Hey guys, I am looking to see what others are using for dust extraction? I have a shop vac but its crazy loud and running it for the duration of a job is driving people crazy. What are people using as a quite solution?
The bigger “dust collectors” are lower frequency, and a little less annoying to listen to. They generally operate with more volume and less pressure. So it is tricky to get it hooked up to the 1 1/4" tubes we use. I also bought a baffle for the exhaust on the shop vac and that works a little bit. I’ve seen people build little shop vac houses to put their SVs into, but I’m not sure they will make it as quiet as you’d like.
My LR has a dust collector that was left here when we bought the house. It is a big can with a 2.5" hose attached and it is a lot quieter than my shop vac. I installed the harbor freight dust collector in my shed, but it has a massive 6" inlet and is pretty loud (but much less annoying than the whine).
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I was using the portable dust collector from harbor freight with the 4in inlet. Definitely quieter. I ran a 3 in hose to the z from overhead, then split it to 2 1.25 inch hoses. Worked pretty ok, but the dual hose setup got in the way an awful lot.
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Just a word of caution when using dust collectors in the same space - you need quality filtration or you are just spreading the fine dust back into the area in which you work.
This is inconvenient if you like “clean” -(it’s the really fine stuff that you don’t know is there until you come back in the morning and there’s a layer of it over your stuff) - It’s very bad for your lungs and other bits. Just don’t be lulled into thinking because you have a “dust collector” you are actually collecting dust!
A proper setup will take a bit of mucking around and some money too (or you can use a respirator) but you’ll have it for a very long time.
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No dust collector is 100% effective at catching dust and chips at the source, so any dust collection system will benefit from an “air scrubber” that can pull those missed bits back out of the air.
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For now and my small setup I am using a Dyson vacuum with Hepa filter with a dust cyclone in front of it. We will see how long it lasts.
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