Sharpening Dust Collector Impellers

[John Grossbohlin]

This is a spin off of the plane shavings discussion... there the discussion evolved in to one about hand plane shavings getting caught up in the dust collector impeller or the impeller screens after sailing through the cyclone. My impellers have a "grinder sharp" edge on them (i.e., rough with burrs) that seem to snag the plane shavings and clog up the impeller.

I'm now speculating whether "properly sharpening" the impeller would stop the clogging. This as the shavings may be chopped up instead of snagging. Anyone ever sharpen their impeller? Looks like a lot of work to disassemble the collector and sharpen all those surfaces so I figure that learning through other's experiences might be a reasonable approach to this. ;~)

John

[J. Clarke]

I'd be surprised if sharpening it accomplished much and you'd want to rebalance it afterward.

[dpb]

...

A DC fan housing isn't intended to be an ensilage chopper--there's no shear surface against which the fan would have resistance to make the cut. It would essentially be like throwing a shaving in the air and swinging a butcher knife against it, hoping to slice it in two. Ain't a-gonna' happen, for the most part...

[diggerop]

I'd be inclined smooth the burrs off and also remove the sharp edge. It won't cut up shavings and no matter how sharp it is, any sharp leading edge will soon develop burrs again. Impellers wear over time, and as it takes a lot to access yours, would it make sense to put a new one in if you go to the trouble of disassembly?

diggerop

[RicodJour]

Wait a minute...are you telling me that I'm not supposed to be tossing the vegetables in the air and chopping them mid-flight? How else am I supposed to make a tossed salad?

R

[John Grossbohlin]

If that is so, it begs the question of why did they sharpen the leading edges of the impeller? A relative of mine owns a commercial shop and he mentioned that his collectors have sharpened impellers... He's had small pieces of wood sucked up and shredded as they bounced against it. I didn't know mine were sharpened until I had to pull the rat's nest of hand plane shavings out of it. They definitely have a beveled edge.

John

[charlie]

then food processor blades don't work?

inertia. the object is being hit quickly, resists movement, and gets sliced. do it enough times, the object goes away.

[RicodJour]

If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say the edges were tapered, not sharpened, to reduce the noise.

R

[dpb]

charlie wrote: ...

See above qualifier "for the most part". The material in the processor isn't trying to be moved past the blades on its way somewhere else but as you note below, remains there to get whacked on repeatedly. ...

...

And the light, fluffy shavings that were the subject of the problem which raised the question ain't got much of that, neither... :)

--

[Nonny]

If you live in the boondocks, you can do like I did and install a "Y" in the line between the bag and the impeller. In my case, one leg of the "Y" led to a buried 6" line extending to about 50' behind the house and was the default way of disposing of cuttings and dust. The bag was only used on really hot days when I didn't want to waste any air conditioning.

By keeping the exit back in the wooded area, pine needles and leaves would hide any DC dust or debris that didn't go away with a rain.

[John Grossbohlin]

Interesting idea... Perhaps that is the reason but the execution was so sharp and ragged as to suggest they were sharpened to shred items that got hung up there.

John

[Larry Jaques]

On Fri, 13 Nov 2009 09:32:38 -0500, the infamous "John Grossbohlin" scrawled the following:

Iffen ya do, you'd damned well better _balance_ that suckah, too.

I'd rather filter it prior to the impeller. Much safer that way.

-- You know, in about 40 years, we'll have literally thousands of OLD LADIES running around with TATTOOS, and Rap Music will be the Golden Oldies. Now that's SCARY! --Maxine

[Martin H. Eastburn]