Cyclone tool makers

Tired of burning up during the summer and freezing in the winter, I replaced that cyclone by building the highly touted Wood Magazine cyclone. Sadly, it had exactly the same problems with cone plugging, filter plugging and dismal airflow. I fixed the cone plugging and increased airflow by coming up with a much more efficient blower and impeller design.

An engineer friend came up with a filter stack to replace the external big bag filters, so I followed his lead modifying my dust collector to use a cartridge filter, plus built a filter stack with cleanout to make the still constantly required cleaning of my cyclone far easier. Sunlight in my shop showed all of these units were still dust pumps.

Disgusted and tired of wasting my limited time on dust collection instead of enjoying woodworking, I foolishly fell for some advertising hype. I read an article in FWW magazine praising the virtues of a particular small shop cyclone that promised excellent health protection while giving good collection at three plus machines working at once. Knowing my children were starting to work more and more with me in my shop, I installed that top magazine rated cyclone with vendor designed and supplied ducting, plus vendor recommended fine filter upgrade.

I had so much invested in this unit and it looked so pretty with its pretty metal cyclone, graduated ducting and blast gates at every machine that I gave it praise on the Internet when in fact I should have just thrown this system away immediately. Even when trying to collect from a single machine, this system collected far worse than my prior cyclones or existing much more affordable dust collectors. Its cyclone cone and internal filter clogged constantly making for nasty cleaning chores that left me and my shop covered in the very dust I bought this system to avoid.

There was not enough airflow to keep the vendor designed and supplied vertical duct runs from plugging or the horizontal runs from building up huge dust piles that posed a serious fire danger. When the dust piles inside the duct broke loose they slammed down the duct so hard they kept blowing apart the joints. These piles went right through the cyclone and destroyed the fine filters in minutes. After three failed internal filters, this vendor had me pay for an expensive external bag filter.

They stupidly blew a blast of dust filled air on the side of the filter which quickly wiped out that filter as well, so I shifted over to the filter stack I had come up with for my Wood cyclone. Regardless, after less than three months use I decided to finish my Christmas projects then replace this system with a commercial cyclone and ducting from a reputable commercial vendor who guaranteed air quality.

As I went, I freely shared my dust collector and cyclone changes on the early woodworking forums, plus later summarized my suggested cyclone changes on my cyclone mods page. I also worked with most small shop cyclone makers and a few larger commercial vendors to make these same changes on their cyclones. Now most large commercial vendors and all the small shop vendors except JDS, Jet and Laguna now sell cyclones that use my innovations. All this work still left us with small shop dust collectors cyclones that move too little air, need constant filter cleaning and replacement, plus are pretty much dust pumps.

Woodworking makes so much airborne dust that instead of stepping up to more powerful blowers and much larger filters fine enough to protect our health, almost all small shop vendors upgraded their air cleaners, dust collectors and cyclones with open filters. Filter material is expensive so smaller filters cost less. The more open filters allow the fine invisible unhealthiest dust that clogs and ruins filters to slip right, so customers do not have to spend so much time cleaning filters or have to replace filters nearly as often.

The problem is too open filters also fill our shop air with the very fine invisible particles that do the most damage to our health. My continuing to use that top magazine rated system was a huge mistake.

I was rushed to the hospital with an apparent heart attack. My doctors found my heart did not get enough oxygen as I was having a bad allergic reaction. My reaction continued even in a clean room. Any time my medications were reduced my reaction became severe. They called in a consulting respiratory physician. He determined fine wood dust trapped in my lungs kept triggering my reaction. I refused to believe that diagnosis as I had just had an allergy test that showed no allergies.

New allergy testing proved with nasty sores that I had become severely allergic to a wide variety of woods. After an extended hospital stay to address the double pneumonia that accompanied these problems, I finally went home heavily medicated. I immediately went back into respiratory distress. My respiratory physician suspected my home was contaminated. We did a very expensive super house clean up, but my problems continued with one bout of double pneumonia after another, so I finally paid for expensive air quality testing.

