A heads up for those interested in cyclone dust collection who want high quality and performance without the high price of industrial machines or the questionable performance of imports.
The Bill Pentz cyclone design is now available in kit form, along with a mating blower housing. For those suffering from low ceilings, a belt-drive accessory is in development, delivery expected in January.
Details at:
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you are not familiar with Bill Pentz's dust-collection web site, it is well worth investing some time going through it. Lots of important and useful info about dust collection, ductwork, air-flow requirements, health hazards of wood dust, and other topics. Bill almost died from the effects of wood dust, and the site is the result of his research as well as input from other woodworkers and professionals. The site is at:
list of everything I needed to get to make a functioning cyclone collector. I know the information is all over the rest of Bill's site, but it's a large site.
"The only things you need to build the cyclone, other than what is in the kit, are your tools and a tube of polyurethane caulk/adhesive-sealant and two wooden discs each 18.00" O.D. and 9.00" I.D. by 3/4" thick made from MDF or a good quality, solid-core plywood. The kit does not include any flex hose, ducting, collection bin, or blower assembly."
You need the cyclone kit, a blower housing (from me), an impeller
14" material-handling impeller from Sheldon's Engineering, a motor (from Electric Motor Warehouse, a dust bin (fiber barrel or make one from an air-tight plywood box with door and insert a polyethylene bin (22 gallon size $5 at Home Depot), plus some ducting and a motor starter/contactor with good overload/overcurrent protection device, and duct work. Also a good final filter or pair of filters (from Wynn Environmental. The details are on the budget-blower page at
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on spending $1100-1300 for a complete system, and do it right the first time. You won't regret it. It's a lot like that Crapsman 10" radial arm saw I bought in 1973 for $250 on sale and the Rockwell/Delta Unisaw I bought for about $1100 in 1979. The Unisaw was a much bigger bargain -- especially after I added my own "T-square" fence I built and welded myself and a nice table extension so I can cut 50" wide on it.
Well for one thing it seems to leave out the filters. ;-)
I'm also wondering if there are design limits on the size of the dust box at the bottom of the cyclone, as my ceiling is somewhat under 8' tall. I see from pictures others have mounted the motor between the rafters but I'm not sure that's a great idea here in Maryland. In the summer the the attic gets very hot.
The site is chocked full of good information but AFAICS it's not "rolled up" into a short "Hey Dummy! You Need This!" list anywhere. Clarke's response was quite helpful. Perhaps the info will show up on the kit page sometime.
The cyclone unit is about 50-52" high, and requires another 6" for the blower housing on top. I have run into a number of people with low ceilings, some as low as 78" (and a standard door is 80" high!!!), so I'm working on an alternative to solve the "motor between the joists" problem (I met with a manufacturers' rep this morning about some of the components needed). Essentially what I'm doing is designing an adapter that will allow a belt drive direct to the center shaft for the blower using a C-face motor (the Leeson 5-HP Bill Pentz recommends works nicely here) that hangs alongside the housing and upper cyclone, thus getting the motor out of the space between joists or rafters, as the case may be. Bearings and pulleys add up in cost, but it looks like we'll have a solution on line and shipping in January at a price close to the same as the blower housing price ($150) plus shipping.
With this arrangement, you can plan on about 60" below the ceiling to the end of the dust chute below the cone. Subtract that from ceiling height and you have the available height for the dust bin. I built a bin from plywood in the form of an air-tight box with removable door (sealed all the way around. Cut a 6" hole in the top for the dust chute, slid it under the cyclone, raised it up on blocks and sealed the joint with elastomeric seal strip. Bought a Rubbermaid 22-gallon polyethylene storage bin from Home Depot for $5 and it fits inside the box like it was designed to fit. Haven't used it yet (too busy building kits and blowers), but it looks like it'll work well.
I do know that the 5-HP Baldor motor I put on top with a flat-blade, backward inclined squirrel-cage impeller I built (5" high by
14.5" diameter) kicks up one tremendous windstorm in my garage when I fire it up with all inlets and outlets free to the air.
I'll see what I can do about putting a list of "other stuff" on the kits page to cover that and make it easier to find.
Let me explain my motivation. I'm not a dust collector expert but I want better dust collection than my shop vac and low-end two-bagger DC give me. I'd rather buy an Oneida than run the risk of building something that, because *I* made a stupid newbie mistake, doesn't do a good job of protecting the health of me and my family.
I *am* a computer expert. I have seen many people build computer systems that are Porsche quality except for one critical component that brings the whole system down to a Briggs & Stratton go cart level. They didn't do it because they wanted to waste money or make a sub-optimal system; they did it because of ignorance.
