J. Phil Thien's Projects

If nothing else that's certainly a good way to see how the air flows in the collector.  The chalk is probably similar to the most dangerous of the wood dust, the really fine stuff you can't even see. 

Quote from: phil (admin) on November 25, 2007, 03:10:54 PM

JPT:  I don't have a single tool with a 4" port on it.  I have a Ryobi BT3K table saw (heavily modded) w/ a 2.5" port, a home-built router table with down-draft box (2.5" port), and Inca jointer/planer (2.5"), and an Inca bandsaw (1.5" port).  All in a tiny basement.  The shop vac is my friend.  :)  Perhaps a dust collector would work better w/ the table saw (even through the 2.5" port), but it would certainly work worse with the router table's down-draft box.

I did make a 20-gallon version w/ 4" in and out.  I tested it a little bit with someone else's blower for a couple of days in my shop and it worked great.  I rigged it so the blower sucked the can, and blew a cloth (1-micron) filter bag.

That was approx. six months ago.  At that time I thought a nice system would be a 30-gallon can with two 4" inputs (on opposite sides of the top) and a single 6" output.  That output would connect to a 1.5-2-HP blower motor, which would push into a large cart. filter like you see on the tops of nicer Jet and Delta single stage collectors.  I would rig the filter in such a way that there would be a clean-out on the bottom (much like large cyclones have on their filter stacks.  You could probably assemble an entire system like that for under $250 if you carefully assembled the parts of eBay/craigslist.

I may try something like this ... I have a few blower motors from vacs, although I don't know if they are large enough to create enough velocity through a 4" port.  Probably not. 

The other thing I really should try is to use the standard configuration; my table saw (a Jet 10") is modded so that most of the dust falls through the bottom port (I have a baffle on the back to avoid shooting dust out the back). 

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