Thread: SPOT the dust collection faux pas

Well other than the two old dogs, one horizontal and one vertical, not wearing dust masks, the only thing I spot is the dust collector hose isn't hooked up to the jointer. Oh sorry! Hooked up to the surfacer. I would love to have a planer, dang, thicknesser, that big by the way.

Originally Posted by QC Inspector

Well other than the two old dogs, one horizontal and one vertical, not wearing dust masks, the only thing I spot is the dust collector hose isn't hooked up to the jointer.

Correct. One problem with using a DC that is swapped between machines is the danger that unless the hose is firmly attached every time, then if it comes off the machine or DC then with all the racket happening from DC and other machines it may just go un-noticed. The picture also shows the small jointer dust port was clogged up - I was wondering at the time why chips were spitting out the top of the machine!

Oh sorry! Hooked up to the surfacer. I would love to have a planer, dang, thicknesser, that big by the way.

Yes it is very nice to use - it also uses a 5" dust port which when connected directly to the DC via some 5" flexy does a fair job. Apart from dust control their whole setup is very good - not to mention the stash of dozens of milled slabs they have on their property. I may post some pics tomorrow.

Bob

Plenty of room there by the looks of it so I can understand why you can see the potential.

The thicknesser looks like Carbatec's 20" model. If that is the case and if you gave it a run what did you think?

One day, when I upgrade or my cheapie 12" turns up it's blades, and assuming I haven't myself expired first, I was looking at that model or the smaller 15" brothers.

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

Bob
Plenty of room there by the looks of it so I can understand why you can see the potential.

Yep - when I need to make something BIG or just processing timber out of cut slabs this is definitely the place. Apart from the 150 x 150 mm posts, the timber in the picture has all been processed from slabs milled on the property.

To break up the nominally 3m long x 50 mm thick jarrah slabs we used a Festool plunge saw connected to a Festool VC - what a lovely piece of kit that is - it cuts up to 75 mm thick. One of the gnarlier slabs was 65 mm thick and it was working hard doing it but it did it without any sign of the overheating I get when I use my big Makita circular for extended periods.

The thicknesser looks like Carbatec's 20" model. If that is the case and if you gave it a run what did you think?

We did a bunch of 2.2 m lengths of 350 x 50 bone dry Jarrah on it yesterday and it worked fine.
Above those widths I think above that it would really benefit from a bigger (currently 3HP) motor.
Handling the 150 x 150 mm jarrah through it was hard yakka but it fair tore through these and did a good job.

The dust extracor we are using with is a 2HP Carbatech with a 125 mm hose but the thicknesser could really benefit from a 3HP DC.

Sandi is a neat freak so it won't be long before we'll be setting up better DC.

Thanks Bob. That machine is available with a 5HP motor too, but 3PH of course. I have often wondered how the smaller motor would cope. Go slower with shallower cuts of course. No subsititute for grunt.

A while back I was planing some dry 150mm hardwood boards for a friend when I realised we were going to be there for a couple of days taking .5mm off at a time. We took the boards on my trailer around to a mutual friend with a kitchen cabinet business and asked him to put them through his 24" 3PH thicknesser.

He put them through two at a time taking 3mm off with each pass .

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

Thanks Bob. That machine is available with a 5HP motor too, but 3PH of course. I have often wondered how the smaller motor would cope. Go slower with shallower cuts of course. No subsititute for grunt.

A while back I was planing some dry 150mm hardwood boards for a friend when I realised we were going to be there for a couple of days taking .5mm off at a time. We took the boards on my trailer around to a mutual friend with a kitchen cabinet business and asked him to put them through his 24" 3PH thicknesser.

He put them through two at a time taking 3mm off with each pass .l

Yeah - about the most we could do was about 1.5 mm on the wider boards but even then I was not comfortable so we were doing 1 mm passes.

Trawling through some past copies of Fine Woodworking and ran across this 2012 article.
This picture from the article pretty much sums up my feelings about it.

NB They label this setup as "state of the art"!



At no stage do they even get close to discussing the air flow differences between 4 and 6" ducting.

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

One day, when I upgrade or my cheapie 12" turns up it's blades, and assuming I haven't myself expired first, I was looking at that model or the smaller 15" brothers.

Bugger the new stuff ... get something from 1950.
Paul

Originally Posted by BobL

Trawling through some past copies of Fine Woodworking and ran across this 2012 article.
This picture from the article pretty much sums up my feelings about it.

NB They label this setup as "state of the art"!

Mmm. Quite apart from air flows.... Hoses across the floor, corrugated hoses and dust collector located inside the building and even worse right next to the woodworker!

Regards
Paul

Originally Posted by Bushmiller

Mmm. Quite apart from air flows.... Hoses across the floor, corrugated hoses and dust collector located inside the building and even worse right next to the woodworker!

Regards
Paul

Yep 3 important points Paul.

A couple of other things that may be a bit subtle are
1) Entry ports left in original (4") size on machines - ie hopeless
2) Blastgates at the machine instead of as close as possible to junctions - this will clog the other .
3) The cyclone is not a ramped entry meaning it will not be as efficient as a ramped entry cyclone like a ClearVue.

How one can write an article without performing a comprehensive test on wood dust particle emission over a range of particle sizes is beyond me.

The article also makes a big deal about how good separators are and even presents a few graphs regarding DC air flow with and without separators.
The information provided is correct for VCs but not so for DCs.
The graphs provided are lines without a single data point that simply do not agree with what I have measured - I get the impression there has been some "winging of the results".
That's the problem with magazines that probably get give devices to test. Is the investigator really prepared to say something is a crock of . . . . and risk not getting machines to test in the future.

In the same issue (#223) there are some interesting flow measurements reported by the same author for VCs.
This would make useful reading but because it by the same author as the "state of the art" article I'm a bit concerned about the validity of the results.
The flow rates obtained are terrible - I wish I had access to that raft of new VCs to do some proper testing.