# Dust Deputy



## tenontim

I have one of these and I really like it. I just bought the cyclone and mounted it to the lid of a 5 gallon bucket. 
It makes it a little smaller and the plastic is a little easier on floors. I'm using a 4 gallon ShopVac on mine and it really "cleans up". I bought a 25', 1.25" hose from a swimming pool supply and adapted it to the Dust Deputy. I have a hook that I hang it on, so that it doesn't fall over when I'm dragging the hose around.


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## ChicoWoodnut

So If you had a bigger shop vac (say 15 amps) do you think it could keep up with a bigger tool (lets say a planer)? I have been considering these as a bridge to a real dust collection system when I build a shop.


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## tenontim

Scott, the planer problem would be hose size. Outlet to the vac is 2" and the inlet to the Dust Deputy is 1.5". A planer, or anything else that makes large chips would clog it up. It will work ok for some saws. I had mine hooked up to my band saw for awhile.


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## ChicoWoodnut

Thanks Tim


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## teenagewoodworker

nice review. i've been looking at this. i want a dust collector but due to price i have been looking at this. still not sure what to due though. thanks for the review!


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## renthal

I have been using my DD since they came out. It sits next to the assembly bench and gets hooked up to the sanders, Festool saw and router, and helps with final cleaning before staining.

Yes the hose limits hookup size, but the trade off is the filter of the shop vac hardly gets dirty so the suction remains constant.


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## Tim_456

I'm glad this was of some help to people.

I think the main problem with hooking the dust deputy, or shop vac, up to a larger tool is the volume of air that is moved by the shop vac which is proportional to the horsepower of the motor and the size of the hoses and inlets. For a shop vac, the amount of air it moves is pretty small compared to a larger dust collector.

Regardless of the HP of the motor, once you push that air through a small opening the vacuum pressure may increase but the mass airflow decreases. This can be seen by the drastic reduction on suction as you move your hand away from your shop vac's hose. Up close, there's quite a bit of power, but if you move your hand away from the opening, within a few inches the vacuum pressure drops drastically. With my lame shop vac the vacuum diminishes after about an two inches from the hose inlet.

After attaching the shop vac hose to the large cavity below my table saw, the suction on the shop vac is dissipated and only a small amount of debris is collected. It's just too large of a space to clear based on the small amount of air that's being moved even though what is being moved has quite a bit of suction.

So, for a universal dust collector, this doesn't really work. Having said all of the above, if you can overcome this limitation it still provides a "pretty good" dust collector. To do this, I put the outlet hose as close to the blade (source of dust) as possible. I can do this on my sander, router, RAS, and TS as part of the blade guard. By doing this I remove *most* of the airborne particles, which is what I'm worried about anyway. In this capacity, the DD improves a standard shop vac by making it NOT a dust pump that basically pushes the dust around.

In practice it works pretty darn good when I use it in this mode, but I'm hesitant to say it's perfect because people's health may be in jeopardy. A bigger system is better for many reasons, but if your budget and/or space is small, this might be the next best thing to that $1000 cyclone and certainly better than nothing.


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## steve3604

just bought the DIY version, after two weeks had to call them to get it shipped, with that said it works great, got the 2.25 inch inlet version. you can just about throw away the bucket on the shop vac cause it all goes in the bucket or drum your hooked up to. works far better than I ever expected, but you absolutely must have every connection sealed to the best of your abilties or it will degrade the performance.


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## MortyNTenon

Here's my homemade version. I don't know how good the DD is but mine definitely works good, some dust on the filter but no chips in the vac. Its a bit crude but I wanted to see if it would work before I put to much effort in, of course it worked so I'm not going to redo it now!


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