Dust Collection

Accessories
21

My Journeyman has not arrived yet, but I have purchased the Harbor Freight 70 gal dust collection system and upgraded the bag with a 1 micron bag and a cyclone separator. The system has a 4-inch hose, and I ordered the Journeyman with the Suckit dust boot that will not accept a 4-inch hose. Do I reduce the hose at the router or prior to the CNC machine?

22

I own the same Harbor Freight dust collector. Any reduction of the hose size from 4" will result in a notable loss of suction. You want the reduced area to be as small as possible, ideally at the router as opposed to running any length of 2.5" hose.

I opted instead to go with the PwnCNC Dust Boot v7 which has an option to accept a 4" hose, as well as different spindle sizes. The MagLock system is also very convenient.

Additionally — Down the road, you may want to consider a filter cartridge for that dust collector if you plan on branching it off to multiple tools. This is the one I use from Wynn Environmental 35C222NANO Cartridge Kit. It has much greater surface area than a filter bag (222 sq ft), allowing the dust collector to operate unrestricted, and you can easily clean it with compressed air from the outside (the dust drops into the bag).

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23

I have 3 shop vacs, a $600 Bosch vac
and a 1 1/2 hp Shop Fox with a 2.5 micron bag and Oneida cyclone. Shop vacs all have Home Depot Dustopper
Takeaways ;
Dustoppers are great and really help keep the filter clean
Shop vac s are ok for table saws, routers, band saws and small bench sanders.
Bosch system Hepa filter is good and the system works good when connected to small tools. Better than nothing on a planer but so many chips came out the back I had to build a box to catch them
Shop Fox works great but the 2.5 micron bag does not stop mdf dust dust

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24

I think it would be best to reduce right at the cnc machine. I had same problem when I started out but have gone to a 4” collector on my cnc machine. I made my own boot out of wood and lexan! Drew it out on Vcarve with a lexan top. That is what cnc machine are made to do! Couldn’t see buying one!

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25

So does say a Fein do a good enough job at removing most debris? My 2hp dust collector is LOUD and I’d like to tone things down a bit. It’s fine when running my table saw or planer for a half hour or so, but for a 3 hour carve it’s kind of annoying. Right now I have my 4" hose reduced to 2.5" so I’m thinking maybe a Fein would give me similar suction.

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26

My Fein works great and is relatively quiet compared to any other collection system.

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27

Linking to what I just posted in another thread about my latest dust collection endeavor:

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