Thread: Filter cleaning protocol

Originally Posted by cookie48

What am I doing wrong

For what its worth what you are doing wrong is collecting the invisible dust in ANYTHING that wil require YOU to handle it later. The stuff is bad enough in the quantities that are made while you are working without concentrating it all in a filter for you toe have to confront all in one hit.

If you catch it in a filter bag or a pleated filter sooner or later you want to clean out the bag or filter. these items only make sense to me if you throw them away with the dust in them, but nobody does that.

Get the best dust extraction you can afford be it a shop vac or a 3 phase 5 hp monster, but vent the exhaust outside the shed! your dust extactor will puill more air and thertefore more dust without the resistance of a filter thereby collecting more dust and by venting it outside you wont have the invisible particles everyone talks about recirculating in the shed.

have a collector inside the shed , preferably a yclone and make sure you can empty it without coming into contact with the contents.

Doug

Originally Posted by doug3030

For what its worth what you are doing wrong is collecting the invisible dust in ANYTHING that wil require YOU to handle it later. The stuff is bad enough in the quantities that are made while you are working without concentrating it all in a filter for you toe have to confront all in one hit.

This makes a lot of sense. It's better to use 5 or even 30 micron bags connected to a DC that vents outside a shed than 1 micron bags inside or outside a shed. With the bigger micron bags most (but not all) the very fine dust passes through the bags and gets diluted into the atmosphere where as the 1 micron filters trap enough of the finer stuff to make then worse to handle than the bigger micron bags.

Hey Cookie, what brand / where did you purchase your pleated filter from ?. I have just done exactly the same as you by deleting the cloth bags in place for the JET pleated filter kit as I have had a very bad reaction to Western Red Cedar dust. I got mine from Gregory's Machinery, as my DC is a JET DC1200 2hp job. I am yet to put it through it's paces, it 'WILL' be going back to them for a refund it the thing does what yours is doing ! v Needless to say, all cedar is now banned from my shed.

If you are clogging your filter up so quickly i would suggest a couple of things:

1. Put a cyclone stage into the chain. With mine I never even have to turn the paddles.

2. Perhaps your DC could do with a larger filtration area. ie by using a bigger DC or rigging an extra outlet in parallel to the current one.

Originally Posted by BobL

This makes a lot of sense. It's better to use 5 or even 30 micron bags connected to a DC that vents outside a shed than 1 micron bags inside or outside a shed. With the bigger micron bags most (but not all) the very fine dust passes through the bags and gets diluted into the atmosphere where as the 1 micron filters trap enough of the finer stuff to make then worse to handle than the bigger micron bags.

Except that pleated filters have almost 7 times the surface area of a bag. A bag will never have as good suction as a decent pleated filter on the same DC. I have also found this out in practice.

Originally Posted by TP1

Except that pleated filters have almost 7 times the surface area of a bag. A bag will never have as good suction as a decent pleated filter on the same DC. I have also found this out in practice.

Yep I agree.

My concern with pleated filters is that retailers and many users see them as quick simple solution to improve dust collection whereas in reality they are often a medium to minor and in many cases of no benefit.

For example; a pleated filter does not fix the fact that any system that uses 4" ducting and a standard DC does not meet BP spec. In these cases I reckon it is more effective to spend the money otherwise spent on a pleated filter on 6" ducting and opening up the inlets on the DC and machines and vent outside a shed.

A pleated filter definitely does add more suck so if the DC system is up to spec and venting outside then it still is worth using one - maybe just wear a dust mask when cleaning bags - we all should do that anyway

I took a very close look at the pressure differences between bags and pleated filters back when I bought my 3HP bag DC, which has twin large, nominally 5 micron bags. To fit pleated filters (only rated to 3 microns) to this large DC was going to cost an extra $1400 which was significantly more than the original cost of the DC. I figured if I was going to spend that much on a system I might as well just get a clearvue cyclone.

The 5 micron bags that came with my DC are rated at 1" of pressure loss, but because there are two the overall pressure loss is 0.5", compared to the pressure loss of using the pleated filters of 0.15" The reality is that the 0.35" difference in pressure would simply not add much of an increase in flow rate to warrant the cost and I figure I could easily save this pressure losses in other ways.

For example, using 2 x 45º fittings for just one 90º bend saved 0.34" of pressure! - with this simple move I had just saved $1400!

The moral of this story is, if you are having problems with suck, look elsewhere in your system and you might not have to resort to pleated filters. 95% of systems I have seen suck poorly because they use 4" ducting.

The pleated filters do have a significant other advantage and that is that they do not clog up as quickly as bags. So far this has not been that big of a problem for the amount of WW I have been doing as I found I only have to clean the bags every 4 months or so.

My pleated filter is a Hore & Forbes brand. As all this hassle was mainly occuring when turning acrylic blanks I have now resorted to useing my Vacuum and placing that outside the shed as my collection system. I place the nozzle as near as possible to where I am turning and extend the pipe with another one from another cleaner. I understand this is not ideal but is the best I can come up with at present till I vent my dusty to an outside system.

Originally Posted by BobL

To fit pleated filters (only rated to 3 microns) to this large DC was going to cost an extra $1400 which was significantly more than the original cost of the DC.

Bob, was that Mrs Kelly's son you getting the price from? I can supply .5 micron filters a lot cheaper that that. And retailers wonder why we buy stuff OS with prices like you were quoted. Filters only need to be used where the air must be recycled and that is a rare situation in Australia.

Originally Posted by Mini

Bob, was that Mrs Kelly's son you getting the price from? I can supply .5 micron filters a lot cheaper that that. And retailers wonder why we buy stuff OS with prices like you were quoted. Filters only need to be used where the air must be recycled and that is a rare situation in Australia.

Yeah - I can't believe the prices for these and they were only 3 microns!