I thought the title of today’s post a little humorous considering the ‘shop vac’ which arrived today on three skids:
The bag house on the right has 30 slim bags in it and two metal pull-out drawers on the bottom – the bags were disconnected from the bottom plenum so extra stuff could be crammed in there. It took quite a while to unpack all the bits:
As you can see the system, made by Air Sentry, was originally green but was repainted at some point. Here’s the chip bin with it’s pull out box on rollers – this bin supports the cyclone:
An interesting assortment of piping came with the machine:
Some of the piping was even bigger than the inlet pipe to the cyclone, leading me to wonder if the original system was even larger or if there were two systems as some point:
Getting the cyclone, which must weigh around 300 lbs., on top of the chip bin was entertaining – we (my shop neighbor Joe gave me a hand) used a come-along attached to the floor joist above to ratchet it up into place and then bolt the two parts together:
The 7.5 hp. Baldor motor was also quite heavy and required winching up to mount atop the cyclone. Total height from floor to top of motor must be close to 10 feet.
The piping puzzle gradually gets sorted out. I’ll inevitably have some pieces I can’t use, and will need to buy a few more pieces to put it all together:
Included in the system were a couple of nice fabricated sheet metal collection ports, like this one:
There is also a floor pick up vacuum opening, and even a large downdraft sanding hood, which I have no use for:
I imagine I’ll be able to find a buyer for it somewhere down the line.
A dusty day, but i was pleased with the system I brought into my shop for less than $1000.00. I’m sure i’ll have to drop another $2~300 on it yet to get it working. I plan to get the wiring sorted tomorrow and connect the bag house and cyclone together. It will be sweet to finally have a dust collection system – better for my health obviously, less mess to clean up, and the few machines I use should work a bit better as well.
Thanks for dropping by the Carpentry Way. A follow-up to this post can be found here.
A 7.5HP Baldor motor is worth the price by itself. Very nice. My 1.5HP General is feeling inadequate.
Adam,
he last dust collector I had was a Delta single bag 1.5hp unit on a little cart. It worked okay but sure filled up fast and had to be dragged to each machine. And that was back in 2005, so it has been 7 years since I had any dust collection beyond a Festool portable vacuum. I'm interested to see how this cyclone system works and wonder if they are all they're cracked up to be.
Thanks as always for your comment!
~C
I attended the International Yacht Restoration School and they had a similar system to what you're using. One thing I remember is that the frame holding the fan needs to be reinforced. It can get damaged by impacts that don't actually hurt the fan itself. But then again, we had two 20″ planers going for hours a day so that definitely doesn't qualify as typical use.
I was wondering what you use for a drill press? I'm in the market for one and I'm finding out that I don't like anything. It's a little depressing actually. I've always taken my drill press for granted. Now that I'm somewhat of a better woodworker, or at least, my standards for precision are much higher, I'm finding modern presses flimsy, and old presses too heavily used to be salvageable.
Adam,
thanks for your comment and question. I'm using a Delta Rockwell Radial ram drill press. It has needed a bit of work but it has been great. There's a post from several months back where I show some pictures of it, but in case those aren't easily found, check out the pics here:
http://www.mytractorforum.com/showthread.php?t=167385
~C