Official Luthiers Forum!

For those of you who built your own dust collection system where did you get your blower from. What do you like and dislike about the unit.
Thanks a lot
Matt

Matt,
Are you talking about Cyclones or the dust collectors that filter the air? I built this cyclone dust collector http://www.woodstore.net/cycduscol.html, I think the blower came from Penn State Industries, they had a kit for this article. There isn't anything that I don't like about it other than I would rather have a larger filter which I will probably replace at some point. The only change I made to it was it had a rather annoying howl coming out of the filter. I just put a little longer flexible pipe on it and let it make a turn or two and the howl was gone. As far as the filters that I made that hang from the ceiling they work very well also, I would make sure and get at least a two speed fan. Whenever I am in the shop have at least one of them turned on low even when I am not really creating that much dust. There is always a little dust and in the winter it circulates the heat better. They have just one small squirrel cage fan which I got one from Grainger and the other one I found on sale at Home Depot. I can get you the sizes if you need.
Mike

I have a ceiling hanging air filter. I am currently building a cyclone unit which i plan to vent outside instead of filtering. I am not sure what size blower to get for the cyclone. My shop is 23x12 however I only need to run duct work about 17 feet max. I have an old relient (no name knock off) wheel around unit (which has a bad filter) poss 10 or more micron. It is a 2hp blower but I am not sure that will be strong enough. I am looking for ideas on blower sizes, prices, and places to by them from. if the cyclone route gets to expensive I may go with a jet wheel around canister unit.

Matt,

So you don’t feel alone I’m following this thread too. I was thinking about building a cyclone.
One thing I was thinking of doing was getting one of the Harbor Freight dust collectors and using the blower from that. If I can find a used one that might work too.

Looking at the Penn State site their cost for just the blower comes up to being about half the cost of their small cyclone. With that in mind I’m not sure if I can build and save much. I’m still on the fence for what to do here.

For me I’m looking at dust collection for a 2 car garage with 1 or two tools connected.

John