My new dust collector.

[scotties22]

This has been on sale at Woodcraft all month. It's the 2hp model and was $100 off. I got it all put together yesterday and tested it last night while I was sanding. It works great. Today I plan on getting all my ducting in place and getting the system all set up. I plan on grounding everything by running copper wire through the tubing. My questions is.....How do I run the ground wire through a blast gate? I have two I am going to use, one on either side of the Y fitting that will run a hose to my workbench and one to my lathe. I am using 4" hose and fittings (not going to run metal ducting because for some reason my husband had 30' of 4" pvc hose). My blast gates are plastic as well. Here's a picture of the collector all set up in her new home and one of the layout of my "shop" wich is really one wall of my garage. Any suggestions would be great. I would like to get everything in place by Monday.





Thanks boys.

[caskwith]

Well I never grounded mine and had no problems.

[d.huber]

Nice! I look forward to the day when I've got space for one of those.

[scotties22]

Well I never grounded mine and had no problems.

I'm sure I wouldn't either, but my husband is bound and determinded to not have an errant spark burn the house down.

[Sasquatch]

You can run ground wire on the outside of the tubing if you want and connect the whole thing to the machine as a ground. That prevents huge amounts of static build up on the pvc piping - likewise you could run the wire internally and just pop it out through a small hole around the gates and caulk that hole up. The issue with internal wires is that you can get a lot of crap kind of stuck in them, depending on what sort of thing you are send down the hole. If you screen your ports it shouldn't be an issue (probably a good idea anyhow).

Dunno. Never had a dust collector explode so I'm not an expert at it.

[LatakiaLover]

Are you going to run a 2hp motor on the same AC leg as your other equipment?

[scotties22]

I have my own circuit in the panel. I won't ever be running more than the dc and one other tool at a time, so I'm okay. My husband set things up to be able to handle the load and the shop lights are on another circuit too.

[Vermont Freehand]

working at a high end cabinet shop for 15 years, I learned to make sure you definately ground every tube, just drill a hole and come outside the tube at each blast gate and at each junction, and yes, use copper. I've seen shops go up in flames and it really sucks. At every intersection, run a 22 degree Y fitting with a straight pipe for a cleanout tube. If anything gets clogged (usually only happens by clogging in the wires), just remove the cleanout cap and unclog it. Please ground everything, and not just you Scottie, everyone!!! Oh yeah, and just wire nut the junctions of copper. You should drill a hole and run ALL wire nuts outside the tubes to cut down on clogging. Clogging mainly occurs when you have 3"+ pieces going through the tube, like you would with tablesaws. The only other time it clogs is when you are running mulitple machines and one of them is a 36" planer with massive amounts of shavings being pulled through a tube at once. I've clogged 12" tubes and had them cleaned out in 10 seconds. Much easier than taking the risk of burning down the shop. If you go to most woodshops, the dust shed is detached from the building that the shop is in.

[scotties22]

I used to work in a mill when I lived in Oregon. We had dust silos that where huge. They were almost 1/8 of a mile from the mill. Hell of a walk when you got clean up detail out there in the middle of winter.

I got everything all wired up yesterday and am ready to go. Thanks for the help.

[mcgregorpipes]

the guy I got my dust collector from had a metal barrel in the line before it with a lid that had and an in and out line, he seemed concerned about sucking up a stray nail and causing a spark when it hit the fan blades. probably a bigger issue if you installed a floor sweep or if you're sanding anything metal. btw don't sharpen your chisels on the belt sander unless you have a beer nearby to put out the fire.

[caskwith]

I use a cyclonic dust separator between my tools and the extractor, 1 for wood dust and 1 for the sandblaster. Really helps in keeping nearly all the dust out of the filter and keeps the efficiency high.