J. Phil Thien's Projects

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Okay so for example, for those of us cheap skates here that went with the cheapo HF 2HP DC (yeah right I know overrated but it is what it is..) and Wynn 35A cartridge (your recommendation) how are we to get the 5" port, and connection hose between the impeller housing and inlet ring to play nice with 6" (or bigger) duct? You don?t, the HF only has ample capacity to support 5? duct.

I quote your Cartridge Conversion page subsection G...http://www.billpentz.com/woodworking/cyclone/DCConversion.cfm
"They make this filter in the same paper poly blend that most other makers offer, and offer it in the far superior all poly version."

And I in turn quote from the Wynn Environmental product description page for the 35A cartridge kit.
"99.995% efficient at 1.0 micron and above" So step up to the newer Wynn MERV 15 filter and get your real 0.5-micron filtering.

You recommend .5 micron filtration, yet you tout the 1 micron spun bond poly as being far superior. Why is that? Let?s discuss apples and oranges separately:

1. I recommend spun bond poly filters over paper poly blends because the spun bond lasts four times longer, can be washed, and for the same CFM requires half the overall filter area. They cost twice as much but are worth it.

2. In terms of filtering level the EPA, European Union, and medical experts all consistently recommend HEPA level filtering for dust control. HEPA is the old radiation breathing mask standard where every single filter is individually tested and certified as 99.9% efficient on particles sized 0.3 microns and larger. When I first put up my web pages only one vendor, Donaldson Torit, offered a fine woodworking filter, their 0.5-micron filters. All other affordable filters were 1-micron. Since then manufacturing efficiencies have improved and we can now get good 0.5-micron filters for about what I had to pay for poly blended filters ten years ago. Today I personally use on my Jet DC a single and on my cyclone a set of the Wynn Environmental MERV-15 rated filters.

And YES I understand you state that as a lesser solution, but if it is what we have to work with. I tire of hearing this same argument. For decades I used a ceiling mounted air cleaner, nice set of dust collectors, and a large doorway fan that kept my shop well ventilated and often too hot or cold to enjoy. I saved diligently and finally bought the top magazine rated cyclone system with vendor designed and supplied ducting plus vendor recommended filter upgrade. Less than a month later I found myself rushed to the hospital with an apparent heart attack. That cyclone created a bad false sense of security because it left a clean looking shop while building up dangerously high invisible dust levels. Three months after I went to the hospital an air quality test showed my shop and home badly contaminated. Worse, that cyclone was a dust store as just turning it on with no woodworking pushed the fine invisible dust level over 10,000 times higher than the maximum airborne invisible dust that EPA considers safe. Because I worked many toxic woods the considerable invisible dust that built in my clean looking shop and home caused me to rapidly sensitize with a bad allergic reaction. My Cyclone and Dust Collection Research web pages and dust collection efforts are dedicated to try and help others avoid this same problem. I would gladly pay ten times what I spent on that expensive POS cyclone with ducting and fine filter to have not had to live on an oxygen hose for the last ten years. So you will never convince me that compromise on our dust collection is wise.

I'm mostly trying to get my head around this. You do recommend the 6" pipe pretty clearly in your writings, Yes, you need 7? duct to move the 1000 CFM or 6? duct and oversized blower wheel. so I am just itching to figure out how that works when not all, but most single stage dust collectors use 5" fittings like the Central Machinery does... Is necking the port down from 6" to 5" at the DC an option? If not then how does that work? On most of these machines, you CAN make a custom flange to go into the impeller housing, but it would require a LOT of sheet metal work to adapt the inlet ring and outlet of the impeller housing to accept 6" hose... Although it is an easy fix to install a 6? flange on the face of the HF blower, upgrading a HF to 6? pipe is a waste of time and money. That blower and impeller do not move ample air to support 6? duct, so you will end up with clogging in the vertical runs and piles in the horizontal runs unless you use minimum duct and keep very clean open filters.