I want better dust collection. I'd love to save money and have the fun of putting much of it together myself. But I need to know that I'm doing it RIGHT. A checklist of recommended parts goes a long way to convincing me I'm not screwing up.
I designed the kit with a lot of preforming already done so you don't have to know how to weld, solder or anything else that requires specialized skills. The first public report is from a firefighter with no experience with working sheet metal. Take a look at his:
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spent 30 years at Hewlett-Packard, 15 years working on Unix learning products, including sole responsibility for HP's HP-UX system reference manual for several years. With 20 years of writing computer manuals and designing online help systems, I ***KNOW*** how to write user manuals. I was licensed as a Registered Professional Engineer by the State of Colorado in 1980, and I have a lot of metalworking experience (since the
1950s), so I know how to make stuff. This kit was designed for people who like the satisfaction of doing it themselves without any great experience, and the results are coming in. As John Sellers says in another thread farther down (later) in this newsgroup, "...the instructions are detailed to a gnat's hair."
It's as "idiot proof" as I can make it. If you can figure out Unix, you can build a cyclone. :-) BTW, the instructions are typeset using groff, (similar to troff), and if you haven't laid out printed-circuit-board artwork with troff, you don't know troff. :-) (for the rest of you all, troff is a typesetting program that runs on the Unix operating system.
Ok, correction. I'm not a *computer* expert, I'm a PC expert. Though I know rm -r * my *nix is only better than 998.437 of 1000 USA citizens pulled at random off the street.
Great! I just want to make sure I don't buy a quad 3.0 GHz motherboard but only put 64 KB worth of filters on it.
My 1983 $4.5k 8086 PC was LOADED with a 10MB hard drive and 64KB of memory. "10 mega bytes? My god, what will you do with all that space?"
Is the converse true? If you can't figure out a bizarre chmod does that mean you shouldn't try to build a cyclone?
I see your troff and raise you (ABEND, CORE DUMP, PROCESSOR SHUTDOWN)
I prefer not to openly discuss my observations about this machine vs other products because if I divulge what makes this design better than theirs, especially in a public forum, that provides them with access to engineering and design expertise at no cost. It also tempts some companies whose scruples aren't stellar to find some excuse to try to shut me down by threats of lawsuits, and that's no exaggeration. I've seen it done in multiple instances to other people I know who were starting businesses in the woodworking field.
Bill Pentz did some evaluation work for Oneida, and he speaks well of them in comparison with some other popular brands, and they have a clean reputation, more than certain others I am aware of, but they have a somewhat different design philosophy from mine, which is what the world is all about anyway, so I'll leave it at that.
My objective was as still is to put a first-rate quality product on the market and let it speak for itself, rather than get into some kind of "Consumer Reports" comparison of products. Besides, when Consumer Reports has evaluated certain types of products in areas where I had extensive expertise, I found myself rarely agreeing with their methods or their conclusions.
It is helpful to be aware, when shopping as a consumer, that many major companies are critically dependent, for their financial survival, to keep consumers as ignorant as is humanly possible. This is especially true in banking and finance, in the sale and promotion of non-durable consumer goods (detergents, toiletries, cosmetics, nutrition, and many other areas), and, unfortunately in the field of machine and woodworking tools. It is often impossible to trust the "specifications" in a company's catalog, and anyone with experience in air handling can see that the promoter of a product is engaging in measurement techniques that cannot be independently validated and coming up with numbers that are physically impossible in a real-world, actual shop environment (I'm not referring to Oneida when I say this, nor any other specific company in particular, but as a general observation of companies whose principle market is not in commercial and industrial applications where savvy engineers can see right through their numbers with only minimal mental calculations.
To quote Bill O'Reilly of Fox News Channel, "I'm looking out for you." What others do I am not particularly interested in.
My "dream shop" has outstanding dust collection. In my mind, it has both a cyclone that is used while the tools are on and an air circulation system with basically the same components running most of the time. Both have a "forest" of pleated filters. Is it possible both can be combined into one system? Can your design handle both? That is, if I open the blast gate to the appropriately-located ducts, how large a space will your design clean of dust in what timeframe?
I started college as a mechanical engineer but I switched to computer science before I really learned enough to ask this question intelligently.... I know a little about ASHRAE since I completed one semester of that stuff. I was
I'd like to see that list too. After adding in a good insulation class F motor with overload protection ($300+), the impeller ($180), cartridge filter (about $70 for paper, double that for spun polyester), fiber barrel (about $30), and a short piece of large diameter flex hose (which is expensive and hard to find in short lengths) to connect the barrel I'm guesstimating you've met or exceeded the price of a new Woodsucker or 2hp Oneida.
