Moving away from the shop vac setup and towards a high CFM larger orifice dust collector. Currently looking at the two budget options from Hazard Frought.
With Twice the price comes a little over twice the advertised CFM. I am a buy once cry once kinda guy, or try to be. Is it worth spending the extra $150? For reference my shop is a 2 wide x 2 Deep attached garage. Space is limited and either option will require creative problem solving.
Tools that could use the dust collection: 2x72 Belt Grinder, Table Saw, Blasting Cabinet, obviously my 4x8 LR3, disc sanders, drill press etc.
Given that tool lineup, I would say you are better off with the bigger one. I have had both. The size difference between those two is massive though too, so if you have a small space, you will need to take that into consideration.
Both of the CFMs on those are overstated from the reality of what you will get running them at home (Ideal conditions running wide open in a test facility only). You will get nowhere near 1550 CFM at your tool. Probably half that or a little less.
A lot of people who permanently install these end up upgrading the impeller with the larger one from the equivalent Rikon unit to get better performance.
If you intend to go that route, I would suggest looking into the WEN unit, which is essentially the same unit, but I believe already has the larger 12" impeller installed. WEN unit
Yes spend the extra - as @Michael_Melancon says, the 2hp cheapie will not perform to the advertised specs.
I don’t know what 2 wide x 2 deep is (cars?) but be aware that the filter bag won’t filter fine dust - if you can swap it out for a pleated filter that would be better.
Mine sits outside in a small lean-to cupboard with ducts to most machinery and magnetic connectors.
You may find some of these useful to make swapping between machines super easy (shameless plug for my own stuff). I have a 2.5hp collector with a 6" duct system and everything swappable.
@bitingmidge Yeah, here in the states we measure things funny don’t ya know? Garages are measured in cars, which cars? Who knows?
Very good work on the dust collectors I will certainly give them a shot. Thanks for sharing!
As an aside, I found out the hard way what biting midges were about a year ago, I was covered in gasoline by coincidence and literally thought I was on fire…
One other thing to consider is particles floating in the air.
I plan on adding a pair of 20" box fans with furnace filters bungeed to them to help pull dust out of the air. I kept looking at the Wen air filters. I used to use one of the box fan/filter combos to help filter air brush paint, so I think i’d work pretty good for sawdust too.
In that mess you’ll see a table saw, band saw, lathe, disk and oscillating sanders, and LR3 - on the wall you can’t see are thicknesser, jointer, drum sander, drill press and compressor - it’s a bit squeezy, but I can expand into the car space when I need.
Dust collection wise - the collector is pretty much on the other side of the wall bottom left of picture, the middle right is an exhaust fan to take airborne stuff to the outside, (there’s another just out of this pic) and the little shadow top right is part of a Jet room filter to pick up anything that escapes the other lot.
Note the sanders and LR3 connect to the shopvac with overhead extractors.
Sorry about your experience with midges, we used to live at a place we called “the Home of the Biting Midge” which is how the moniker came about - and I still bear the scars!!!
Wow - thank you for sharing that picture. I have a small Jet DC and it’s on its last legs. I put the LR3 on a shop vac, but the noise is unhealthy, so I need to figure some way to put it on the DC. Its small, and worked pretty well for a single tool like the tablesaw, and I always figured I could only do one thing at a time anyway. But now I need to be able to collect the LR3 plus whatever I’m doing.
Garages are measured in cars, which cars? Who knows?
