124 Dust Collection Systems
Description
This article is from the Woodworking FAQ Collection 2, by multiple authors.
124 Dust Collection Systems
From: clif@clif.ypsi.mi.usa (Clif Flynt)
Date: 17 Apr 90 06:37:50 GMT
>I have a couple of fans from old furnaces, and I'd like to turn them into
>dust collectors.
This is the idea I played with recently, and seems to work well.
Sears sells an couple electrostatic air filters to replace the old
drop-in filter in your furnace. The smaller one is the same thickness as
a standard furnace filter, and comes in similar height/width.
I bought a 20 x 20 x 3/4 " electrostatic (~150), and a
20 x 20 " Purity Air Filter (a heavier duty version of the standard furnace
filter), and scavenged an old 20 inch window fan for motor and fan blades.
An afternoon in the shop created a box to mount the fan motor and blade,
with dado's cut for the electrostatic precipitator and the Purity filter.
And, in the tradition of bad ascii drawings -
/- Fan Motor and Blades
v
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| | | |
| | | |
| | | b |
| | | b |
| | | b |
| | | b |
| | | M | --> Air Flow
| | | M |
| | | b |
| | | b |
| | | b |
| | | b |
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^ ^
| | - Precipitator
|
Furnace Filter
On my first attempt I used a regular furnace filter in place of the
Purity filter. I clogged the Electrostatic precipitator almost immediately
(like within an hour), and had to take out the precip. and wash it out.
The Purity seems to work well. It pulls out a lot of dust, and the
electrostatic precipitator seems to pull out the rest. I need to clean
the precipitator after about 3 or 4 hours of heavy sanding type dust
making. Or about 3-4 times that of sawing.
My shop is in the basement, and with this critter running, I can see
the air clear within a few minutes after I finish some real dust making
activity (like sweeping up after a sanding binge.)
Now, I suspect this isn't as good as the bag design would be for getting
rid of lots of dust quickly. It does seem to do a very good job on getting
rid of the finer dust that the dust collector folks told me they couldn't
catch in their bags and cyclones.
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