re: Cyclone dust collection

I’ve had a Clearvue cyclone for the past 4 years. When I started out woodworking I got tired of coughing up sawdust, and I’d always feel a little short of breath after working in my shop for a few hours. I did a little bit of research and bought a 1 3/4hp single stage DC with a 1 micron canister. I ran 4" flex hose to my machines; I had a very small shop 13×24 with only a couple of machines. The DC made a difference, but I still came in coughing and covered in dust after extended sessions. More reading lead me to upgrade the main ducting trunk to 6" snaplock duct with 4" flex drops. This helped a little to increase the airflow, but not by much, even with the very short runs in my little shop.

The more I read online about dust collection, the more I realized that the power of my DC wasn’t enough to move enough air against the resistance provided by the 4" ducting and the impeller on my DC wasn’t large enough to move enough air to provide fast enough airflow in larger ducting if I upgraded to 6" duct. Therefore I needed both a higher HP DC and one with a larger impeller. I spent a lot of time looking at different DC’s both cyclone and single stage. I gradually settled on a cyclone because basically I’m lazy and didn’t want to have to always be cleaning the canister filter on a single stage (the efficient separation of dust in a cyclone keeps the filters cleaner so you don’t lose airflow if you don’t clean them daily as I had to do with my small DC).

I eventually settled on a Clearvue b/c I figured that if I was going to invest a bunch of money into getting a good DC, I wanted something that I’d never need to upgrade. The Clearvue had power for even long duct runs and a large impeller would let me maintain high airflow while using large 6" ducting.

Today I have a large 25×40 shop with high ceilings and long runs of ducting. The Clearvue performs perfectly; my shop is as close to dustless as I think a shop can be; my Dylos particle counter reads better air quality in my shop than in my very clean, petless house. I can spend all day in my shop and not be coughing or short of breath. I clean the filters on the cyclone every couple of months; typically I have less than a few tablespoons of fine dust that makes it to the filters from the cyclone.