Dust Collection System

I bought a 2HP Laguna dust collector shortly after Judy and I bought the house but I procrastinated in setting it up for a while.  I knew that the duct work and blast gates, etc. would be expensive and didn't want to spend the money right then.  Also, once you put in your dust collection system, you pretty much fix where your tools are going to go and I wanted to make sure I was happy with the set up of the shop. 

Anyway, I finally decided it was time to get cracking so I bought the duct work, fittings, blast gates, and hose and got going.  I used 6" PVC for the main runs but I go down to 4" to connect the tools.  I used air conditioning strapping to strap the ducts up against the ceiling.

I did do the drop for the table saw with 6" PVC but even there I use 4" flex hose to connect the table saw.  Note that there are two hoses at the end of this drop. One is for the table saw and the other is for my router table, which is in a wing of my table saw.  I wrapped each joint with a metal tape to make sure there was no air leakage, and to hold the pipe together, especially for the drops.  On a few of the drops, ones that I felt were heavy, I put small screws through the "bell" of the fitting and into the pipe to make sure the drop pipe wouldn't come out.

Here's the drop for the band saw and the lathe.  I don't have a hood for the lathe yet so that one is not hooked up.

The main line goes across the shop, with a drop for the planer and sander.  Then it continues to my miter saw.  I have three connections at this station, one for the planer, one for the sander, and one for vac hose which I can use to vacuum the floor.

In addition to dropping the dust collection duct, I had to wire up an electrical drop for the tools.

The duct work then runs over to my miter saw.  I built a hood for the miter saw and dropped the duct directly into the hood area.  One connection goes to the dust collection port on the saw and the other goes to collect the swarf that misses the dust collection port.

You may wonder about that pipe that runs along the back of the hood - what does it do?  I cut a slot in the pipe and the slot is facing downward and forward to collect the loose swarf that always collects around a miter saw.  In the next picture, I've rotated the pipe so you can see the slot - it would not face upward like this in normal operation.

To house the dust collector itself, I built a closet.  I decided to do this to reduce the noise of the compressor and dust collector.

And here's a picture with the door open.

Of course, I had to put in a vent to allow the air brought in by the dust collector to get out of the closet.

I still have to build a box around my router so that I can hook up the dust collection to my router table - but it's not my highest priority project right now.

   

Return to my main page by clicking here