After having all cleaned and washed, my home air quality was still so bad that if this was a public building the EPA would have closed it down.

Repair required installing a powerful air cleaner system, replacing the carpets with tile, repainting the walls and ceilings, and deep professional cleaning of all the furniture and drapes. I was expected to have to stay on supplemental oxygen for life. My respiratory doctor is also a very talented fine woodworker. He said I had to stop woodworking.

I am very stubborn and did not want to give up either my three generations of tools or my favorite hobby. My doctors still said no more woodworking until I did not have such strong allergic reactions. Unlike most, my engineering background allowed me to do some serious testing then come up with my own far better fine dust separating cyclone design.

The airflow testing showed my expensive magazine top rated cyclone moved less than half its advertised air volume and its actual flow was far less than my dust collector it replaced. This low air volume reduced the airspeed in the ducts so much that my ducts plugged constantly.

This of course meant all of the fine dust separation was left up to the filters. Digging into the engineering charts showed at typical dust loading and dust collection airflows my vendor used less than one quarter of the minimum filter surface area required.

This way too small filter clearly explained why my filter clogged constantly. Worse, this same vendor designed ducting was not even high school quality. Everyone knowledgeable about dust collection ducting design knows that air at these pressures is like water and will barely compress at all. As a result, any small tool port, overly restrictive tool hood, undersized duct or hose, or dirty filter will add enough resistance to all but kill the airflow we need for good collection.

My vendor still uses a free computer ducting design program that specifies duct so restrictive in size it kills the airflow needed to keep the vertical runs from plugging. The particle testing showed the expensive filter upgrade I purchased freely passed the invisible micron and smaller invisible dust particles known to cause the most health damage.

This inspired me to come up with a better solution. I figured out how to reduce internal turbulence that kills fine dust separation and figured out how to size the cyclone so its cone did not constantly plug and it did not suck the fine dust out of the dust bin. I studied the engineering on blowers and came up with blower designs for small shop cyclones that move more air with less power.

I figured out what we needed to do to get tool hoods to work for us instead of against us. I did the homework to learn how much air we had to move and at what speeds to get good fine dust collection.

These refinements are well worth the little extra work to upgrade a basic design as this to something that will make a big difference. Most who use my latest cyclone design find that they go from having to replace their fine filters every three months of full time woodworking or yearly for most small shop workers, to going six or more years before their particle meters show they need to do a filter replacement.

I strongly recommend making my 18" diameter if you are using a dust collection blower up to 5 hp and my 6" vacuum sized cyclone if working with a shop vacuum.

Since I did that work in early , our small shop market continues to be dominated by the same high budget advertisers whose focus is to sell equipment not provide health protection. I oversaw the testing of every major brand and size of small shop cyclone during and and since have overseen four different magazine tests on dust collectors and cyclones. Rather than admit in these tests that the true measure of a cyclone separator is how well it separates, these vendor dominated magazine tests ignored cyclone separation and focused on airflows.

Airflow mostly depends of how big and good our blowers are. These tests did not even look at working airflow but instead focused on maximum airflows which are about double what we will get with ducting and tools hooked up and a filter that is no longer brand new. Most dust collector and cyclone vendors advertise and sell fine filters that freely pass the fine invisible unhealthiest dust. Finally, our small shop forums are filled with vendor paid shills and forum administrators who get paid to recommend the same poorly performing cyclones.

I was kicked off a popular forum that I helped get going because one of the vendors paid that forum owner to advertise their products. Likewise, these same forums are filled with first time cyclone buyers that are still convinced that because they spent so much, they got a great product. Clearly, you should not believe most available cyclone testing and recommendations. Since over twenty thousand small shop users have built or purchased my cyclone design. Not just first time cyclone users, but those who are on their second and third cyclone and have experience with high-end commercial cyclones all send letters and emails that greatly praise this design.

