# Super Dust Deputy



## coxhaus (Jul 18, 2011)

Is anybody running one of these? I am considering one to build my new DC. Not to be confused with the shop vac Dust Deputy. I am looking at one for a 2 HP motor.

What kind of can are you running under the Super Dust Deputy?

The other thing I am thinking is to run a separate unit rather than inline as it would be easier to build. I would just connect the Super Dust Deputy to my DC with a 6 inch hose or pipe.


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## sunnybob (Apr 3, 2015)

I dont follow that. Are you saying you want to put the dust deputy AFTER the dust collector?
If so, theres no point.


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## coxhaus (Jul 18, 2011)

No sorry to be confusing the SDD output side would connect to the input for the motor and fan unit. The SDD input would connect to the tools like the bandsaw. The motor and fan unit output will blow to the outside outside without any bags or filters on it.

I want the SDD to keep from blowing a pile of saw dust outside.


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## sunnybob (Apr 3, 2015)

OK. That is "in line"... machine, dust deputy, fan unit, exhaust.

Dust deputy's are very efficient at collecting medium and heavy chips and dust, but a lot of very fine dust will still get past it. Its the fine dust thats the killer in your lungs. Unless you live in the wild outback, you would want some kind of fine filter to stop the minute stuff blowing around your house 
My motor unit still has a fine paper bag over a truck type air cleaner inside the motor unit, and that clogs often, even when the 12 gallon drum has no chips inside it.


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## coxhaus (Jul 18, 2011)

My motor unit will be in a kind of shed built against my shop so there is a brick wall between me and my shed. Also I don't want the dust in the shed so the motor unit's output will go through the shed wall out away from my shop. The output will be far from the house as the is shop 20 feet or so away and the planed output will be 50 feet or more from the house. So I don't think I need a filter. I just want to minimize the dust pile outside. I thought the SDD would spin and capture the fine dust. Is this not the case?

PS
I guess I should add I don't want to clean a filter. I can only hold my breath for so long without breathing what is coming out of the filter. It is not a job I want to do. If I blow it outside then nothing to clean.


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## DesertRatTom (Jul 3, 2012)

I would want at least a 30 gallon container under the DD, and I still think you need some kind of filter at the output end because there will be plenty of fine dust blowing out there. It will look a little like a snow covered area pretty quickly. Consider a dust mask for the occasional cleanout. I have a 2hp unit that has a canister filter on it, so I don't have to blow out the AC cooled air in summer or the warm shop air in winter. Cleanup is to blow air into the filter from the outside so it falls back into the collection bag. The fine dust never comes out of the system until the bag gets emptied. I think the big Dust Deputy is a pretty good DC device given how many of the industrial grade collectors have a cone like it.


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## coxhaus (Jul 18, 2011)

My shop is always open. I have a cross breeze with 2 doors and a couple of Window fans. None of this is shared where the planed DC will exit. I would rather reduce how much of the dust I breath. I also have a Jet air filter running inside my shop. Air turnover seems like the best bet for not breathing the small particles you can't see to me.

I really don't want the outside area to look covered in saw dust. Is there not a cyclone which will capture enough of the dust to stop this? 

So I gather that no one here is running a Super Dust Deputy here?

Here is my dust pump which I want to add a cyclone to.


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## greenacres2 (Dec 23, 2011)

I've been thinking of something similar for a while. Hobbyist, rural, shop is a 3 car garage, no heat or air. Now running HF with a Thein baffle ahead of it (30 gallon steel drum--heavy even when empty!!). My thought has been to build enclosure on back side of garage (300 acres of corn or soybeans behind us), with all chips and dust directed down into a 96 gallon wheeled trash can. Garage is on the back side of the property, farm field behind it so fines on the ground would be acceptable. Wheeled container would be a lot easier to empty than carrying that steel drum to the "pile". 

If I do that, i'd probably dispense with the separator as everything would go out the back. Again, I don't have concerns with exhausting warm or cold air out. It's under 20 F right now, and after 2 hours of sanding the only thing the propane bullet heater had kept warm was me--as long as I stayed in the air flow. All the parts will come back in the basement of the house for glue-up--inconvenient enough to limit what I do in the winter!! Oddly enough, moving the DC outside was in my mind a "winter project" since it's just construction with 2x stock and plywood. I just need to convince myself to do it. Cutting a hole in the back wall is really a commitment!!

earl


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## coxhaus (Jul 18, 2011)

I have a double set of doors from the shed which step up into the shop. So my plan to start with is to have a 25 foot 6inch hose and coil it up on latter hangers mounted in the shed by the double doors. I will carry in the long hose and connect it to which ever machine I need to use with a 4 inch quick disconnect on each machine. This way my connection will be 6 inch from the DC to the wood machine except for the reduced at the end which will be 4 inch to connect to my wood machines. Hopefully this will give me good flow.

