Thread: Can I use a wet dry vacume for cheap dust extraction.

Originally Posted by hellofellow

So it sounds like a goood dust mask to catch the fine dust and a shop vac to get the larger pieces will have to do for now.
...
In terms of my setup: a metabo TS254 site saw.

Triton router ( soon to be on a kreg table I hope)

Carbatec thicknesser

Pretty simple so far hey, the sanders are a belt and random
Orbital hand held.

Hello Fellow,

Of course you can use one, but as with all half done solutions your patience will occaisonally be tested. I use a normal karcher wet/dry vac on: makita site saw, triton router, leigh dovetail jig, Bosch RO and belt sanders, domino, kapex mitre saw.

I got the rubber festool hose end (it fits the tools really well and doesn't fall out/off) and bought a used (longer) length of vacum hose from the local vacum cleaner shop.

The router (in some routing positions), domino and RO sander collection is great, the router (in some other routing positions), leigh jig, belt sander and kapex collection is reasonable, the table saw collection is hopeless. That being said, sanding clogs the filter and reduces suction, so you'll be doing a lot of filter emptying.

I also use a 1hp carbatec dust collector (the upright one with a plastic bag underneath) on a jet 10" thicknesser/ jointer and on the router table fence, it works really well provided you don't let it get too full (otherwise the extraction drops, the shavings don't get pulled out and they'll stay in the thicknesser, get rolled under the outfeed roller and dint softer timbers, note that some thicknessers will not do this and you could just let the shavings fly, but cleaning up is annoying), the vacum couldn't handle either of those jobs at all, far too little air volume to move large shavings.

Like the other guys say, with a vaccum and 1HP dust extractor , you are preventing mess and visible dust clouds only, (quite effectively, but after a while I still have to blow fine dust out of the workshop). So I use a 3M half face respirator with dust filters when I'm sanding or doing a lot of other power tool work, I have a door and a window open with a good breeze constantly coming through the area and if I've done something dusty I change clothes when I'm finished so the dust doesn't end up all through the house.

Cheers,

Austin

Have a look at a cheap Carbatec or Hafco DC.

I am am pretty sure you will find one second hand for the money you are looking to spend.

Big step up from the shop vac

Originally Posted by hellofellow

In terms of my setup: a metabo TS254 site saw.

Triton router ( soon to be on a kreg table I hope)

Carbatec thicknesser

Pretty simple so far hey, the sanders are a belt and random
Orbital hand held.

For the Metabo saw I would make a chute on the bottom for the sawdust to fall into a disposable bag, similar to the Triton dust bag solution, and attach the vacuum hose to the blade guard. This will solve a lot of your problems and is easily done and affordable. The vacuum hose can be attached to your router as it's designed for that, and can be connected, with adapters, to the belt and orbital sanders.

Your vac will not be any good for your thicknesser but they only spit out chips and not fine dust so it doesn't matter. That can easily be swept up with a brush and pan, or a broom and shovel.

Not high tech and expensive solutions but practical and affordable.


Peter.

Originally Posted by Sturdee

For the Metabo saw I would make a chute on the bottom for the sawdust to fall into a disposable bag, similar to the Triton dust bag solution, and attach the vacuum hose to the blade guard. This will solve a lot of your problems and is easily done and affordable. The vacuum hose can be attached to your router as it's designed for that, and can be connected, with adapters, to the belt and orbital sanders.

Your vac will not be any good for your thicknesser but they only spit out chips and not fine dust so it doesn't matter. That can easily be swept up with a brush and pan, or a broom and shovel.

Not high tech and expensive solutions but practical and affordable.


Peter.

Beyond what Sturdee has suggested, you can knock up a crud separator to stick between your machines and the vac (as I have) for about $25 or less. Still have a bag in the vac, but it's mainly there to protect the filters and collects bugger all debris thanks to the bucket. It ain't perfect, but works a treat for what it is.

Craig

Yet again the dust extraction forum has to be dragged back into the world of reality.

We have a bloke with currently no dust extraction at all considering a sub $100 purchase and a total tool value under $2000.....and the poor fella probaly scraped to afford that

What possible help is it to recommend $5000. in cyclones and ducting.


Seriosly.
The OP probably needs to be looking at a cheap and cheerfull 1hp, 100mm dust extractor under $200.

It may be far from ideal, but that is where most of us started.

As for shop vacs........BobL will tell ya how poor many of them are for filtration.

I'll tell you lots of them are B@#$y poor for suction too......and price is no guarantee of quality.

If ya gona buy a shop vac.....ya realy need to research the issues and have a good look around.

Another alternative.....similar to has been recommended is to buy the MRS a new vacuum.....the new meile is nice..and team her old one up with some sort of seperator bucket.
This seperator bucket can be as crude as you like...of if you do a bit of googling or reading this very forum for some more effective designs that can be made from common items.

cheers

Originally Posted by Sturdee

Your vac will not be any good for your thicknesser but they only spit out chips and not fine dust so it doesn't matter.

I have recently moved sheds and have not had the opportunity to set up my 2hp cyclone at the new location yet but have had to do some projects anyway.

I was making my saw totes for the https://www.woodworkforums.com/f11/me...rkshop-174387/ so I had to meet a deadline that did not allow the dust extraction to be put in place before using some machinery. I took the 15" carbatec thicknesser outside the shed into the breeze and ran my African Walnut board through it several times and taped the nozzle of the shop vac hose to the 4" dust port on the thicknesser. Guess what? No mess! the shop vac got all the shavings out of the dust port. There were some that came out of the bottom of the cutting head of course but the amount of mess was so small it blew away in the breeze.

