Although I made my cyclone from scratch. The costs overall were probably about $400 for a 2hp system. I recently ran across a small company that manufactures an improved model that is 'see through' and comes with a 5hp motor for a very reasonable amount. Check out their website before you decide on whether to make a cyclone or purchase one go to the link at the top of the page that says: ClearVu Cyclone Demo!
DUST CONTROL
GETTING RID OF THE SAWDUST
I'm a firm believer in not breathing anything in that it's not pure air made by mother nature. I don't smoke and always had a problem with being around those who do. This also applies to clouds of dust generated by woodworking.
I've found vacuum cleaners solved part of the problem and it seemed to take me more time to empty and clean the filters than they were wurth. Besides - vacuums were even less efficient over long distances and I didn't want to keep repositioning the shopvac back and forth when I was on a roll making something. So, often times, I ignored the vacuum until the end of the day and had a real mess to clean up. I found I was reluctant to jump in and start making something because I didn't want to deal with the cleanup at the end of the day.
My next solution was to invest in 2hp two bag dust collector. This wasn't too expensive and provided for dust collection from one location. All I had to do was run a bunch of 4 pipe and install blast gates. This worked quite well but still left me with cleaning the bags every month. I also notice I still had very fine sawdust clouds from what particles got through the bags. So only half the problem solved so far!
Well, I found out about cyclone action and dust collection. This seemed to be the answer to all my problems, strong suction over long distances and very little filter management. ITS TRuE, a good cyclone design send over 95% of the sawdust particles into a solid waste collector and the finest of dust particles end up on the filter itself. This greatly reduces the amount of filter management (replacement/cleaning) and associated costs.
Don't get me wrong, there's dust that's generated .... there's just not many woodworking machines that are designed around dust reduction and they inherently throw dust in the air despite the vacuum assembly nearby.
Thanks to WOOD magazine (volume 100), I found an affordable solution. I would make my own cyclone dust collector and use the blower and motor assembly from my two bag system. The cost was palatable and I liked making things.
My shop ceiling was only 7'6" so I couldn't use a trash can for the collector - not a problem - I made an air tight collector to fit. Its not pictured here but a dust drawer slides in the bottom opening.
