A Good Idea for Those with Dust Collectors

Great idea for those with large enough shops.

-- Mike, American in Norway - Do it the fun way

That’s a great idea, even in a small shop.

I wish I had enough dust collecting power to set up a system, as it is I just use my bucket vac and do the best I can.

-- Improvise.... Adapt...... Overcome!

i have one in the shop

with a 1/4”x1/4” mesh
to keep stuff from grinding the impeller blades

in the shop where i learned WW
we used sawdust with water
and spread it around the floor
then swept it to these
the wet sawdust kept the dry dust from rising

-- david - only thru kindness can this world be whole . If we don't succeed we run the risk of failure. Dan Quayle

I have underfloor DC piping in my shop in BC so all I have to do is disconnect something and sweep into the hole.
The thing is, then you have to empty the can under the cyclone more often so I usually use the old dustpan.

-- Paul M ..............If God wanted us to have fiberglas boats he would have given us fiberglas trees. http://prmdesigns.com/

I thought about doing something like that, but decided to use my DC like a house central vac. I can hook up shop vac hoses at three places in my shop and vacuum everywhere. No dust stirred up from sweeping.

SWMBO claims that my shop gets vacuumed more often than the house. – lol

-- Adversity doesn't build character...................it reveals it.

Good idea. The set-ups I’ve seen like that used a blast gate in the pipe above the floor pick-up.

I had considered it, but I’m not so sure I like the idea of just sweeping stuff willy nilly into my DC piping. A 3/8” nut wouldn’t be too healthy for the blower for sure!
Maybe with the mesh like patron uses, but I’d still want to run a magnet through it.

But I guess if I’m running a separator it wouldn’t really matter anyway…

-- Kenny

Cool.
Best thoughts,
Mads

-- Mad F, the fanatical rhykenologist and vintage architect. Democraticwoodworking.

I have one but have found I rarely use it, with my DC hooked up to all machines, I sweep the floor and am lucky to get a half a dustpan of sawdust. And I also think that there might be something in using the broom that triggers miller time. Thanks,Bob

-- Bob, Lewistown, Mt. How could Dad do so much with so little?

I bought one of the plastic floor adapters to do just that, but never got around to hooking it up. I’m like Sawkerf in that I just use the open end of the flex hose as a giant vac. I find it easier than sweeping, though I do make sure to watch out for metal when doing so. Don’t want to start a spark-lit fire in the DC, for sure…

-- HorizontalMike -- "Woodpeckers understand..."

Hey Mike,
Don’t you use a collector can ahead of the DC?

-- Gene 'The true soldier fights not because he hates what is in front of him, but because he loves what is behind him.' G. K. Chesterton

1800 sq. ft. shop, 2 hp Murphy-Rodgers dust collector.

My dust goes through my impeller and into the bag/barrel.

It would be absolutely and incredibly stupid for me to install that floor sweep. Any piece of metal that could generate a spark could go in there and life would be vastly different from that moment on.

I’ll continue to use my dustpan which takes maybe ten seconds more and consumes, so near as I can tell, zero kilowatts.

Kindly,

Lee

-- "...in his brain, which is as dry as the remainder biscuit after a voyage, he hath strange places cramm'd with observation, the which he vents in mangled forms." --Shakespeare, "As You Like It"

Lee: is your impeller definitely ferrous ? Many aren’t … to avoid just that risk….

Not to talk you out of your dustpan method, by the way ;-)

-- -- Neil

@Sawkerf Re: #5 So does mine and it is probably true.

I used a plastic floor sweep for some time and it worked well. However, I needed to cut the intake area down to get adequate air velocity to get everything swept to it.

-- My mother named me Hamilton, I have been trying to earn my nickname ever since.

I’ve thought about adding something like this to my DC system however, I’m not sure I want all the non-wood dirt shooting through my cyclone.

-- Rob, Sault Ste. Marie, Ontario

Gene,
Yeah, I use a DIY Thien separator in a 30gal can before the DC. The likelihood of metal actually making it past the separator and spark is low, however I do try to stay alert to that possibility. I also keep a couple of 2lb ABC extinguishers close at hand for that very possibility.

-- HorizontalMike -- "Woodpeckers understand..."