Dust collector

I don't have a separate shop like you Bob, I'm stuck doing it in the garage and up to now I've been doing the same as you. Unfortunately, my wife doesn't appreciate the film of dust that covers everything in the garage during the winter months so I'm trying to avoid complaints. The only unit I've found so far in town is at Menards, and it's by a brand that everyone seems to be dishing on the internet - Promatex or something like that. My birthday is coming up and the wife is willing to buy me one so now I just need to locate one of decent quality. Guess it's time to visit Amazon.

Actually I'm looking for something that mounts on the ceiling and comes with several speeds and a remote control. That gets it out of my way in the garage and will probably keep the wife off my back. But all the reviews on Performax that I see on the internet are lousy, Delta and some others also make these. The one at Menards is:




+ Quick View Performax® Air Filtration System
Performax® Air Filtration System
Online Price
$159.00

here is his pdf file with measures and materials filtration2.pdf (419.47 KB)


The part I liked the best is drawing air for filtration from all 4 sides

What I've read is that you need to mount the unit on the ceiling so that the exhaust is blowing downwards toward (and reasonably close to) a wall. This gives you a circular circulation of air throughout the room and forces dust back towards the unit. I just wonder where in the school shop did you remember having them mounted? I can believe if they were mounted in the center of the room (like my mother-in-law had hers) that it might be less effective. Plus I'm just looking at the small airborne dust collection, I do the big collection at the machine itself as much as I can.

Bob, I like the article but I'd rather buy a factory unit than make my own. I do like his idea of air coming in from all four directions, and his calculations on his shop (2 car garage, similar size to mine) were helpful in determining what I need. I found a Rikon ceiling mount unit that looks good at Woodcraft ($299 through Friday) and Amazon ($344 free shipping), it has the remote control and you can set a timer to keep it running when you are done working so that it keeps cleaning the air - hopefully eliminating that layer of dust newbie mentioned (and I have now in my garage). If I can control it so that it circulates enough air to clean the total area of the garage 7 or 8 times per hour, I should at least keep the airborne dust down to a minimum. I hope.

November is a big month for birthdays in our family - me, my daughter (day before mine), brother, brother-in-law, granddaughter, etc. Second granddaughter came a day early, a Halloween baby.

My real problem with building my own unit is more that it will end up being larger than a factory made one, and my ceiling height where I want to mount it isn't all that much already (guessing at 7.5 feet). Newbie's comments about the ceiling mounted units had me thinking, but then a school shop is probably producing a lot more dust in a short period of time than I am with one machine going at a time. My goal is more to reduce the airborne dust and reduce the film of dust that sticks around afterwards.

I did end up getting the Rikon ceiling mount unit as a combination Christmas and Birthday gift from my wife. Unfortunately, she decided that I can't use it (or mount it, or take it out of the box) until Christmas. I'll report on my experience with airborne dust once I get it up and running next week. I added a jigsaw table and some added sanding capabilities so we'll see if it does what I hope it does in reducing that film of dust.

Does anyone have any ideas on finding parts for a Delta 31-352 sander/grinder? I am trying to fix up some tools that I inherited and it appears that this unit was obsoleted at least 8 years ago. I need a couple pulley wheels, which even the companies that sell parts on the internet seem to say are unavailable with no replacement. Not on ebay either.

Hope everyone has a very Merry Christmas!