P&J Dust Extraction

[Sideways]

I think I've just been very lucky in finding a good, used, P&J "under bench" type dust extractor.
Basically it's a cube containing a five or six pocket felt filter bag with a dust collecting drawer below and a 1.1kw induction motor on the back to spin the fan. This is a ten year old device with a good service history. It seems well made with few signs of wear and tear.
I've spent a couple of sessions wiring up a VFD to drive it and making a simple remote pendant. This evening it ran up like a champ and put a big grin on my face. Way more airflow and suction than my old elektra beckum chip collector and crucially in a much friendlier form factor. I also like that the fan is placed AFTER the filter in the airflow.
Now I get to fit an outfeed / assembly table on top of it and park it behind my little Kity table saw

Now that I've committed myself, I'd like to get a spot of advice from anyone who owns or has used one of these extractors.
The real reason I wanted this was to connect to my planer thicknesser. The airflow will be ample for that but the P&J unit is sold as a "fine dust" extractor and more normally connected to saws and sanders.
Do the bigger chips from a planer shake out of these multi-pocket filters OK or will I be hoovering it out every day ?
Thanks in advance.

 

[ScaredyCat]

You could add a cyclone, which would remove the waste from the planer well before it reached the extractor but you'd sill be using it's suction. Perhaps add 2 blast gates and a split hose so you could bypass the cyclone if you were generating fine dust from other equipment.



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[Sideways]

Have to think about that Scaredycat,
It's a 5" port. I think that would need a much bigger cyclone than I have space for

Interesting to note though, I have a small dust commander cyclone attached to a shop vac. Although it doesn't move anywhere near enough air for the P/T, it does separates the chips very effectively. When I bought this P&J, it still had half a drawer full of dust inside it. I hoovered it out with the cyclone just for curiousity.
80% of that fine dust flew straight through the cyclone and ended up in the shop vac...

Thanks

 

[ScaredyCat]

Cyclones are for separating large bits from the dust. Vacuuming up dust will more than likely end up in the P&J, because it's dust - but when you're using a planer it's heavier bits, which wouldn't (shouldn't) end up in the P&J at all. You would, eventually need to empty the P&J but it should be much less often. I use the contents from the cyclone bucket in mine for the wood burner, to get it going.



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