If I end up with a pile of saw dust outside I may build an outside bin to catch it. Wheels would be nice. I really want to catch as much of the saw dust as possible inside so weather does not effect it. This why I am thinking cyclone.

PS
I have a big garden so my saw dust is going straight into the compost pile. Which is only another 50 feet away. So I do not need to bag anything. Just move it 50 feet to the garden.


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## sunnybob (Apr 3, 2015)

The deputy will catch at least 99% of the dust and chips. But that 1% is the really fine stuff that you can hardly see, and that does the most damage to your lungs. Over a period of time it will coat any filter bags and cover the area you are thinking of venting to.

I havent tried this because I dont have the space, but I think if the exhaust vent was placed just under the surface of a large container filled with water, the dust would stick to the water and sink to the bottom. Then there would be no pollution issues at all.


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## coxhaus (Jul 18, 2011)

I like the water idea. I wonder how much resistance it would present.

I don't see the pollution problem. Even if you have a filter it still ends up outside when you clean it.


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## sunnybob (Apr 3, 2015)

My thinking is the exhaust vent sits only an inch below the surface. The dust will get wet and sink allowing safer disposal every once in a while.

The pollution issue is with the very fine dust blowing around in the wind, where people will breathe it while its still quite concentrated. remember, we are talking about dust so fine that its barely visible. and because its wood dust, it will cling to the lung lining and choke you. Lung diseases are the woodworkers nightmare, because they are irreversable.


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## Daikusan (Apr 12, 2013)

What about a couple of spray heads creating a curtain of water and having the exhaust dust aimed into it? Not pressure resistance. Professional paint booths use them. Here is a link to a homemade one. https://video.search.yahoo.com/sear...7e48862c470e7e20b750b4b87639bddf&action=click


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## sunnybob (Apr 3, 2015)

I think we are on our way to building a better spaceship.
A water spray will work, hope someone tries this out, just remember who owns the patent....


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## DesertRatTom (Jul 3, 2012)

Rather than put it under water, consider blowing the exhaust into a cube of some sort with wet filters surrounding it, something like a large evaporative cooler. A tray on the bottom, a recirculation pump with a filter over the input to reuse the water if it's in short supply. The wet curtain would contain mearly all of the fine dust to the inside surface. Let it dry out once in awhile and clean it off. 

I have a Champion cooler for my house in summer, and it filters out nearly all the fine desert dust that is always in the air around here. A wet, cloth filter will do even better than the coarse filters I use, and if you recirculate water, it will cost less to operate. You could always put a spray inside to wet the cloth and knock down a lot of the dust before it hits the filters. We have the most expensive water in the USA here, so conserving it is pretty important. Maybe you could find an old cooler and repurpose it. Replacement motors and pumps are cheap and available online. Make your own filters on a wooden frame and insert them into the cooler, put a dust port in for the input. Run an extension to power the pump and voila, done.

The problem I see with just venting it outside is that before long, without a filter, the fine dust will build up. Yes, some will blow away with the wind, but doubt that all of it will. Try to brush all the sawdust off your clothes, it is pretty tenacious stuff.


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## coxhaus (Jul 18, 2011)

I don't see how a filter is the end all to a DC. The filter is just a stopping point. You still have to deal with what's inside the filter. If the saw dust is tenacious stuff blown outside how is it any different in a filter which you have to dump all the time?

So if I end up with 1% outside. Can I vacuum up the 1% with the cyclone and end up with 1% of 1%. So in effect vacuum when I see stuff outside. Will this keep it clean?


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## sunnybob (Apr 3, 2015)

The whole point of a wood workshop dust collection system is that you and your family are protected. Saving the fine dust to one particular area, be it a bag or a bucket of water, means that you can then decide how you can SAFELY dispose of it, rather than just having it blowing straight back in the kitchen door when the wind changes direction.

Not much point in hoovering the whole house if you then empty the vacuum cleaner just outside the front door.


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## whimsofchaz (Jun 6, 2013)

I have the exact set up you are trying to do. It works great. Unless you have a large commercial set up the fine dust is not a big problem. I will add that I live in the NW and the rain keeps the dust wet most of the time. I have a 20 gallon drum under the SDD. I don't have any problems except when I run my planer a lot. Just means I have to empty the drum a little more often.


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## coxhaus (Jul 18, 2011)

I just got off the phone with Oneida and they told me 25 feet of flex hose would have too great a loss of static pressure. I need to keep it at 10 feet for flex hose. So I have to rethink the one long hose fits all tools. Yuk, not sure I can get solid pipe in there.

