With Fall rapidly approaching, a young man's fancy turns to buying a dust collector. I've been pretty happy with my modded Harbor Freight setup, but I think it's time to upgrade. I have a lot more room in the new shop, so I'm thinking about getting a cyclone separator and upgrade the duct work to 6".
After reviewing 15,984 threads here on North Carolina Woodworker, SawmillCreek, Woodnet and various other sites, I've come to the following conclusions:
- There are no (recent) independent tests on cyclones for a good comparison
- Much of the data supplied by the manufacturer is as useless as claiming a 120V shop vac has a 6.5HP motor
- Oneida makes very good systems, but they're not cheap. Filet Mignon.
- ClearVue makes very good systems, reasonably priced, but some assembly required. Prime Rib.
- Grizzly makes good systems that are reasonably priced. NY Strip
- JDS seems to change systems a lot. Mystery Meat.
- Opinions on the Penn State vary wildly, but overall they appear to be neither the best nor the worst, and neither the cheapest nor the most expensive. If Penn State had a flavor, it'd be Chicken.
- Lots of happy cyclone owners (regardless of brand), very few unhappy cyclone owners (regardless of brand)
- Cyclone dust collectors are noisy.
(I have more conclusions, but I'd go past 9 and that messes up the alignment in my list).
My shop is in the basement, so noise is somewhat of a concern. Your DC can never be powerful enough, but not quiet enough either. By comparison, the rest of the power tools (table saw, jointer) are much louder of course, but those are typically on for maybe a minute at a time, whereas the DC remains running for longer periods of time.
One of the systems I was looking at is the
Grizzly G0441. Then I checked the
sound level...83db at 10'. Ouch. That would put it in the mid 90s when I'm standing at my table saw. I plan to put the cyclone in a closet and add some insulation to dampen the sound, but there is only so much you can do with that.
For those that have a cyclone DC - which one do you have, and do you find it too noisy?
I may step done and go with the
Grizzly G0440 instead. It has 2HP (vs. 3HP), but it's 8db quieter, which is significant. I haven't read any reports of people who bought the 2HP version and wished they'd gone with the 3HP version, so I'm not too concerned about the step down in power. Then again, I haven't heard of anyone who wished they'd gone with less power either.....
For those that have a 2HP cyclone DC (Oneida/ Grizzly/ JDS/ Penn State etc.) - ever wish you'd gone with a larger machine?
08-06-2009, 09:01 PM
A hidden gloat in this is that you are powering the economic recovery.
.gif "Drogar Laugh(DBG)")
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