Back to Basics

J

julie

New member
I am VERY new to woodworking. This Christmas I got a tablesaw. I have a router and a small scroll saw. Everything is in my large, very dirty (partial dirt floor), cobweb festooned basement in my 114 year old house in Minnesota. I am already ankle deep in sawdust and was searching the web for a shop vac when I came accross Bill Pentz's site. Suddenly I got worried about my lungs. I don't want to waste money buying unneeded equipment as I am on a tight budget. If I get your "complete system", and trash can, filters, a cleanout and piping to the machines, what else should I get and could you give me a rough estimate of the grand total I need to spend? I will need to do all of the work myself, probably. Am I still going to need an air cleaner? a shop vac? covering contraptions for all of my tools? extra wiring? an engineering degree? Zoloft?

Dimentions of my basement: 30' X 40' X 9' (no ceiling). Includes two small rooms with no doors and a large room where my tools are.
 
Julie,
In answer to some of your questions: first, you shouldn't need a shop vac and you definately won't need an air cleaner. The Zoloft is up to you. <smile> The electrical service needed is 20 amps at 220V. The .5 micron filters that are recommended for our system will clean your air much cleaner than the air in your house is. The system right now is 1139.00. Add to that 14.00 for a trash can, about 83.00 for one filter (two are recommended, but you can get by nicely with one to start.) about 30.00 for a heavy duty switch and then some 6" pipe and fittings. The cost on that depends on how much and how many fittings. Y's are about 16.00 ea......6" pipe x 10' is about 10.00, 45 deg els are about 8.00 ea. Our system comes with 6 blast gates so you should be ok there. I just installed a new system since I retired and I spent about 350.00 in 6" pipe and fittings. If you have any other questions you can contact me direct at ed@clearvuecyclones.com.

Ed
 
Thanks. Another question. Is this something I should run all the time, just when I am in my shop, or just while creating dust? Will this eliminate my having to wear a mask? (Not that I do now unless I hear my husband coming downstairs and I want to avoid a lecture). What is a cleanout? I guess that is three questions, isn't it? Four.
Julie
 
Julie,
I ususally turn my system on when I first start making dust and then I leave it run unless I know I won't be needing it for a couple of hours. It's not effecient to start and stop the blower too often. As for the mask, that depends on how good of a job you do with dust pickups on your machines. Just because you have a cyclone running, it doesn't mean you are putting all the dust in it. For example, if you take your skill saw and rough cut 5 sheets of plywood down to sizes that you can handle, you are going to have dust all over your shop and it will take a while for the air to clear. If you are sanding a cabinet with a palm sander you are going to be putting dust in the air. A dust mask would be good in a situation like this. What I'm saying is there are times when you are going to make dust and it would be good to wear a mask and leave the dust collector running with all the pickups open to clean up the air.l
A cleanout is simply a way of cleaning out the filters. What we do is put a 4" Tee at the bottom of the filter stack. (I have a picture of one in the gallery under cyclone pictures.) Tee standing up with one leg facing out. Plug the bottom hole and install a blast gate on the leg facing out. Then when the filters get dirty you can blow them off, let the dust settle to the bottom. If you install a 4" flex hose to the blast gate then you can simply turn on the system, open the blast gate and blow the fine dust outside. I do a lot of CNC routing of MDF board for the cyclone parts. I ran my system for 6 months without cleaning the filters. I finally decided to blow them out one day just to see how much dust they had in them (they were still working fine). After blowing them out I reached in and gathered up the dust at the bottom of the filters........I got less than a hand full. That says alot about the efficiency of the system.
 
Julie, if you're still active . . . I just joined the forum. Did you ever buy the system? How did you find the installation? (I'm a bit intimidated by the instructions, since I don't have an engineering background.) Thanks.

Joe
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top