PS
This is using 6 inch flex hose.


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## Red Stick (Sep 7, 2011)

I have used the SuperDustDeputy for almost 3 years now. The final resting place for whatever dust it does not capture is the bag on my 2hp Jet. Used to empty the bag at least 1/mo. Have not emptied since setting up the SDD. If there is any fine dust in the bag it hasn't amounted to enough to worry with. I do empty my 30 gallon can at least weekly. It is a conventional set up with the hose from SDD to DC is about 3'. Both units are outside (under roof) just to get the noise further away. Longest run of DC is about 30' of 4" good metal tubing; gates at each tool (8 total, but 4 have a "Y" at the drop). Hope this helps you.


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## coxhaus (Jul 18, 2011)

Yes Keith that helps and seems to support I don't need a filter outside. I need to figure out a way to run pipe and not so long of a hose as recommended by Oneida.

Keith did you use a standard trash can for your SDD? What did you use for a lid?

I do like the idea of bubbling my exhaust pipe outside in water. Once I get it running I may try it.

PS
I bought a SDD today at Woodcraft as they had it in stock. I need to come up with something to mount it on.


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## whimsofchaz (Jun 6, 2013)

coxhaus said:


> Yes Keith that helps and seems to support I don't need a filter outside. I need to figure out a way to run pipe and not so long of a hose as recommended by Oneida.
> 
> Keith did you use a standard trash can for your SDD? What did you use for a lid?
> 
> ...


Take a look at this video to get an idea about how to put up the SSD. He has the full set up with filter but you can get some ideas about how to hang it from this video


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## Bob Adams (Jul 5, 2014)

coxhaus said:


> Yes Keith that helps and seems to support I don't need a filter outside. I need to figure out a way to run pipe and not so long of a hose as recommended by Oneida.
> 
> Keith did you use a standard trash can for your SDD? What did you use for a lid?
> 
> ...


I use a metal 32 gallon trash can for my SDD. I made a plywood slip ring to fit under the rim of the can and epoxied the ring to the can. then attached some weather stripping to the ring. Made a matching lid, with a groove to fit over the rim and added 4 shop made bolts with t-nuts to hold it together. This is a Harbor Freight DC that exhausts outside, and there is no visible dust. I use 5" metal duct and the longest run is about 42'. It works extremely well for my needs. Pictures explain it better. Hope this helps.


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## coxhaus (Jul 18, 2011)

Bob you did a very nice job on your trash can. I was sizing my trash can up and realized I now need to run pipe and not use a long hose. I am going have to run pipe on the ceiling which means my SSD needs to be close to the ceiling. I think my 30 gal trash can is going to be too short. I would need to build a tall stand. I am now thinking a 55 gal drum would be a better staring point since it is taller.


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## Ray Newman (Mar 9, 2009)

RE: saw dust drum sizes.

My old dust collector had a 55 gallon metal drum. Heavy empty, heavier when filled. Due to its size it was cumbersome to maneuver around the shop even on a drum dolly and empty out. Now have a 30 gallon fiber drum for my cyclone. Much easier to handle and empty.


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## coxhaus (Jul 18, 2011)

I think my drum is going to be stationary. I am going to strap a wide wheeled dolly to a 55 gal drum and just leave it there. When I want to empty it I unhook it and wheel it to the compost pile. This is the new plan. Of course plans are made to change. My daughter is picking up a dolly off craigslist close to her for me. I hope to get it Christmas.


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## AshleyJ (Dec 1, 2017)

sunnybob said:


> I think if the exhaust vent was placed just under the surface of a large container filled with water, the dust would stick to the water and sink to the bottom. Then there would be no pollution issues at all.


Have you ever looked at a Rainbow vacuum cleaner? Water serves as their primary filter mechanism and there's no bag. People either love them (clean air out) or hate them (have to dump that water each time it's used).

However, the Rainbow vacuum doesn't bubble the air through the water. I think it's a bit like a cyclone, as it brings air in the side of a short cylinder, just above the water level, and the blower sucks that air out the top center. I've never looked super close, but the water appears to rotate and form a vortex.

If someone wants to experiment with a water based DC post filter, it might be worth a quick look at the Rainbow as a starting point.


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## AshleyJ (Dec 1, 2017)

I got curious enough for 30 seconds of research on YouTube. Try searching "water vortex dust collection filter". There's definitely others to learn from on this one.


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## DonkeyHody (Jan 22, 2015)

Bill Pentz has done more real research on home shop dust collection than anyone else I know about. He says to send the fine dust outside if local codes allow it. The dust is so fine the slightest breeze dissipates it, and the first hint of moisture settles it. 

Dust Collection Research - Equipment


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