

[Moon Lake Refuge]

I was looking into making a cyclone but more and more am leaning toward a air cleaner first.  I will have both by spring but am looking for short term which should I buy first?  I do a bit of sanding which is making me lean toward a air cleaner.  Tools I would use a dust collector for would be a table saw, chop saw, and a couple vacuum attachments for cleaning.  This is the first actual shop I have had for woodworking and the dust is piling up.  for reference it's a 3 car garage with 11ish foot ceilings.

Thanks!

[roony]

You are by far better off getting the dust at it's source with a dust collector. I ran my own shop for over 30 years, didn't have much of anything at first. I made my own by buying a cyclone and the bags. Having a lot of sq. ft. of filter area is paramount.  Good Luck to you!

PS. For sanding I made a "box" aprox 5' by 3' by 1' with slotted air holes in the top. This hooked up to my dust collector at one end. It did an excellent job of capturing the dust before it got up to my face. 

 

[Moon Lake Refuge]

I'm thinking the cyclone is going to be my go to.  I also just found a DIY air cleaner.  Just a wood box around a inline duct cleaner with filters on each end.  for 50 bucks I may take a crack at it.  My concern is I do alright with cleanup with my saws, but being more of a beginner in woodworking I'm finding that my joints dont always line up the greatest so I'm doing more sanding than a lot of others I think.  I like the Idea of leaving a cleaner run for a night every once in awhile or while I'm working to keep some of the really fine stuff out of the air.

[leech~~]

1 hour ago, Moon Lake Refuge said:

I was looking into making a cyclone but more and more am leaning toward a air cleaner first.  I will have both by spring but am looking for short term which should I buy first?  I do a bit of sanding which is making me lean toward a air cleaner.  Tools I would use a dust collector for would be a table saw, chop saw, and a couple vacuum attachments for cleaning.  This is the first actual shop I have had for woodworking and the dust is piling up.  for reference it's a 3 car garage with 11ish foot ceilings.

Thanks!

What ever you choose get going and get that dust up!!

I have a buddy who's then retired, now passed away dad who lived up by Squaw Lake, MN, had a beautiful wood shop with everything you could need on the upper floor of a 3 car garage. He let the dust build up and it started a fire burning down the wood shop, garage and caught his house on fire which was a converted old school house all to the ground! Lost everything he had in one night!

Such a shame.

[roony]

That fine dust is nasty, explosive stuff!

[Big Dave2]

Definitely dust collector first.

[smurfy]

Leech, whereabouts squaw lake? How long ago? I know the area fairly well!

[leech~~]

54 minutes ago, smurfy said:

Leech, whereabouts squaw lake? How long ago? I know the area fairly well!

Probably about 8 years now and they lived north off MAX road on a dirt road right next to School House lake. I'm sure that is why it burnt so bad living out in the middle of no where it takes the fire trucks a long time to get there.

Edited September 6, 2017 by leech~~

[Moon Lake Refuge]

Thats the concern... I have a hanging furnace in there so I want to keep it clean.  I know the dust collector will take up a majority but I kind of lean towards knowing I can just use my shop vac to the tools for now.... Might have to just do both ha

[smurfy]

10 hours ago, leech~~ said:

Probably about 8 years now and they lived north off MAX road on a dirt road right next to School House lake. I'm sure that is why it burnt so bad living out in the middle of no where it takes the fire trucks a long time to get there.

yea up there i dont see much hope for alot of places in cases of fires. heck we are way back in the sticks and still have a fire dept number. were are 20 miles at least from the nearest fire dept. its either squaw lake or bigfork!!!

[Moon Lake Refuge]

Almost done with my air cleaner.  Will have 4 filters and the fan runs 5000 cfm... just have to shim the last two filters and trim out the ends.  Looked at one at the store and for 150$ it had 1 filter and moved 400 cfm so for the 40 bucks I spend in materials I'm pretty darn happy with it.  Hope to have it mounted on the ceiling Friday then will be putting in a cyclone dust collector and running it to my shop vac in the ceiling.  Hopefully be able to keep a clean garage going forward! 

[leech~~]

Just a thought but if your going to run 5000 cfm through that box, you may want to run some small support strips down the middle of the backside of at least the first filter to keep it in place without having it cave into the next filter.  Once the filters start to collect dust and get more clogged the pressure on them will increase causing a need to support them in the middle a bit. Just a suggestion.

[Moon Lake Refuge]

8 hours ago, leech~~ said:

Just a thought but if your going to run 5000 cfm through that box, you may want to run some small support strips down the middle of the backside of at least the first filter to keep it in place without having it cave into the next filter.  Once the filters start to collect dust and get more clogged the pressure on them will increase causing a need to support them in the middle a bit. Just a suggestion.

Thats a good Idea, I have some threaded rods laying around that I can pup in front of them.  Thanks!

