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Beginner attempt at DC - thanks to forum members
HI all, I'm new to the world of woodworking and here because my Wife has progressed with her interest in woodturning. She has been taking woodworking classes for a year or so and decided to get an old lathe to enjoy her newfound hobby at home. Sigh!
I can suffer from severs sinus (slowly getting this under control after 60 years) and so decided to research the health and safety issues of wood turning, wood working in general and wood dust.
Thanks to this wonderful forum and the intelligent and insightful discussions, I was able to come up with a workable solution - I know some will point out that it's not a good or ideal solution, but it's the best I could come up with for my wife in our current circumstances. Had it not been for forums like this I would have made so many major errors by not understanding the factors involved in collecting dust from a lathe and other machinery.
My wife had found a WoodFast 280 (I know, it's old as) on a sturdy frame with various attachments and tools - it has not seen a lot of work and after pulling it apart and going over it with some TLC, it appears to be in perfect running condition.
Now to the debated and difficult (if funds are limited) issue of the DC, ducting and air safety.
After reading articles and posts from BobL, and many others including Billpentz's site, I decide to go for a 3hp dusty and not the 1hp or 2 hp friends had advised. A unit was available local to us - again an old design - but it was something we could afford at this stage.
We have a 6x9 shed that's lined and insulated, one 6 x 3 bay is lined with fibre-cement sheeting and is sealed from the rest of the shed. This would be the location for the lathe, tools and various wood working equipment.
I positioned the lathe so that the DC could be mounted close outside the shed (as others and BobL suggested) in a self contained cabinet which is sealed except for low mounted exhaust vents. Thick treated pine planks glued and screwed make up the base and this is mounted on six 75mm x 600mm steel box section tubes driven into the ground about 1/2 meter. This cabinet is constructed from (seems like tons) of 70 x 35 pine and covered in hardy flex fibre cement sheeting. Every joint is glued and screwed as are the FC sheets, later I plan to add internal sound deadening when time and funds permit, I constructed the cabinet to make sound proofing a simple add-on .
The cabinet is about 100mm at the closest point from the main shed (stand alone to remove any mechanical vibration coupling) and this position allows me to run 150mm PVC pipe around 1.8M long almost straight to the lathe (as suggested in these forums, keeping it short and 150mm). I'm also following BobL's advise and will be making a bell mouth for the 150mm tube and mounting it close to the work.
Luckily the wiring to the shed is a 30A circuit (single phase unfortunately ) and the run is very (seriously) heavy gauge cable. The 3HP DC (at start up - max current draw) hardly even flickers or dims an incandescent globe connected with the DC at the end of this heavy 240v run. The start/emergency stop switch is moved from the DC to the inside shed wall next to the lathe.
A trial run and the sound outside is even lower that I had hoped for. Shed closed and standing outside near the DC, the noise of air being sucked into the 150mm port near the lathe (inside the closed shed) is louder that the DC. When 9m away and you can hardly hear the DC and no low freq rumble.
I plan on fitting a powerful through the wall extractor (blowing in) on the opposite side of the shed to bring outside air in and across the 6 x 3 wood work bay towards the DC extraction port, this will auto run whenever the DC is running and of course can be switched on by itself for cross ventilation when needed, hopefully this will provide that desirable extra cross flow and help counteract the sheds negative pressure when the DC is running . Also making a small weatherproof box for the shop VAC and mounting it outside the shed, using this for metal drilling and general large shavings clean up.
Who'd of thought that even making small things like pens on a lathe could be so hazardous to one's health, but then again, it involves very fine sanding with some hardwoods that can be higher on the list of problem timbers.
Picture were taken at dusk and are a bit washed out.
The 150mm flexible tubing (hanging by a cable) in the picture was for a temporary test and will be changed to mostly PCV when I make an adjustable solid holder and a bell mouth collector.