I know there's no free lunch, but... (Re: DC)

[Schleeper]

Help, I'm on the dust collection treadmill!

I started out with a 10 gal. shop vac, but it lacked suction and capacity.

I replaced it with a HF dust collector, but the filtration was substandard.

I replaced the canvas bottom bag on the DC with a clear poly bag, and the suction suffered.

I replaced the top canvas bag with a pleated paper filter from Wynn Environmental, and added a neutral vane. Suction improved, but the wood shavings filled the bag too quickly, and clogged the paper filter.

Changed to two-stage collection by adding a 30 gal. garbage can. Filter stays clean longer, and sawdust doesn't have to be dumped as often. However, suction has been reduced dramatically. Now I have to blow shavings off the planer table after every board, and they're everwhere!

What's next?

[drumpriest]

Cyclone baby! I've been pretty happy with my jet 1100ck, but yeah, it's a pain to empty the bag, for sure.

[cgallery]

As a stop gap you could ditch the separator and add one of my baffles to the ring of your DC. You'll have to get better at changing bags. But your Wynn filter will only require cleaning one or twice a year and you'll have gobs of CFM.

[LCHIEN]

airflow and suction are often confused.
If your DC is leaving material behind its usually an airflow problem, not suction.
Make sure you have no constrictions and the opening in the planer is large enough to pass sufficient air that will carry shavings to the DC. If you had enough air flow before, then the separator may be the source of constriction. Certainly the HF DC wants to have at the very least 4" straight clear hose the whole way, and not too much of it - did you add ten feet of flex hose with the separator?

Is your neutral vane working properly? Its purpose is to deflect the incoming material around the ring and not be picked up by the air that will flow from the center of the bottom bag straight up thru the ring - it helps the separation of the material into the lower bag.

[Rich P]

Since I'm about to pull the trigger on the Wynn/neutral vane setup myself, I was taken aback by your observation that the "bag filled up too quickly". If you are generating a cubic foot of chips at the machine it has got to go somewhere and if it is going into the bag...mission accomplished. I've got an American Filter bag on top and a plastic one on the bottom and have way too much fine dust all over so I'm hoping the Wynn will deal with that. Not to hijack your post but which Wynn filter are you running...the 35A series or ??? As I understand it, blowing the filter out with compressed air is fairly effective and easy. I initially went the bag on top route to avoid filter cleaning but the fine dust is just too much.

[Schleeper]

airflow and suction are often confused.
If your DC is leaving material behind its usually an airflow problem, not suction.
Make sure you have no constrictions and the opening in the planer is large enough to pass sufficient air that will carry shavings to the DC. If you had enough air flow before, then the separator may be the source of constriction. Certainly the HF DC wants to have at the very least 4" straight clear hose the whole way, and not too much of it - did you add ten feet of flex hose with the separator?

Is your neutral vane working properly? Its purpose is to deflect the incoming material around the ring and not be picked up by the air that will flow from the center of the bottom bag straight up thru the ring - it helps the separation of the material into the lower bag.

Loring,

The planer has a 4" duct, and I cut into the 10' hose to add the separator. Still, I did have sufficient air flow before adding the separator, so it stands to reason that the latest modification is the culprit. If it's because the hose is no longer straight, there's not much I can do about that. There's always going to be a bend in the hose going into the separator, and the one coming out.

As for the neutral vane's operation, I have no way of knowing if it's working properly because I have nothing to compare it with. It seems to be creating a strong cyclonic action, but at one point before I added the separator I had about a third of a bag of shavings stuck in one massive clog up inside the filter!

The info you gave me for the neutral vane wasn't specific when it came to its actual positioning in relationship to the ring. I assume that the scooped out portion of the cylindrical vane is meant to hug the underside of the ring's concave profile. When I pushed the vane into the duct, it reached a point where it more or less snapped into place, and that's where I left it. Maybe I didn't push it in far enough. How far should the vane extend out from the duct?

[dbhost]

Keep your lines as straight and short as possible. Use smooth pipe wherever possible, IF you have to use a 90 degree elbow, use a sweep elbow instead of tight radius, and if you got one of the commercially available separators odds are you are loosing airflow, AND ending up with scrubbing pulling excess junk into the lower bag on your DC, search here for Thien Cyclone and you will have a good idea of a good trash can cyclone you can build with that can you already have...

I have seen this setup work in other guys shops... Keep at it, you can get it done...

[master53yoda]

You might install a Phil Thien baffle in the dust collector that should prevent undo filter plugging and come close to cyclone quality dust separation . see picture attached.

The HF dust collector will move about 1300 cfm but with a 4" hose it is only moving about 650 to 700 at the device. The longer the hose the less cfm you will move and you will have less dust collection capability. Please remember that the DCs purpose is removal of large particulate. Small dust removal is the purpose of a high volume filter assembly.

What planer are you running I have problems with my planer not doing a real good job if the board is narrow due to the design of the collection hood on the planer.