I think I'm also going to cut the cord before the speed controller and try and extend that down the wall so that I can adjust the speed without climbing up a ladder.

[leech~~]

1 hour ago, Moon Lake Refuge said:

Thats a good Idea, I have some threaded rods laying around that I can pup in front of them.  Thanks!

I think I'm also going to cut the cord before the speed controller and try and extend that down the wall so that I can adjust the speed without climbing up a ladder.

You mean put the rods behind them. To support them from the air flow from the front.

Edited September 7, 2017 by leech~~

[Moon Lake Refuge]

11 minutes ago, leech~~ said:

You mean put the rods behind them. To support them from the air flow from the front.

I like to be counter productive.  Maybe I'll just put a plywood panel in between them to really add support.

[Tom7227]

Nice setup you have so far.  But that collects the airborne dust but it really doesn't do much for the heavier stuff that collects on the work surfaces, equipment and the floor.

I spent some time checking these things out and one thing I saw was a need for some sort of copper wire around the duct work if you have a manifold on the dust collector.  Info about static build up and the risk of it starting a fire on the material that coats the manifold.  I don't know how real that is but it is worth checking out.

I bought a dust collector at an auction and the thing is too loud for me to use in my garage.  If I was going to get serious about it I would have to build some sort of walls around it to dampen the noise.

[Moon Lake Refuge]

For the dust collector I'll be installing a cyclone in the shop with the vacuum or motor up in the attic.  Collector will go to all of my tools with a couple vacuum ports for cleaning up my workspace.  It wont be silent but will take a huge amount of the sound out.  And yeah, the plan is to run metallic tape inside and a grounding wire down to the concrete when I mount both of them.

 

[Big Dave2]

2 hours ago, Moon Lake Refuge said:

For the dust collector I'll be installing a cyclone in the shop with the vacuum or motor up in the attic.  Collector will go to all of my tools with a couple vacuum ports for cleaning up my workspace.  It wont be silent but will take a huge amount of the sound out.  And yeah, the plan is to run metallic tape inside and a grounding wire down to the concrete when I mount both of them.

 

Can't wait to see the pictures!

Are you going to buy a dust collector or make your own?

 

Edited September 7, 2017 by Big Dave2

[PurpleFloyd]

Get one of these and hook your sander, saws etc to it. This is not your fathers shop vac. Very effective. 

Festool has similar stuff but it's overpriced for the performance IMO. 

 

https://fein.com/en_us/surface-finishing/dust-extractors/turbo-ii-0313220/

[Big Dave2]

For a home/hobby wood shop, I would thing this would be more than enough:

 

[Moon Lake Refuge]

1 hour ago, Big Dave2 said:

Can't wait to see the pictures!

Are you going to buy a dust collector or make your own?

 

I think I'm just going to buy the cyclone for 50.  From what I understand it feeds the spiral down rather than just coming into the bucket and stopping.

15 minutes ago, Big Dave2 said:

For a home/hobby wood shop, I would thing this would be more than enough:

 

I keep going back and forth on just buying a darn dust collector.  They arent that much more money until you start running 4 inch pipe, that can add up.  May be in my future but just want to get something to get me through the winter now.  I have about 5 pieces of furniture I want to make so nothing to crazy.

[PurpleFloyd]

You  can get by with a shop vac if it's just 5 pcs of furniture to be completely honest. That extraction vac is a big step up from that. 

Dust collectors are nice. I have a few but they are also pretty noisy in a small shop, need 220 for the bigger ones and the bags can be a P.I.T.A to empty as well. 

The air cleaner is for taking out the dust that your collection system misses.

For a home shop the extraction vac like I posted or the festool stuff really do a great job of keeping things free of dust.

I can run an 11" orbital sander in a client's house on a Corian countertop and it takes up virtually all the dust the sander generates and if you have ever sanded Corian you understand how impressive that is.

[Moon Lake Refuge]

Yeah, I'll have a nicer dust collector eventually but for now I'm just tinkering around a bit and wanted a decent cheap setup.  With two you kids getting out there to actually do a bunch of cleaning is hard so the cleaner I can keep it as I go the better.

[Moon Lake Refuge]

Well hot darn!!  I made them both.  Finished the air cleaner yesterday.  Waiting for help to mount it, then put in the cyclone today with the shop vac in the ceiling.  All you can hear is a slight hum from the attic and the air at the end of the hose but the air flow is fantastic!  The cyclone bucket catches about 95% of the garbage so it will take quite awhile for me to fill the vac.  Wired it to my attic light switch which is down in the shop for easy access.  Extremely pleased with both for probably under 150 total.

IMG_0399.MOV

Edited September 9, 2017 by Moon Lake Refuge

[Moon Lake Refuge]

And first new peice of furniture for the house is almost done.  Entryway bench for the girls.