I'm sure in the end you'd have an excellent cyclone system but it doesn't seem cost effective to build your own unless you go the true cheapskate route and form all the sheetmetal yourself.
not sure that there would be much of a temp differential between bottom and top of rafters.
Perhaps I made an error in assuming that the cyclone kit was for the cyclone only. I figured filtering would be an exercise for the builder. Either old bags, new 1 micron bags or pleated filters, whatever floats yer boat.
With all due respect, what is to prevent Oneida, Woodsucker, Penn State and the others from purchasing one of your kits and reverse engineering it? Wouldn't you'd want to fire a preemptive strike and be the first to prove why your kit is better than their systems?
Fair enough, but I'm a curious sort and before I shell out $1300 for a cyclone I have to build versus one I can bolt to the wall, I need more data to analyze. I know that Ford and Chevy have different design philosophies, but they both use motors, transmissions, and brakes. It is in the analysis of the philosophical differences that allows me as a consumer to decide what is best for me. While your kit's performance sounds appealing, I can't afford to make a $1300 mistake.
Again, with all due respect, isn't this what you are doing by not posting comparative analysis?
This is especially true
I find this to be a little patronizing. These statements sound like you're not publishing your data for our own good. While some people are taken in by marketing blather, many of us can understand and differentiate between reality and bull$*!@.
Even though I'm not from Missouri, I do not know you. I appreciate the sentiment, but whenever someone tells me they're looking out for me, I instinctively grab my wallet and my balls. :-)
In closing, I don't think any of us want you to put everything on the table without protecting yourself. I've been in business and I know what is like to protect your intellectual property. But I also know there comes a time when being first outweighs the possible loss of a technological edge.
Regardless of your decision to publish your performance comparisons, I wish you well with your venture.
Unless you have an unusually large shop, just put a blast gate in a "Y" in one of the ducts and open it. My shop is about 25 x 30 feet with 8-foot ceiling. At 1200 CFM (being conservative here), that's a complete air change every 5 minutes. It won't take long to clean the air at that rate, even if you need it (which you might not -- at least not very often). That's my plan for cleaning welding smoke and other trash in the air, what little there is.
Just having the collector on normal tools I figure will drop dust in the air by at least 90-95% even without being particularly careful on the collection hoods. And with that kind of CFM, you could have a vacuum- cleaning hose and intake for vacuuming the shop, then use a compressed air gun to blow the dust off of benches and stuff to get it airborne so the collector can pull it in. Beats a bench brush any day. :-)
I know about college courses not matching the real world. I got an extended major in physics with my BA plus a minor in math and most of a minor in business, along with some speech classes, industrial arts, music, and the stuff you don't have time for in engineering school. Plowed through the academics of an MSEE at Colorado State University (didn't finish the tail-end stuff because I had a house to build for our growing family), got registered as a professional engineer in
1980 (a PE beats an MS any day of the week), but after 9 years of designing tooling for Hewlett-Packard, I went to marketing as a senior technical writer and learning-products engineer where I spent
20 years producing technical manuals and online help systems, 3/4 of that working with the HP-UX/Unix operating system. I am the principal author of "The Ultimate Guide to the Vi and Ex Text Editors" which was considered the best book on the subject in the entire industry for years. I also did some general contracting and consulting on the side, so I got a pretty broad range of experience, along with building a bus from scratch (as in "Greyhound" size/type) that's still waiting for me to get back to it. :-(
And yes, I was on the internet before AlBore, who supposedly invented it, even knew what it was. :-) I also told some of HP's marketing types, when they were discussing whether to call our computers "desktop computers" or "workstations", that they should coin and copyright the term "personal computer" before someone else does. Six months later, guess who... Then I told my boss once we should come out with a series of books called "Unix for Dummies", "Vi for Dummies", "Shell Programming for Dummies", etc., but he said it would violate the company's "image". How many yellow books for dummies have you seen? :-) :-) Dang, I get tired of being right.
Life's too short not to stretch one's interests...
With this arrangement, you can plan on about 60" below the ceiling to the
this is something I need to resolve. my filters sit on two pieces of plywood screwed together to form a v open in front. I just have 8" pipe coming out of the filter and a 8" cap taped on. when I blow out the fitter I get a capful and a couple of partial's. not much room for much of a box under it.
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