Pre-collection on dust collector

No, a pre-collector does not catch the fine dust. You should be able to seal your bottom bag if you have the right band for your unit. If you have a Jet DC use the new band that has a piece of foam inside of a cloth cover. Using just the metal band without the foam the bag is hard to seal.

Joe,

My pre collector catches 95% of the dust and chips. The only particles that make it to my dust collector bag looks like really fine dust. I think I bought the trash can venturi lid at Woodcraft.

I use the pre collector garbage can as my floor vacuum. I don't use it for anything else, like lathe sanding or table saw dust collection.

I recently bought one of those Jet retrofit dust collectors that updated my old Reliant dust collector. The filter bag filters 2 micron dust particles. It is paper pleated and has so much surface area than the old cloth bag that I actually now get more suction flow. The new collection bag holding scheme allows the bag to easily snap in and out. I bought the kit at Amazon.com. Kevin Neelley

In article , golf says... >

Hi Joe! Turning your single stage dust collector into a two stage dust collector using the garbage can lid adapter works very well in situations where you have a lot of chips produced (i.e. planers, jointers, etc.). It will not collect very fine dust - that will just go straight to the dust collector bag. I would install floor sweep fittings with blast gates near your lathes to collect their debris after you are done turning. That's what I have done. Your waste from the lathes will end up (for the most part) in the garbage can separator. The real benefit here is that you will not have to go through the pain of emptying your lower bag (or changing the plastic bag) as often on your dust collector. That's a real benefit in my book! Happy turning!

- Dan Klima

Dan.. another BIG advantage to a cyclone/garbage can is that it "presorts" the stuff that the DC collects, which protects your DC impeller from trying to eat sandpaper, large chips, small screws and other stuff that you didn't mean to get near the DC port.. On a shop vac, they just bounce off the filter and drop into the waste... On most DC's, the 1st thing on the inside of the port is the impeller...

mac

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If your collector is leaking around the band, try this. Buy a 20" bicycle tube, slit it lengthwise in half, keep the ring without the valve on it. Slip this on the metal flange before putting the bag on, then put your band clamp on. This should solve most leak problems.

Joe C.

Good idea - thanks.

Don

Unfortunately, I haven't as good luck with the 2 stage setup. My garbage can lid came from Woodcraft several years ago and fits quite tightly on the galvanized can I got for it. The collector is a Jet in the 1.5 to 2 hp range as I recall (it is 220v) and I wouldn't think my pipe system is particularly efficient (the collector is in one room and the pipes branch off in many different angles into 2 other room that make up my shop). My problem is that dispite all this, the suction is still great enough to suck all the chips, no matter how large, through the can and into the lower bag on the collector. I've added an elbow to the inside of the can (having suspected that the layout of the inlet and outlet created a vortex that didn't allow the chips to reach the bottom of the can), but it has not helped. There are so many positive comments here about the setup, I figure I must be doing something wrong, but I have no clue what it might be. Any suggestions would be appreciated.

Art Learmonth

Dan Klima wrote:

Thanks for the info. My new dc leaks in a cuppla places where the metal band is kinked (shipped that way). SH

My

I am going to concede that I do not yet own one of those fancy dust collector thingies, much less a cyclone can en-route to it. That said, why not insert a 1/2" mesh hardwire baffle into the collection can? As I envision it, the baffle would just be a rolled up tube that would be directly below the suction side tube. It should not actually seal it off but come to within perhaps an inch of the cannister top. This would be enough to keep the chips in the cannister until it was nearly full but still allow chips hitting the impeller to sound the alarm that the cannister was actually full.

Just a thought. If you put a slight taper in the baffle (wide end at the top), I think it might even work a bit better.

Bill

Art and Diane wrote in news:FzTDd.29445$wu4.28374@attbi_s52:

Taller can?

Patriarch

I kind of hate to ask this, but are you sure you have it hooked up the right way? On mine the hose from the lathe comes in on the perimeter of the lid. The hose to the collector comes out of the center of the lid. That really is the only reason I can think of for the setup not to work.

My set up is similar to yours. The collector is in another room and there must be 30 feet of 4" pipe between it and the bin by the lathe. I have the Veritas lid from Lee Valley Tools. I don't remember the rating of the collector, but 1.5 hp wouldn't be far wrong.

I just went thru this. I needed a bigger can. My galvanized can had a standard opening, but it was too short. I got a bigass industrial 55 gallon garbage can, and it works better. Still some stuff gets sucked thru, but major improvement.

How very true! How I neglected to state that obvious benefit is a mystery to me. I propose we have a government probe into that oversight! (Ha!) Many times I have heard that tell-tale clank as a larger than life chunk of wood managed to get sucked up into my dust collection system and landed safely in my metal garbage can separator. Thanks Mac for reminding me and letting others know of this benefit!

- Dan Klima

The lid appears to be symetrical, so I don't think that's the problem I also added an elbow on the inside of the inlet to try to break up the cyclonic action, but the results are the same.

Art

Derek Andrews wrote:

Dan.. Saturday night a friend was in the shop learning to turn, and he decided to use the DC to clean off the lathe... he didn't realize that he had a shop rag laying under the rails, and in it went... I don't know if that rag (about a foot square towel) would have messed up the DC impeller, but I'm sure it wouldn't have helped it a lot.. (I'm really glad that it made it to the trash can.. finding and removing it from the hoses wouldn't of been fun)

mac

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Is this the one?

What I have is this: The hoses come in at an angle and don't have the elbow like the woodcraft. I would think that the last thing you want to do is break up the cyclonic action. My guess is that the Woodcraft model doesn't create such an efficient cyclone by virtue of the elbow, symmetric positioning of the ports and angle at which the hoses enter.

No. Mine is not like the current Woodcraft model. When I added the elbow, I was trying to more or less duplicate the elbow concept the new model uses. Mine is more like the LV version, but instead of having an opening in the center, it has 2 on the outer rim. If you can imagine a 2nd opening that is the mirror image of the outer opening. In effect, it would be easy to connect the 2 with a short piece of hose inside the can because they point toward each other. It's like there is so much suction, the incoming chips flow directly from the inlet into the outlet without dropping to the bottom of the can.

Art

Derek Andrews wrote:

I built my own, and the only difference I see from yours is the direction of the elbows... can they be turned?

Both hoses are on the outer edge, opposite of each other... at the time, I didn't know that one in the center was better... My elbows are sort of parallel to the sides of the can, but pointed in opposite directions, to make it "swirl"... you might try turning them..

mac

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