J. Phil Thien's Projects

I would just use a 5" metal adjustable elbow,  silicon the seams and it won't move or come apart.

good luck

The problem mounting a motor vertical is that the bearings are designed primarily for a radial thrust.   The bearings are the weak ling on the HF DC.  I have replaced   mine with Timken thrust bearings and would not hesitate to mount the motor vertical with these thrust bearings.   Worst case scenario is that you wipe out the bearings and they will make noise before they fail completely .  The bearings are a standard size shaft end is a 6205-ZZ the other end is 6204-ZZ, the Timken bearings were $45.00 for the set.   If and when I need more air flow then I currently have I will just parallel 2 HF DCs.  @ $139.00 ea on sale you just can't get any better deal for a good working system.  Remember that a fan is just a chunk of metal going round and round.  Good bearings are the key to most machines.

take a reading without any hose on it at all,   then a reading without the discharge hose on and that will give you and idea of where to put your energy as far as improving the dust collector

Paralleling fans to increase air flow is a common practice.

Paralleling 2 fans will provide close to double the volume at the same pressure.    Series connections will double the pressure at the  volume of one fan.   Inlet piping is important to getting the flow correct.  The inlet needs to be piped into the center of the Tee or Wye preferably or they won't load evenly.  the length and configuration of the inlet piping between the Tee and the blowers needs to be as identical a as possible.   I would only use enough flex to absorb vibrations.  3  to 4" long on each blower.     A good example would be the piping configuration between the fan and the multiple bags on the larger dust collectors.   The discharge is individual into the surrounding air, but the discharge piping configuration needs to be the same on each blower.

One thing to remember that in dust collection there are two factors that must be meet.  One is sufficient air velocity to keep the collected material entrained in the air flow.  The other is enough volume to generate the velocity to overcome the chip  velocity that is placed on the chip by the cutting tool.   the finer the chip the more air volume is necessary to overcome the initial chip velocity.   This is why dust collection on miter saws or radial arm saws is much harder to obtain because the chip velocity is not directed effectively by the saw.  It also requires a higher air flow to effectively collect dust above the table on a table saw.

piping methods and  sizing uses up the available static pressure.   a 4" pipe run on a 2 hp and a 5 hp collector will move almost the same amount of air.

Delivered HP is related directly to CFM X Static pressure.    A 4" hose takes about 1 1/3 Hp to provide full airflow.   I if you measure the amp draw X voltage on each motor you would find that the 2 hp and the 5 hp are using the same amount of power when connect to the same piping system as in  he case of a 10' piece of 4" flex.

So in conclusion the only reason to Parallel 2 blowers is to be able to use more tool runs open at the same time.   If you wanted to get the dust collectors to draw air like a vacuum cleaner does then putting the blowers in series would increase the available static pressure and move about 1/3 more air through the same 4" piping system, this appears to be making it a better collector but you would accomplish the same thing by increasing the duct size to a 5" and it would use less power then increasing the pressure does.

I hope this makes since and us usable information.   Please give me some feedback if not.