Lex Luthier Posted September 1, 2004 Report Share Posted September 1, 2004 This seems to hardly ever come up, even on a woodworking forum I frequent it's not brought up very often. I have two shopvacs, one for each room of my shop for general clean up, but when I got larger sized tools, the shopvacs didn't do much so I thought about a real dust collector. I looked into one of these, but when I asked the salesman at the store if it could be mounted on a wall, he said no. Space was an issue, so I couldn't go with the regular design of dust collector, even with it's small foot print. I decided to make one. My dad gave me a large squirrel cage motor from a restaurant's oven hood, which I'm assuming is explosion proof because it was covered with grease. The opening of the intake was 6", and needed to be stepped down to 4". I couldn't find any adaptors at tool outlets, so I used plumbing fixtures and LOTS of silicone. On the outtake, at first I installed a little filter cartidge that screwed right into the end where I had a plumbing fixture fastened, but I found it blocked too much air - dust collectors can only suck in as much air as they can blow out - so I changed my setup to what is pictured below. I have the outtake running into a garbage can. Inside the garbage can I have a cone made of paper. My theory is the cone creates a vortex and traps most of the dust, and what escapes gets caught by the furnace filter. Image 1 Image 2 This is how I have the motor mounted. Image 3 Here is the filter. Image 4 Image 5 Here is the inside. Image 6 My idea behind the cone. When I took these pictures, it was the first time opening up the can since constructing it. There is a good amount of sawdust in the very bottom, which would have otherwise been all over my shop. I also found it necessary NOT to touch the furnace filter, as with use a layer of dust builds up, further blocking dust from escaping, and touching it caused clouds to puff up when I would then turn on the machine. You may think the garbage can takes up as much room as one of those dust collectors, but not really, plus it only cost me about $50 to make. BTW, it's quite as hell. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Executioner606 Posted September 1, 2004 Report Share Posted September 1, 2004 Sweet dude. I love having a dust collector on the bench grinder at school and the ventilation hood above the painting area. We've got a nice aircompressor and a spray gun. I mostly use it to shoot glaze on bowls and the hood sure does help alot. I love the oven hood idea , i might have to check this out when we replace our oven. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jay5 Posted September 1, 2004 Report Share Posted September 1, 2004 Cool setup! I love it when people are creative and build solutions to there problems instead of just breaking out the checkbook. I plan on getting some tubing and setting up a few lines to my work table and router base from my shopvac. Dust collection is definately a must. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
JPL Posted September 1, 2004 Report Share Posted September 1, 2004 http://www.copycarver.com/Dust_collector.htm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lex Luthier Posted September 2, 2004 Author Report Share Posted September 2, 2004 Yeah, I've seen that before, but couldn't remember the link. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Lex Luthier Posted October 17, 2004 Author Report Share Posted October 17, 2004 My original idea proved to work OK, but too much fine sanding dust from the edgesander would get through, so I decided to redo it when I got my thickness sander. Hooked up to edgesander. Hooked up to edgesander again. Hooked up to bandsaw. Blast gates and Y of the out take. Aircleaner as filter. Ducting coming from thickness sander. Ducting at thickness sander. Hooked up to thickness sander. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
samoht Posted October 25, 2004 Report Share Posted October 25, 2004 i cut a pepsi bottle in half and stuck my vacuum cleaner into it.. then clamped it to the edge of my drill press.. sounds silly, but i haven't seen any dust anymore.. and i sand alot! my "shop" is also my living room, kitchen and bedroom, so i had to come up with somekind of dust collector Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ddgman2001 Posted October 28, 2004 Report Share Posted October 28, 2004 I looked into one of these, but when I asked the salesman at the store if it could be mounted on a wall, he said no. Space was an issue, so I couldn't go with the regular design of dust collector, even with it's small foot print. That salesman didn't know what he was talking about. There's no reason why you couldn't mount that collector on a wall or ceiling for that matter. It's only fault is that the bag looks to be too small and likely not designed to capture the really fine dust - which is the stuff that'll hurt you. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ansil Posted October 29, 2004 Report Share Posted October 29, 2004 other things that help.. not nesecearrly with wood. for those of us with really messy desks or benches like myself i found that the really fine screen door mesh across the shop vacum keeps my nuts and bolts and screws from getting sucked up. also i drill metal alot. so its nice if you can mount a large piece of metal to a bench desktop or just have a metal desk too.. and put a small electro magnet on it.makes clean up so much easier. also if you cut wood stuff on it.. you can just vaccum it up and not worry about the screws and stuff on the desk.. just my .02 Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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