And with a great quantity of woodworking equipment being fitted with 2.5" ports injection molded in to fragile plastic housings, it would seem to be a less than simple matter to upgrade those to 6" duct. Agreed, I quit buying tools from makers who continue to give us 2.5? diameter ports on machines that need up to 1000 CFM for good fine dust collection. For those tools that I already own and use these small ports I forget my DC and instead use a good shop vacuum. An okay shop vacuum pulls about 50? of working vacuum versus a HF dust collector at about 5?. My high end shop vacuum pulls over 100". That ten to twenty fold difference in pressure is the only way to get good chip collection from tools with these tiny ports. To get them to also have good fine dust collection you need to use in addition to your vacuum a hood going to your dust collector which pulls in as much air as possible from around the working area of your tool.

I fully agree with Alan and a few others here.

Yes, my web pages grew from incorporating well meaning help from simple without explanations to so complex I can?t even find things. To make repair I am doing another rewrite to separate off the cream and move the technical into its own areas.

Also, as Alan shared, the CFM numbers I advocate remain the industry standard which our small shop vendors continue to ignore. Not me, but instead the top commercial dust collection firms that guarantee their customer air quality built the following table. This table includes more than twenty years of refinement to set the minimum airflow we need at each tool for each different level of dust collection.


Also Alan was correct with his summary about blower horsepower and air moved  and he accurately touched on the major problem with our small shop vendors. These ?bendors? remain trapped in an exaggeration game they created and now don?t know how to escape with their often just plain fictitious CFM and filtering claims. Based on tests that dozens of us did all over the country, most vendors advertize maximum airflow that is roughly double what their systems provide in real use. Many, especially vacuum vendors exaggerate maximum horsepower when the reality is none provide more than about 1.5 hp when connected to a 120 V outlet.

Alan also touched on our biggest problem in getting good fine dust collection today. Almost all small shop dust collector and cyclone filtering claims are badly exaggerated. Our tests found all mainstream small shop dust collector and cyclone makers freely passed ten to twenty times larger particles than claimed on their ads. Their rationale is they use outdoor testing versus indoor which requires testing the filters when clean and new. The result is the fine filters we buy to protect our health leave a clean looking shop while freely passing the fine invisible unhealthiest dust particles sized 10-microns and smaller. Worse, these filters become dust stores so every time we turn on our dust collector or cyclone they blow dangerously unhealthy amounts of fine invisible dust all over our shops.

You would not believe the numbers of people who have bought http://www.DylosProducts.com Dylos 0.5 and other air quality meters that found their expensive top magazine rated dust collectors and cyclones made their shop air outright dangerous. Additionally, you would not believe the hundreds who have written over this past nine years who said they had no problem with wood dust, then suddenly they ended up getting ill, some with life threatening problems. Folks, many woods are sensitizer so just like me you can go for decades with no problem the suddenly find yourself with a minor problem up to being rushed to the hospital.

Let me summarize all the physics, engineering and medical concerns together. The only way to avoid the fine dust is not to breathe it. You can work outside, collect the fine dust as it is made or use a strong fan blows that dust away from us as it is made then out of our shop. Air cleaners are great to help with finishing, but they work so slowly we end up with our lungs doing the filtering. To collect the dust at the source we either need tools that totally trap the dust or the airflows shown in the above table plus upgraded hoods and tool ports. For tools with un-modifiable 2.25? ports always use a big shop vacuum with fine filter. To move the air we need for good fine dust collection either use an oversized blower with smaller pipe or an appropriate sized blower and the right size pipe. For my cyclone solutions I do a little of both because we really should be using 7? diameter pipe for 1000 CFM, but I recommend 6? diameter pipe and compensate by using an oversized blower wheel to increase pressure and duct air speed. This lets me move the real 1000 CFM that our table shows we need at most larger tools with all 6? duct. To move this much air in an average shop with ducting and a good set of fine filters such as the MERV-15?s I get from Wynn Environmental http://www.wynnenv.com/cartridge_filters.htm  we need at least a 3 hp dust collector turning a 14? diameter impeller or 3.5 hp cyclone turning a 15? diameter impeller. That is pretty much it in a nut shell except you still need to address your tool ports and hoods.