Made some progress with my dust collection system today, as a shipment from Dustpipe Inc. arrived. I had revised the design several times – here’s the latest version (of 4):
The revisions to the drawing are on account to several re-arrangements of my shop space in past weeks as I get ready for the new aircraft carrier (jointer) to make its way into port, scheduled to happen in a couple of days.
The piping is all quality spiral steel, no plastic or building yard HVAC piping. I thought I’d share a few pics of the parts going together. I’m about halfway through hooking it up, and need a few more parts before I can complete the work (those needed parts are colored red in the preceding drawing).
I assembly the parts together and then rivet them. After that they will be wrapped with industrial aluminum sheet duct sealing tape.
I was hoping to re-use more of the piping that came with my collection system, but really only about 10% is going to be re-usable – the painted bits – like the 10″ primary duct:
The first fitting to the primary duct is a reducing lateral, them most expensive component in the piping system. The metal ducting is not an inexpensive proposition, and, like the collector itself, hardly glamorous. But important and I’m glad to have it at last.
It took a while to get the first section up by myself as the plenum to the cyclone was inconveniently sized and I had to make a custom sleeve to join the pipe and plenum. One of the stepladders came in handy as a temporary support for the two 8″ elbows which bring the pipe up in height a bit:
Here I’ve connected the floor vacuum pickup:
The 6″ down-pipe for the floor vacuum will have a couple of spur lines at 3″ size going right and left, one for the router table (visible to the right of the down pipe) and one for the Kapex.
Another look at the floor vac intake:
The green bit of ply on the wall is the site of a soon to be built plywood cabinet for storing all my cutters – planer knives, router bits, shaper heads, etc. Slowly but surely things are getting organized after the re-organizing of the shop.
Then I got the 8″ pipe run popped into place, but not firmly connected or leveled out quite yet:
Another view:
Dust collection is so important to a shop if you run machinery and it is an area I have made do with hokey crap systems in the past – or had nothing. It feels good to get a decent system in there and I look forward to having a shop with a whole lot less dust in it. I expect I’ll be able to complete the dust collection hookup by sometime early next week. Just waiting on some parts – and a new machine!
All for today – thanks for dropping by the Carpentry Way. On to part II
That space is turning into a beautifull shop! Little dust, plenty of light nice equipment. Looking good!
Mathieu,
good to hear from you and thanks! The shop is a nice place to spend a day, even if it lacks heating, and I am super pleased to be able to realize improvements in the space and set up here and there.
~Chris
Love those windows. And looking forward to seeing pics of your new monster jointer.
Starting to look great, I'm quite envious. I just have a mobile extractor i that i have to wheel around between my machines. It's great to get home and not have that saw dust snot up your nose every evening. I used to make syrups in a softdrinks factory and we'd mix the colours in powder form. Inevitably I'd come home with multicoloured snot.
I'm really enjoying this blog Chris, It's given me some huge inspiration! Thank you.
Danno.
Mark,
good to hear from you and your desire to see jointer pics will be satisfied quite soon I'm sure!
Danno,
thanks for your comment and I can relate! Years back, I used to have a mobile Delta 1 h.p. unit on casters. Better than nothing of course, but the bags needed emptying with great frequency. I sold that along with a Felder combo machine I used to own and have been making to with my Festool shop vac for the past couple of years. Finding the new system of cyclone and baghouse on Ebay for $600 was a bit fortunate to be sure. That piping though sure adds up in a hurry mind you.
Glad to read you're finding inspiration on this blog.
~C
My dust collection is simple and inexpensive. The shop is only 600 square feet so space is very limited and running pipes along the wall not an option. I use two mobile collectors and they work as well as I could expect. It is slightly time consuming to hook the hose up and move it to another operation but it is a small price to pay to not have mounds on the floor.