Thread: Am I expecting too much from this cyclone?

You obviously have not spent much time on the dust forum?

The 99% extraction claim of dust extraction is somewhat meaningless because what they failed to tell you is for what size particles.

The 99% claim assumes the dust particle profile is an average for ALL woodworking dust.
This includes the very large chips, shavings as would be produced by a saw or thicknesser.
The 99% claim is easy to meet because a few big chips contains a lot of small dust particles.
The big particles are a nuisance but they won't cause any health problems, its the particles you cannot even see that are the biggest concern.

Sanders produces different dust profile (much finer dust) from the average which most cyclones (especially that one) are not that effective at filtering out.
If you can see that much dust coming out I would hate to think of how much invisible dust is coming out.
The cyclone you have is an old design and will never be that efficient plus it will slow the overall impeller air flow down meaning it leaves more dust behind in the shed

I also note you have long runs of 4" ducting in your shed.
You will never get fine dust control - especially from a sander - with this size ducting - it simply cannot capture enough dust at the source to keep up with what most machines produce.
The minimum size to use is 6" and the ports on the machines, DC and ducting has to be 6" ALL the way.

Hi mate. Cheers.
I spent some time a while ago checking out the dust forum but I admit I've probably forgotten a fair bit. The 4 inch pipe is a hangover from old bag system and we are planning to run 6 inch through the shed.
I've got 6inch in the main workshop and on the buffing wheels and it does pull a lot more air.
I guess I'll have to run a filter outside and just keep an eye on it. I'm a bit disappointed because I could just run a ported rubbish bin lid if I wanted to drop chips, or just keep a bag system outside.
Anyway, thanks for the response.

What I dislike is the PR 'hype' a lot of woodwork equipment sellers apply to such units.

It is a dust separator... of sorts... but what it's doing is separating the chips into the drum and passing the dust on down the line to a dust filtration unit. I guess that my point is that it should be more realistically advertised as a chip separator!

Mind you, in the MWE link you provided, the bottom line is "Note - You need a Dust Unit for this system to work." ie. it's only half of the system you need.