These experienced cyclone users consistently reported their 3 hp and smaller cyclones moved too little air. Those with particle counters such as the inexpensive 0. For instance, D. Hayes wrote, "I use my large shop vacuum as my dust collector when turning batches of pens. Although this filter works great, when turning I have to constantly take the vacuum outside to clean that HEPA filter because it plugs very quickly.

Tired of the filter cleaning disrupting my turning I bought an XXX brand cone type cyclone that sat before my vacuum. This substantial expensive cyclone separator simply moved the chips and sawdust to its collection bin with no noticeable improvement in keeping my fine filter clean. I searched the Internet woodworking forums for help. Many said they got very good results with your mini cyclone, so I bought a 6" diameter cyclone of your design.

The results are incredible. Almost all the fine dust ends up in the cyclone bin and I can go at least five times longer between the HEPA filter cleanings. Thank you for sharing such an incredible design!

Wang wrote, "Like you I bought a 3 hp top magazine rated cyclone and it did not collect the fine dust as well as my 1. Worse, I borrowed a friend's Dylos air quality meter and discovered that this cyclone came with such an open filter it saved up and filled my shop with the fine dust I wanted to avoid every time I turned on my cyclone. I built one of your cyclones and upgraded to the much finer filters you recommend.

I also did lots of work to improve my tool hoods and ports. Now the air quality in my shop consistently tests better than the excellent air quality we have outside here on California's northern coast. Thank you so much for your sharing and hard work! I built my first cyclone in about using plans from Shop Notes magazine and it worked terribly. As an incurable addict who has to figure out why something works poorly and needing to make repair I spent considerable wasted time researching, changing, and testing my existing expensive cyclone to try and improve its dismal airflow and separation efficiency.

In addition to gathering up changes recommended by other woodworkers I also extensively studied the cyclone research literature. One of the best sources of information was the work done on the Cotton Site that shares research and testing of various cyclone designs. After gathering this information I then built, tested and in many cases improved the various modifications and shared a little of what I did up through The best improvement in airflow came from adding Jim Halbert's "neutral vane" which reduced horsepower needs by reducing the cyclone internal turbulence.

When all was said and done I changed the cyclone dust chute outlet on the bottom of the cone, changed the cone angle, changed the cyclone diameter, changed the inlet size, changed to a rectangular inlet, changed the blower sizing and design, added a filter stack with lower cleanout, and changed the cyclone outlet tube to a more efficient size.

Before these improvements roughly one full horsepower of a 1. All of the major small shop vendors today now use variations of my modified cyclone design that I shared and put on my Cyclone Modifications web pages. Thanks to these efforts these cyclones move more air with less horsepower, are easier to empty, and it is far easier to clean the cyclone filters.

This poor separation creates serious filter problems. When used with fine filters these cyclones put out so much fine dust the filters clog very quickly.

That clogging kills the airflow we need for good fine dust collection and quickly destroys our filters because the higher pressures force the fine sharp particles to cut and tear their way through the filters. Cleaning does the same thing but faster. This why I only recommend traditional cyclones should only be used without filters and vented directly outside. It is also what inspired me to build a better separating cyclone. With a choice of giving up on a forty plus year woodworking hobby, I chose to spend my recovery time putting my three engineering degrees to work.

I needed a solution that reduced how much dust went into the filter. Wearing a mask was not good enough because the fine dust lingers for months and would continue to get tracked into my home, office, and vehicles. The shared knowledge from those dust collection firms who guarantee customer air quality all say we must capture the fine dust as it gets made then get rid of that dust.

The fire and building codes require that dust collectors and cyclones either be placed outside behind explosion and fire proof barriers or that these units be certified as fire and explosion proof.

This online version has been added to progressively by HTPAA members, members of similar interest groups and from members of the public with special interest in tools. Information has been gleaned from various publications such as: catalogues, brochures, newspapers, magazines, from advertising material and packaging and the Internet. Turbologo is the online logo maker tool. You can create your own logo in few minutes and only pay if you're pleased satisfied.

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