Hi John,
Doing WW full time, you lucky chap, I wish I was, but who knows what the future could bring.
I did get a bot more done on the cyclone tonight, but work keeps getting in the way, especially when your self employed, but I will keep you posted as to progress, it will take me a while before it is up and running.
It amazes me, that there is so little over here for us WW's, what ever the Yanks want they can get, all we have is these plastic bag extractors with a cloth sock on top, there not very efficent and the sock gets clogged up so quick with dust, then they don't suck very well. You take the sock off, take it outside and get covered in dust, shaking it out, bit of a waste of time having one!.
Your right about the 6" pipe, I have been looking into this dust thing quite a bit and the Yanks do seem to have the right idea. My own extractor a Charnwood W691, 2hp motor and rated at 2000 cmh and whilst it has plenty of suck, using 4" pipe resticts it a lot, plus the 5" outlet into the collection bag also restricts it. The area of a 4" pipe is 12.566 square ins, a 6" pipe is 28.27 square ins, over double and the Yanks say that the new thinkin on dust extraction you need 6" to get all the fine dust as well as the normal chippings etc. The 4" pipe just will not support enough air flow to do this, they say that the standard used to be about 450 cfm air flow, now they say you need 800 cfm or more to get all the dust. This to me makes sence, so i did some test on my extyractor to see what it was capable of. Taking off the 4" pipe and the pipe leading to the collection bag, I noted wuite a big diffirance in the amount of air flow. So I went one better and took the fan cover off, also the 5" dia pipe to the collector as this was also resticting it. the air flow was amazing, nearly double, I would think and the motor was still within its rated amps, so it won't burn out. Once I knew this, it seemed to me to be the only way to go and make a cyclone, using the fan from my extractor. According to the Yanks, this size motor is the minimum you can have for good extraction and the air flow it gives, smaller size motor will not do it.
So 6" pipe is the best and only dropping down if you have no other choice, my saw bench takes a 6" pipe, so that's good and my P/T is 5", so I should get much better extraction on these 2 machines, for starters.
Any way I hope this helps, let me know if you need more info, I'm not an expert, but I have studied it quite a bit and I will let you know when its up and running.
The plastic pipe you mention can they say cause static, but some say as long as your in a damp area, well the UK is, you should not have any problems. What I found about plastic pipe it was expensive, but of course it is readily available from builders merchants. I have found a supplier of 6" steel pipe and all the required fittings, bends, Y's branches etc and the price was not mad either. 3mt length of pipe was about £18. The also do balst gates, flexiable pipe etc, so i will be persueing this in the near furure, as I would prefer steel pipe, just in case, I don't fancy landing on the moon just yet. If you want to dicuss this further or anyone else for that matter, so these pages don't get to clogged up, send an email to my email box on this site or email me direct at
[email protected]
