My good wife has agreed, in fact is insisting, that Santa bring me a decent dust collection system for my lathe this year. I use a canister mask most of the time but there is still dust in the air when I take the thing off. At the Ottawa wood show this past week I looked at the King and Jet equipment with the canvas bag on top and plastic bag below being fed by a hood which is adjustable to the height of my lathe. Problem I'm having after doing a newsgroup search is the conflicting opinion on what should be the optimal choice -- low micron (I gather less than 1 is good) or higher HP. All I want the thing to do is look after my lathe. What's the best solution? Tried a furnace squirrel cage and some filter, not really very good. Any suggestions appreciated. thanks.
've got its Delta brother, and it's a vacuum, dust collector, and all-overthe shop roller. The finer filtration stuff is good, especially when youcan't get any distance between you and the bag. Got my pickup behind and below the lathe bed, and it works really well.
The reason to have a dust collector is to get rid of the dust below 5 microns, nasal hairs do a good job above that. Less than 1 micron and hp is good. However, your finer bags will reduce your air flow to about
600CFM, irrespective of what horsepower you have. You could modify your collector to add another filter bag, which I did, Doubles your air flow and more importantly your suction.
Hi Bill Biggest problem is the filters don't take out the smallest stuff and the fan keeps the dust from settling down, (the big pieces you can grab between your teeth and spit out) The best answer in my opinion is a personal dust filter and to keep it on until you leave the shop.
Someone decided that if its smaller than 5 microns its ok, why? can't shut down industry? some reports indicate that the smaller stuff is unhealthy, but I'm not going into that, when you generate dust and not get all of it, it just there for you to suck up, even if you eventually get the dust down to 5 microns
I did not say _anything_ about "below 5 microns is OK", AND I pointed you to a dust collector that gets plenty below 5 microns, and you replied to my post back with this drivel??
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you apparently won't bother to go _look_, I'll simply mention that, after a breif inital loading of the filter, an Oneida will get 100% from 1-5 microns, and 97-99.9% below 1 micron. Which is as good as, or better than most personal dust masks and recirculating air filters, while having the function of a dust collector.
Ecnerwal I was not trying to say that what you said was wrong, what I was trying to say is that before the dust collector gets all the dust the person is sucking in the dust all the time, and therefore it would be better to use a personal filter, that's the way I see it, and the size of the particles is arbitrary, .5 micron dust inhaled is still bad in the long run. Have fun and take care Leo Van Der Loo
Well, the physiology is pretty straightforward. The mucus in your nose and on your nose hairs, lining your nasopharnyx and trachea/bronchi, will catch and hold any size particle. Period. Your body also tries to move it along through the regular elimination channels, as you can see on Kleenex the morning after touching up that walnut that just needed a bit, where you didn't care to get the mask. The "evidence" for the dangers of wood dust is derivative. Inorganic particles like asbestos and so forth produce lesions in the nasopharnyx and lungs, though it seems increased risk of cancer is barely significant unless the individual is also a smoker. Which is probably the major part of what the real danger is for woodworkers - the natural insecticides and fungicides in wood can cause chemical damage - so can smoking. As the derivative "studies" did not control for exposure to other chemicals by woodworkers, nor for other factors, they're not of much precise value.
The science of filters is also pretty straightforward. There's mesh trapping, which is pretty easy to imagine - it's running sand through a sieve. Consider what happens when you get some larger particles on the sieve - finer and finer are trapped, at the expense of flow, until the sieve clogs. Then there's the settling effect, where air has so many passages to the outside that the pressure in any one is so low as to allow smaller particles to settle. The felt types and folded papers work mostly on this principle. Electrostatic types you can hear about on late-night cable.
Both filtration varieties, however, will trap smaller particles if the dust cake is not disturbed, so if you still have enough suction, leave things be.
Personally, I use collection when sanding, and a mask when I remember. Also ear defenders to keep the sound of the collector out of my ears.
I would also suggest you look at the JDS portable that I got at Woodcraft. It's got the felt bag on top to remove the nasty small stuff. Don't have the model number available right now but I'm very pleased with my choice and does a great job. Only problem is cleaning the felt bag from time to time but I think that would be true with any of the collectors.
As a guide, EPA has regulations that prohibit emissions down to 10 microns, referred to as particulate matter 10 microns (PM 10). That limit was set about 30 years ago, and recent scientific evidence has shown that the particles SMALLER than 10 microns is MORE dangerous than those larger than that. This is because the smaller particles are transported deeper into the smaller branches of the lungs and are more difficult to expel as a result. A move to lower the EPA standard to 2.5 microns (PM 2.5) was defeated by industrial interests in congress. A Google search on Air Quality and EPA will get you more info than you can digest this month. Of course, this is for exposure in outside air, and what you're exposed to inside your shop where clouds of dust can be seen hanging in the air is decidely worse. Protect yourself the best way you can.
I"ve got a "Dust Boy" from the folks in Ohio and since it has such high CFM at the 6" port it still has more when you get to the 4" stuff at the machine. And being a barrel, the large stuff drops inside and the small stuff is caught in the bag, which after the initial uses, traps a lot of the small stuff. Cast housing too and a good motor. It's perhaps a bit pricy, but suitable for the whole shop. Which brings up the question of why stop at the lathe?
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