Thread: 1 HP dust extractor

Geoff, go 2hp. Table saws need good suction, as do routers. As you intend to use piping there will also be friction losses. All this would have the 1hp hard pressed. To run between 2 macines at the same time would not be an option which means shutting off one machine all the time. Any added machines and your up for another extractor. Go 2hp and be done with it.

1hp dusties are great - for creating the need to get a 2hp dusty. Trust me I know.

Doug

I agree that a 2HP is a bare minimum and if you can possibly do it place the DC outside.

BTW I had to learn the really hard way, first the 1HP then two 2HP and finally the 3HP, before I was satisfied.

OK, thanks for the help guys.

Garfield, there is another consideration in choosing the size of your dusty that may come into play and that is the availability of power in your shed. Most sheds have one 10amp power circuit and that is it.

Do you have any machines such as your tablesaw that run of 15 amp power? you can get away with one 15amp machine on a 10amp circuit in most circumstances, so long as nothing else is running on that circuit at the time, but dont try this unless you know what you are doing or seek the advice of an electrician. The point being a 3hp dusty will require 15amps. You may not be able to run anything at the same time as it, so there would be very little point in having one.

My tablesaw and 21inch bandsaw are both 15 amp machines so I am restricted to a 2hp dusty and I have 2 circuits in my shed.

Just making sure that you are aware that it can be a balancing act between what you want and the power available to run it.

Doug

Originally Posted by doug3030

Garfield, there is another consideration in choosing the size of your dusty that may come into play and that is the availability of power in your shed. Most sheds have one 10amp power circuit and that is it.

Do you have any machines such as your tablesaw that run of 15 amp power? you can get away with one 15amp machine on a 10amp circuit in most circumstances, so long as nothing else is running on that circuit at the time, but dont try this unless you know what you are doing or seek the advice of an electrician. The point being a 3hp dusty will require 15amps. You may not be able to run anything at the same time as it, so there would be very little point in having one.

My tablesaw and 21inch bandsaw are both 15 amp machines so I am restricted to a 2hp dusty and I have 2 circuits in my shed.

Just making sure that you are aware that it can be a balancing act between what you want and the power available to run it.

Doug

Cheers Doug.

Mate I only have a Makita MLT100 it runs on the 10AMP as do all of my tools. I don't spend heaps and heaps of time woodworking every weekend - so that why I thought a 1HP would have suit me as it is only a small workshop and would mainly be connected to the table saw most of the time but also to my router table and SCS from time to time.

Thanks for the advice anyhow Doug.

Garfield,
Like you, I don't spend every waking hour in the shed doing woodwork. If there's something to be made or repaired then I fire up the machines ( all 10 amp BTW) and I have a 1 HP Carba-Tec Dusty with a pleated paper filter and a drop box I made from and old office chair base and a plastic rubbish bin which I connect via a short 2.0 meter, 100mm dia flexible pipe to each machine as needed.

I am not talking a huge amount of room to do this either, and I can operate a BAS 350, Triton WC200, Triton Router table, 6" jointer, and sander, all within a space around 2m x 5m . This, of course, excludes the extra room required by a large work piece, and all machines are mobile so I can shuffle them around a bit, but it works for me. I have a 6mx9m shed but I have other interest besides woodworking

I've seen, over my time on this forum, the many debates about the "invisible dust", and whilst I don't doubt its existence for a moment, you have to weigh up the cost of prevention, compared to your exposure, and I've taken a realtively minimalist approach. If you haven't already , then I suggest you search the forum for all the threads on dust ( BobL is a good start) then, taking the risks into account, make up your own mind what's best for you.

Ian

Ian

Originally Posted by Ian Smith

. . . . . I've seen, over my time on this forum, the many debates about the "invisible dust", and whilst I don't doubt its existence for a moment, you have to weigh up the cost of prevention, compared to your exposure

I agree with this but from what I have seen analysing the exposure is not easy.

A simple way to look at exposure is;

Exposure = dust concentration x Time.

Time is easy to assess. A couple of hours a week in a shed is equivalent to 5% of a 40 hour week.

The dust concentration is not as easy.
Most OSH use a simple milligrams of dust per cubic metre (ppm) value and do not take particle size into account.
The current Australian OSH standards for professional are 5 ppm for softwood and 1 ppm for hardwood.
It's interesting that Australian white collar workers have a 0.1 ppm level and European/Canadians have even less.

Why is it that white collar workers have different standard than blue collar workers? - of course, white collar workers are more important and valuable than that blue collar lot .

US EPA, Europeans and Canadians also have particle size specific levels as low as 0.01 ppm
The first problem is thus, whose levels are you willing to work under?

Just sweeping a not very dusty shed floor raises the dust levels to well over 10 times the current recommended Aussie levels.
Worst still, if a DC vents inside a shed then any dust level generated will not remove the invisible dust and it will build up over time.
Thus it is very easy to see even a 2 hour a week exposure easily exceeding a 40 hour a week European exposure level and even to exceed Australian standards especially for invisibles.

It doesn't especially worry me what individuals do once they are informed but from what I see on these forums and various wood working groups I belong and talk to, very few woodworkers seem to know what the levels are or how to achieve these levels. Unfortunately 1 HP or cheap vacuum cleaner that vents inside a shed is not going to do much towards meeting these risks.

So bottom line then Bob is a 2HP or larger and if possible keep the DC outside as well?

Originally Posted by garfield

So bottom line then Bob is a 2HP or larger and if possible keep the DC outside as well?

Yep - but bear in mind that even this is not an immediate or out of the box solution, it is just the beginning. ie something to build on.
Optimizing all DCs still takes some effort, especially at the machine end of things.

Originally Posted by BobL

Yep - but bear in mind that even this is not an immediate or out of the box solution, it is just the beginning. ie something to build on.
Optimizing all DCs still takes some effort, especially at the machine end of things.

So true Bob, once you have the dusty and ducting itself set up to give you the maximum possible airflow and minimised the return of invisible dust into the work area, that part of the equation is essentially a constant. It is then up to our ingenuity to maximise the benefits of that potential collecton effort for every different machine we connect to it.

This is where your recent experiments have me, and apparently a lot of other forumites really thinking hard about how we can do it better on individual machines. As I am getting more involved in improving the "meaningful" dust collection on my machines, I am becoming increasingly appalled at how poorly manufacturers are presenting their tools to the market in regard to dust collection.

I mentioned in a recent thread about my belt and disk sander which came with a 2" dust port which is choked to an effective collection of a quarter of a square inch of duct between the vacuum source and the 6" wide belt producing the dust. It just wont work. major mods are required, but the manufacturers will continue to peddle this kind of thing because when we see a dust port on a machine we assume that it will work effectively. More often than not they dont and it often takes only a few small mods to make a great difference.

Doug