# Dust Collection ?



## Joseph Mazey (Mar 8, 2017)

I have a HF 1 HP dust collector that I mounted onto a rolling cart; mainly for the purpose to taking it off the ground. I use about 1/4 of a 2 car garage for my shop as I am not loaded with a lot of tools; just the basics. Have a table saw, miter saw and drill press. I have run 2½ inch line behind my cabinets. My cabinets set out about 3½ inches from the wall because of the cement riser which I assume is for the purpose of flooding so I am able to fit the line behind there. I have it run to the miter saw with a blast gate and another to a dead-end blast gate. That one will be use to connect a hose to table saw or any other tool I may need it for. My original thought on design was to get the 4" dust separator components Rockler sells and connect them to a 20 gallon drum. 4" would go from the dust collector into the drum and the other port would go out to a reducer down to 2½ connecting to my line I have already run. Now the more I started testing the idea of this the more I find that I may be worse off with that route. My DC has a small reducer that came with it and I have had it connected directly to my 2½ line and get pretty good suction. Again my lines may run 6 feet if that. If I take that reducer off and connect a 4" hose to my DC I still get ample suction but once I add the reducer (end of about 3' of hose) the suction gets diminished quickly and this is where I factor whether this is a good idea because what I am doing is allowing a higher build of air and then forcing it to reduce quickly. So to avoid this post sounding more confusing that it may already be, the question is can I get away with getting the 2½" dust deputy unit and connecting that to my lines and reducer on my DC or is using the 4" fittings into a drum and then reducing the line from 4" to 2½" 2-3' from the DC the more logical choice?


----------



## Carl10 (Feb 3, 2017)

Joseph,

From what I can decipher from your note you are mixing and matching vacuum accessories and dust collector accessories. First, with your size dust collector, the ONLY effective way to use it would be to connect it directly to your tool with a 4" hose. HF has always been long on specs and short on performance. So you are somewhere in the 3/4 HP range. The second issue is mixing vacuum and DC parts. A vacuum has very little velocity and a lot of suction, a DC has a lot of velocity and little suction (relatively speaking). A vacuum can still be effective with a long run of 2 1/2 in hose because it is designed to have a lot of suction (static Pressure - SP). If you try and put a 4" hose on a vacuum it wont work because there is not enough velocity to keep the dust moving in the bigger hose. Your DC is suppose to have 660 CFM, however ALL DC manufacturers exaggerate this number and most create it without a bag or hose attached (which will lower the number immediately). So lets say you have 500 CFM with your bag and hose attached......that is what you need to effectively collect chips and big dust (not the fine stuff). So don't even think about running any duct work on this, as that will lower your CFM even further. The 2 1/2" line is better suited for a shop vac. The dust deputy is designed for a shop vac, they make a new larger version that is designed for a 4" port like your DC (for some reason this is the only dust deputy that they make you buy the drum - you can ask to just buy the cyclone) If you add anything like a cyclone to your DC, your critical CFM will get even lower (about 2/3 of your 500 CFM). And whatever you do, do not reduce any DC line below 4", it will be useless. A 2 1/2 line has about 5 sq-in of area a 4" line is over 12.5 sq-in more than 2x the area, which is what you need for velocity. You will get better performance out of your shop vac at that 2 1/2 size. To use duct work (4" and larger) and a DC you need a larger DC. Google DIY Super Dust Deputy (SDD) and you will see how many people take the blower and mount it right on top of the SDD and then exhaust right into a large pleated filter (ignore all the pics of people running all kinds of flex hose between blowers and separators and filters-the effectiveness is killed with all that flex hose) Remember, your vac is not a DC and your DC is not a vac.

This not what you probably wanted to here but I can't change the laws of physics (-:

Carl


----------

