Workshop dust collection

This is part 3 of my workshop upgrade series. Previously:

Insulating and heating my workshop with a diesel heater

Workbench build

With my workshop upgrade, I decided it is time to get serious about dust collection.

As I wrote about in the workbench build post, my main constraint is lack of floor space in the 10×14′ shed. So whatever I came up with must be mounted to the wall.

After watching a bunch of videos, I decided to go with a Harbor Freight 2HP Dust Collector with a canister filter in place of the filter bag for finer filtration, with hoses running to my Shopsmith and bench, and one hose at the dust collector for vacuuming up the shop.

What I bought:

Harbor Freight 2HP Dust Collector

Donaldson P181038 canister filter + turnbuckles

(2) 20ft sections of 4in hose and (1) 10ft section of 4in hose

3 blast gates

1 dust hood

Spring clamps and Hose clamps

Y Splitter

Various hose fittings

Vacuum head nozzle with handle

Remote control plug

Installation and setup

I took the dust collector motor & fan out of the box and went to work mounting it to the wall. Had I taken 2 more minutes and unpacked the rest of the box, I would have found the motor stand, which would have made mounting the motor to the wall a LOT easier. Instead I drilled holes on a 1″ thick board, bolted the motor to the board, then bolted the board to 2x4s spanning the studs. The 2x4s are attached to the studs with lag bolts.

The motor is pretty heavy, so in order to get it up there I temporarily screwed a 6″ 2×4 to the main board to act as a cleat while I got the bolts in place.

Next I hung the collector to the wall. It isn’t bearing much weight (the canister filter isn’t heavy and the dust bag rests on some drawers), so I just punched a couple holes in it and screwed it into the 2×4 studs. I covered the screw holes with aluminum tape, then set the canister filter on top and secured it with turnbuckles.

Next I ran the 5″ hose from the fan to the collector. My collector was just a little too far away since the ports are pointing different directions, so I had to make an extension with some air conditioner exhaust hose I had in the basement and some aluminum tape. At this point I put the bag on and attached one of the 4″ hoses, and tested it out. It worked as expected!

The next day I ran hoses in the rafters and put in the Y-splitter. I didn’t take into account that my blast gates and Y-splitter had the same diameter, so I needed adapters to connect them. While climbing down off the ladder, a plastic deli quart container caught my eye, and I thought, “that might work!”. The bottom fit inside the blast gate and the top fit over the Y-splitter. It is a bit on the redneck engineering side, but it works.

Reddit liked it. A couple naysayers said they’d collapse when I left the blast gates closed, but they do not. The ends are supported and rigid, and they’d need to flatten out in order to collapse. I’ve had no issues so far in the past two months.

I have a hose running through the rafters to the Y-splitter, which then drops a hose to the Shopsmith and continues on over to the bench. Blast gates for both.

At the Shopsmith I have a port on the bandsaw and a dust hood on the carriage under the lathe.

The bench hose is stored up out of the way, ready to be pulled down and used with a dust hood for the router and belt sander, or a port on the miter saw or benchtop table saw (though I prefer to use the saws when if I can).

The last hose I added a couple weeks later is one with a nozzle and handle for general vacuuming around the shop. I use it the most.

I turn the dust collector on and off with a remote control that I keep in my pocket.

Considerations

I considered making it a two-step system by adding a cyclone separator or baffle before the fan, but decided it wasn’t worth the decrease in suction power. This video is the one that put me over the edge. I’ve only sucked up big chunks that got caught and blocked the fan intake twice in the past two months, and it only takes 30 seconds to clear. Not a big deal.

I went with a canister filter over the bag filter for both increased airflow and better filtration (0.5 microns with the filter vs 5 microns with the bag).

If I do a lot of sanding, I may need to do some additional air filtration, not because of the filter, but because catching it off of a sander in the first place is difficult. In that case I may mount another canister filter up in the rafters along with a high powered fan, as described in this video. So far the dust hood worked well with sanding a few things on the lathe, but my door has also been open. We’ll see.

Overall this has been a huge improvement, keeping my shop a lot cleaner and cutting way down on the dust. I’m glad I put it in.