I did it on the basis that "something is better than nothing" but I didnt expect it to clean it up like it did. I still would not have done it this way inside the shed for fear of the fine dust hanging around and settling out, waiting to be kicked up again, but outside the shed it gave me a pleasant surprise at how much it made a difference.

Cheers

Doug

Originally Posted by doug3030

I did it on the basis that "something is better than nothing" but I didnt expect it to clean it up like it did. I still would not have done it this way inside the shed for fear of the fine dust hanging around and settling out, waiting to be kicked up again, but outside the shed it gave me a pleasant surprise at how much it made a difference.

Cheers

Doug

Doug,

Your experiment tallies fairly well with mine. I was trying to figure out how to improve dust collection on my combo jointer/thicknesser. The core problem for this machine is getting enough air into and through the machine. This is the only machine still using 4 inch flexy. The airflow is so low that when the shavings hit the cyclone they don't spin around fast forming clean "lines" of material against the cyclone wall, as is normal. They tend to "fluff" around in long clouds. If another port is opened about halfway, the velocity picks up nicely and the cyclone starts to look and perform as it should; but whilst this fixes the cyclone effectiveness, it does nothing to improve the airflow through the woodworking machine.

The plastic hood has a port which is a bit less than 4 inches, and half of this is blanked off. If we say a 4 inch line can draw a max of 400 CFM, then with this shape I'm getting less than 200 CFM. That's not a lot of air. Looked up several vacs on the web. At 50 Hz shop vac manufacturers generally claim between 70 and 100 CFM (lets use these figures, just for kicks and for the sake of the discussion) for their vacs, which is approx half of what I am getting (ball park figures only).

On the other hand, my thickneser throws the chips (or most of them) in a very directional manner, up through the table. It has shrouds in the machine to form a path that most of the chips must follow. This makes it easier for the air to pick up the shavings; not the case for most of my machines.

To test these figures, I did what you did with a 2 HP vac. Extraction was not as good as with the cyclone, with more than double the mess that is normally produced, maybe more than triple, and we can likely be sure even more fine dust was emitted. Still, the vac picked up far more than might have anticipated.

This seems to be, in large part, due to the directional nature of the chip movement. The chips are forced up through the table, and then into a slot in the plastic port to which suction is applied. At any rate, our experiments agree generally, even though we are using different machines.

For other machines, I am delighted with dust collection effectiveness, crosscutting on the table saw, band saw and drop saw produces so little dust it can be ignored; ripping produces a small spurt of dust just as the blade exits the workpiece, but it is minimal. The linisher, spindle moulder and drum sander are brilliant, but the thicknesser lets the team down. Airflow through my thicknesser is terrible, such that even if I doubled the motor and impeller size, I would not expect to see any difference. So that is the problem to conquer. Dust collection on my thicknesser will continue to be poor until I figure out how to get more air flowing through the machine. Any and all ideas are gratefully accepted ... please.

Cheerio!

John

Originally Posted by John Samuel

Doug,
On the other hand, my thickneser throws the chips (or most of them) in a very directional manner, up through the table. It has shrouds in the machine to form a path that most of the chips must follow. This makes it easier for the air to pick up the shavings; not the case for most of my machines.

John, that pretty well sums it up. Most of the shavings from one pass of the short board I was thicknessing would have stayed in the shroud if there was no dust extraction applied at all, and could have been sucked out of the shroud with the shop vac after every pass. For longer boards this would not be the case and in any case would become tedious rather quickly on a bigger job. But the 2hp vac made light work of it. I was not worried about the invisible dust because I was outside and there was a breeze blowing.

Originally Posted by John Samuel

For other machines, I am delighted with dust collection effectiveness, crosscutting on the table saw, band saw and drop saw produces so little dust it can be ignored; ripping produces a small spurt of dust just as the blade exits the workpiece, but it is minimal. The linisher, spindle moulder and drum sander are brilliant, but the thicknesser lets the team down.

I still need to modify ports on a few machines and having followed your work on this I am confident that I will, when time permits. achieve similar results.

But the thicknesser ... I can't see how I can ever mod it so that I would be happy using it in the shed. Fortunately it is something that is generally used for a short while at the start of a project so I can see it being dragged outside for use more often than not. I have the 1hp impeller that used to sit on top of my cyclone before I upgraded to 2hp and a 44 gallon drum and I will probably make a mobile collector out of that for the thicknesser and use it outside just to collect the chips and let the rest go in the wind.

If I get a little bit of exposure to dust in the short time the thicknesser is in use, so be it. For the majority of my shed time I will be in a very clean shed with effective dust collection on every other machine. I run two exhaust fans constantly while I am in the shed and sometimes overnight after I finish, to make up for the dusty being only 2hp and there is no noticeable buildup of fine dust anywhere.

Cheers

Doug

Originally Posted by doug3030

I am confident that I will, when time permits. achieve similar results.

Doug,

I'm sure you will, and hope you are as surprised and pleased as I was with how much better the system works once you upgrade the ports/shrouds. It was always going to make a difference, but the degree of improvement was almost startling.

As for the thicknesser ... I am drawing up some designs that I hope will lift capture of very fine dust. The heavier chips that are spat out at the in and outfeed ends I can live with because I don't breathe them. All will be revealed once I get around to making a prototype.

Good hunting!

John