[dbhost]

I think the Neutral Vane is there to do what a Thien Baffle would do. But if he builds a Thien Baffle / separator lid and removes the neutral vane, he should be catching all but the finest particles in the trash can. The neutral vane would be simply redundant, and potentially an air flow restriction. (Gonna have to get the input of someone more qualified than me on that part...)

And like I mentioned above, the ribbed hoses do a lot to kill CFM, as do elbows, wyes, etc...

As far as CFM issues are concerned, makes you wish they made 5" S&D PVC commonly avialable and cheap...

I think my first steps would be to upgrade to a Thien cyclone, eliminate the neutral vane, straighten any bends, shorten hoses, and make sure that Wynn filter is clean... That SHOULD get everything moving along just fine... If you still aren't catching stuff at the planer, then investigate what it is about the planer...

FWIW, My shop vac based system does a good job sucking the chips off of my AP1301...

[master53yoda]

I think the Neutral Vane is there to do what a Thien Baffle would do. But if he builds a Thien Baffle / separator lid and removes the neutral vane, he should be catching all but the finest particles in the trash can. The neutral vane would be simply redundant, and potentially an air flow restriction. (Gonna have to get the input of someone more qualified than me on that part...)

The Thien baffle assembly incorporates a neutral vane assembly by having the pipe elbow drop down between the baffle and the top.. The elbow is a neutral vane, with the neutral vane that is installed on the DC adding the baffle would make a Thien separator out of the DC collection bag area.

Just adding the baffle to a side ported assembly would not separate as well as as the Thien separator does without installing the Neutral vane.

[Schleeper]

Since I'm about to pull the trigger on the Wynn/neutral vane setup myself, I was taken aback by your observation that the "bag filled up too quickly". If you are generating a cubic foot of chips at the machine it has got to go somewhere and if it is going into the bag...mission accomplished. I've got an American Filter bag on top and a plastic one on the bottom and have way too much fine dust all over so I'm hoping the Wynn will deal with that. Not to hijack your post but which Wynn filter are you running...the 35A series or ??? As I understand it, blowing the filter out with compressed air is fairly effective and easy. I initially went the bag on top route to avoid filter cleaning but the fine dust is just too much.

That does sound kind of dumb, doesn't it? First I'm complaining about the bag filling up, and then I'm *****ing about it not sucking the stuff up. A clarification is obviously in order.

You're making the right move. Clearing the air of all those fine particles is the top priority. Changing to the Wynn 35A setup (which includes plastic bags to replace the bottom bag,) improved my filtration dramatically. However, you have to keep the chips and particles away from the paper filter as much as possible, in order to prolong the life of the filter, and keep if from becoming clogged. When I first started with that setup, the airflow was great. However, as the bag started to fill and the filter started to clog, it dropped off. I knew I didn't want to constantly be emptying the bag and cleaning the filter, so I added the separator.

There's a possibility that my neutral vane needs additional tweaking. If that ends up being the answer, I'll pass the info along.

[master53yoda]

The purpose of the Neutral vane is to prevent the air that is coming around the cylcone from acting as a plug to the inlet air stream. if you want to set the Neutral vane you could make a U-tube manometer out of some clear plastic tubing and put about 10" of water in the tube. Install one side of the u-tube on the OUTLET of the fan and the other open to the atmosphere move the vane in and out until you have the LOWEST reading on the u-tube.

To calculate pressure in a U-tube manometer, add the sum of the readings above and below zero. This diagram shows an atmospheric reading of 4.

[Schleeper]

Keep your lines as straight and short as possible. Use smooth pipe wherever possible, IF you have to use a 90 degree elbow, use a sweep elbow instead of tight radius, and if you got one of the commercially available separators odds are you are loosing airflow, AND ending up with scrubbing pulling excess junk into the lower bag on your DC, search here for Thien Cyclone and you will have a good idea of a good trash can cyclone you can build with that can you already have...

I have seen this setup work in other guys shops... Keep at it, you can get it done...

Can you elaborate on that "scrubbing pulling excess junk into the lower bag?" When I first installed the separator, I was getting almost nothing in the bag. Then I started noticing quite a bit of the chips flowing through to the bag. I just attributed it to not emptying the separator often enough (even though it wasn't close to being full.) But after I emptied the separator, it continued to do the same thing. At that point, I took the filter off, gave it a thorough cleaning, and I'm back to getting good separation (for now, at least.)

[master53yoda]

picture of a homemade u-tube

[cgallery]

Couple of points:

(1) Replacing your neutral vane with a baffle on your DC's ring will significantly reduce the amount of material that gets to your filter. Do not use the baffle WITH a neutral vane, it will work better without one.

(2) If you use a separator, add the baffle there, too.

It is possible that some of the drop in CFM you experienced after adding the separator was due to the fact that your filter was already plugged. So I'd add a baffle to both the DC ring and the separator and try again. If you still aren't getting enough CFM at the planer, then you may have to eliminate the separator, but you'll still have the baffle in the DC ring which will keep the filter from plugging so quickly.

If you really have your heart on a separator and the one you have isn't cutting it, you can always make your own with a side-inlet.