This is a place for the amateur woodworker. No snobbery about fancy tools, complicated joints, or exotic finishes, just good honest woodworking for the pure enjoyment of it. My shop has a brand new home in 2003/2004 and we feel blessed to have such a great place to spend time in the hobby of woodworking

In the spring of 2009 I made the commitment to purchase a dust control device that would handle the entire shop. Up to this time I had a small protable unit that pulled the dust from the table saw only. When I constructed the shop in 2003 I installed a 4" PVC line between the shop garage and the table saw, you can see this duct installation in my construction report. You can also see the installation under the table saw as a frame of reference.

My original design worked well, but left me with dust control on one machine only and no way to expand it beyond this. In researching the new machine I was warned about the use of PVC as a duct, it can cause static electric discharges, which I eliminated by installing a bare copper ground wire through the pipe. But the larger problem was that this "static cling" can slow the movement of dust and reduce the efficieny of the machine. So I had to re-engineer the entire system and as you will see below, the PVC is now abandoned under the floor and a new metal duct has replaced it.

The unit I decided on was the Oneida 3Hp Super Dust Gorilla System. This unit stands nearly 8-foot tall and about 27" in diameter. The 3hp Baldor motor sets on top of the system and will move about 1554 CFM of air. It shipped in pieces small and light enough to go UPS and arrived without a dent or scratch on it.

Assembly has begun

My original plan when the shop was constructed was to locate this unit in the shop garage and extend more ductwork overhead along the ceiling. But once I considered that I would be moving over 1500 cubic feet of air per minute from the heated protion of the shop to the unheated garage I realized this was not a solid plan. I would need to cut a return air duct from the garage to the shop and remember to close it each day after finishing work or I would loose my heat to the garage. So I cleaned out this corner on the south wall of the shop and will deal with the bulk and the noise to save the heat and of course reduce the distance the dust must travel from point of production to the final collection. In the picture above you can see the assembly of the first 4-pieces of this unit. There is a black bracket that is lagged to the shop wall with 1/2" X 4" lag bolts, this holds the cone shaped portion of the cyclonic seperator. Then the top intake section is bolted to the fan housing and set atop the cone and bolted together.

A-Frame to raise motor

The next step took a bit of thinking and engineering as I needed to get the motor and fan impeller assembly on top of the unit. The motor, mounting plate, and impeller are shipped preassembled and weighed 108 pounds in the box. In my younger days I am sure I would have horsed the thing up a ladder with little concern. But at 61-years old I felt a little thinking would help eliminate the possibility of a shop accident that could turn a great project into a disaster. So I constructed the A-Frame to raise the motor to a better working height. The idea was to pull the white rope and raise the motor as far as it would go and then tie it off. Then I would pull the red rope to raise the A-Frame so the motor was above the unit. But like all plans, some difficulty got in the way of the exact plan.

If I had remembered my high school physics I would have realized that a single pulley does not offer any mechanical advantage. So pulling the rope meant I was still raising a 100-pound load straight up. The A-Frame was solid enough to hold the weight, but it wanted to twist as the motor did not have a lifting hook or eye so as I pulled it up it hung at an angle. So I used a chain hoist attached to the top of the A-Frame and the motor and easily pulled it as high as possible, which turned out to be the top of a 5-foot step ladder with a 2 X 6 screwed to the top of it for a landing surface.

Motor safely raised to 5-foot

With the motor setting safely on top of the ladder I snugged up the white rope and tied if off as previously planned. I removed the chain hoist and then began the slow process of raising the A-Frame a bit and sliding the ladder and motor closer to the housing. With each move I had to adjust the red and white ropes to keep tension on the motor. When the ladder was against the housing I climbed the ladder and picked the motor up and rested it on top of the housing. From there it was a simple matter to move it into place and drop the mounting plate onto the 12-bolt studs and gasket material that would hold it in place.

Motor resting on top of the housing

When I set the motor onto the bolt studs I noticed that there was a slight movement in the unit. I knew my lags were well into the wall studs and the bracket is heavy steel, so the movement must be the sheetrock compressing with the weight. I decided that although the installation insturctions did not sugget the need of any further bracing, I would install a slotted-angle brace to the top of the unit using two of the motor plate mounting studs to hold the unit from flixing forward. This eliminated all movement and left me with a more comfortable feeling that I would not have problems in the future.

The next piece to bolt onto the housing was the large radius elbow for the filter and as you can see in the picture below I attached the filter to it next. The filter has a dust pan below it for the finer dust that doesn't fall out in the drum. This completed the basic assembly of the unit. From start to finish I worked about 8-hours assembling the unit and found that Oneida did a fantastic job of engineering the unit for assembly. Every piece was machined to fit and the parts bags had all the correct fasteners, a rare occurance it seems from past assembly projects.

I will continue this project on the duct installtion page.

If you have any questions or comments please feel free to send e-mail.

This web site, like the rest of www.breyfogle.com, is self-supported, but occasionally we find a commercial site that we really enjoy working with and will direct you there for further information. We have found Hartville Tools to be a great source of tools at a reasonable price and their website is very easy to navigate. Give them a try.

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