Thread: Home-Made Dust Collector for my Jointer

Interesting.

I am thinking that you had the car filter laying around.

interesting - I have one of those benchtop jointers, but mine gets hooked up to a 2hp dusty. I take it you are relying solely on the inbuilt fan in the jointer to provide enough airflow without a shopvac? I'm surprised it would be effective, as I thought the fan was primarily intended for use with the supplied dustbag, not a long length of hose.

I see several problems with your setup.
The first is the car air filter will simply not filter out the invisible dust and even if it did it is so small that it would clog up in a few minutes of use.
Then next is the 65 mm pipe. Whether it is connected to even a very powerful DC or not it is simply not going to be able to move enough air to capture invisible dust at the source of dust generation. This means the jointer will just spray a heap of invisible dust around your shed.

I might have guessed Bob would chime in with the problems ;-)

Bob, the 2.5" port is an unfortunate limitation of that particular jointer - there's a plastic shroud that completely encloses the underside of the cutter, with a mini fan assembly that fits onto it - the 2.5" port exiting the machine is actually part of the fan housing, to eliminate it and fit a large port is impractical. It would require extensive mods to fit even a 4" port.

It works surprisingly well for chip extraction (the fan is belt driven by the same 1.5hp motor that drives the cutter at 10,000rpm, and air velocity seems fair at the port), but then we all know chip extraction isn't dust collection. I use mine with a 4" hose to my dusty (using a very short piece of 2.5" and a reducer) plus a 2nd 4" hose to a large hood I position above the jointer fence. Yes, I know it won't capture the fine stuff, but we all have to start from somewhere. At least with these jointers only weighing 40kg, you can put them on a castor base cabinet and take them outside easily.

As for the car air filter, given the flow restriction by the 2.5" port it'll handle the air volume easily - but then sub 5 micron particles aren't harmful to engines. It will stop the stuff you can see blowing out onto the floor, and that's important isn't it )

Originally Posted by richmond68

I might have guessed Bob would chime in with the problems ;-)

Bob, the 2.5" port is an unfortunate limitation of that particular jointer - there's a plastic shroud that completely encloses the underside of the cutter, with a mini fan assembly that fits onto it - the 2.5" port exiting the machine is actually part of the fan housing, to eliminate it and fit a large port is impractical. It would require extensive mods to fit even a 4" port.

In this case a shroud above the cutter or the fence connected to as big a port and ducting as possible would be the next best thing.

BTW it is really good that these can be taken outside

G'Day All,
Thank you the encouragement & discouragement at what I though was okay.
Originally I had help to lift the jointer into place as it's a bit heavy for me to lug around by myself.
It came with a large-ish bag that fitted over the 65mm exhaust of the jointer and it let almost as much out as it caught.
My woodwork shed in built under the house were we excavated into the sandstone behind a very small garage so space is a big issue.
The blade cover on the joiner table is also somewhat in-indicant but this new "homemade collection system is 100% better than what I originally had.
I would liked to been able to affort a proper dust collector with 100mm piping but I don't have the space or the where-with-all.
I hope that explains what and why I've done what I've done.
Cheers, crowie
.

Crowie,
I agree it is a long way better than the supplied bag - mine is still wrapped in the plastic it came in, just not worth using.

You could improve your design further by making a Thien type separator lid and try to keep the inlet as straight as you can, and hooking a vac up to the outlet (an old household one would do) rather than the air filter. One problem you do have is because yours is effectively a pressure system and not a vacuum system, it's not as obvious when there's a blockage in the hose between the jointer and collector. Adding a vac will improve its performance, reduce the risk of blockage and give you near instant feedback if there is a blockage - the plastic bin will probably collapse!

It's worth the effort to try to improve the dust collection, because even though it's small it's still a 6" jointer and makes as much dust as any other 6" jointer. And if you can make a wheeled base to move it outside, even better. I'm designing one for mine, with a parallelogram infeed table extension and fixed outfeed extension.

Thanks for explaining your situation Crowie. Whether we like it or not we all have to live within our means or we end up like Greece.