Hi,
Alan in Little Washington is an old Internet friend that built a cyclone from my plans then proceeded to educate me. He did a pretty good job considering what he had to start with. Anyhow, I thought I would drop in and say hello, plus give a little praise to Alan for his latest in a dust bin sensor. His solution is clean, works well and easy to implement with not too much effort.
I suspect a few of you know me from my web pages. My career as a trouble shooter and university instructor has my resume looking like I never could hold a job, yet I retired with 37 years of service as a civil servant plus with 29 years of teaching.
My time continues to mostly be spent helping with dust collection and doing some remodeling on a way too big house that I live in alone or at least with my two dogs the kids left when they moved on to college. I have most of the woodworking toys (Robland separates, Inca saw, Inca joiner/planer, Jet DC & air cleaner, Delta band saw, RBI Hawk scroll saw, ShopSmith 510, drill press, router table with Incra setup, and Clear Vue Cyclone). I can even use a few of these tools, but some still have me scratching my thinning patch of hair on top.
I bought an Oneida Air Systems cyclone with ducting only to land in the hospital in early 1999 nearly dying from a severe reaction to the fine invisible dust that system failed to catch. I diligently wore my mask when making dust plus always ran my dust collectors with fine filter bags or cyclone whenever working, but was unaware of the fugitive dust problem. Fugitive dust is dust that escapes collection either because our tool hoods are too open, we don’t move enough air to suck in that dust, or we use filters that are too open and allow the dust to sneak through. Regardless, calling in a favor for a medical air quality check three months after I went to the hospital showed my shop and home were both seriously contaminated. I used a lot of exotic and fairly toxic woods known to quickly build up allergic reactions. The result left me blindsided. Rather than whine I went to work to figure out what went wrong as I did not want to have to give up either my tool collection or woodworking. Figuring out what went wrong and what was required to make repair was tough because there is far more bad information about dust collection than good. I spent a lot of time overhauling the existing cyclone designs that were then used by almost all small shop vendors. Although my friends and I made great headway which I documented and shared in a larger forum post then later on my Cyclone Modification pages, I finally realized that basic design was never going to provide good enough separation to work well with the fine filters I needed to protect my health. The problem is wood dust is full of silica, better known as ground glass and this stuff hangs around nearly forever saying nothing of doing bad things to our respiratory systems very similar to asbestos. It takes a long time, but almost all develop problems and about one in eight at small shop airborne dust levels get seriously ill. I went back to the basic cyclone physics then used my eclectic background to come up with a much better separating and more air efficient cyclone. The result looked good on paper but I had to build “Mount Cyclone” in the backyard to work out the details.
Anyhow, my doctor friend, a fellow woodworker, was impressed and talked me into sharing. I did on a few early forums in the form of additional articles then relearned an old lesson. No good deed goes unpunished. I got hammered with emails. In self-defense I put up my articles, cyclone plan, muffler plan, blower design, downdraft table etc. on my own personal web pages. Soon the traffic and links overwhelmed the available bandwidth of my local ISP and I was forced upgrade to a commercial ISP site plus get a faster connection. I've kept these pages going ever since much to the upset of many in the vendor community who keep trying to sell small shop woodworkers "chip collectors" with finer filters.
Anyhow, that’s a quick overview on me.
bill
Alan in Little Washington is an old Internet friend that built a cyclone from my plans then proceeded to educate me. He did a pretty good job considering what he had to start with. Anyhow, I thought I would drop in and say hello, plus give a little praise to Alan for his latest in a dust bin sensor. His solution is clean, works well and easy to implement with not too much effort.
I suspect a few of you know me from my web pages. My career as a trouble shooter and university instructor has my resume looking like I never could hold a job, yet I retired with 37 years of service as a civil servant plus with 29 years of teaching.
My time continues to mostly be spent helping with dust collection and doing some remodeling on a way too big house that I live in alone or at least with my two dogs the kids left when they moved on to college. I have most of the woodworking toys (Robland separates, Inca saw, Inca joiner/planer, Jet DC & air cleaner, Delta band saw, RBI Hawk scroll saw, ShopSmith 510, drill press, router table with Incra setup, and Clear Vue Cyclone). I can even use a few of these tools, but some still have me scratching my thinning patch of hair on top.
I bought an Oneida Air Systems cyclone with ducting only to land in the hospital in early 1999 nearly dying from a severe reaction to the fine invisible dust that system failed to catch. I diligently wore my mask when making dust plus always ran my dust collectors with fine filter bags or cyclone whenever working, but was unaware of the fugitive dust problem. Fugitive dust is dust that escapes collection either because our tool hoods are too open, we don’t move enough air to suck in that dust, or we use filters that are too open and allow the dust to sneak through. Regardless, calling in a favor for a medical air quality check three months after I went to the hospital showed my shop and home were both seriously contaminated. I used a lot of exotic and fairly toxic woods known to quickly build up allergic reactions. The result left me blindsided. Rather than whine I went to work to figure out what went wrong as I did not want to have to give up either my tool collection or woodworking. Figuring out what went wrong and what was required to make repair was tough because there is far more bad information about dust collection than good. I spent a lot of time overhauling the existing cyclone designs that were then used by almost all small shop vendors. Although my friends and I made great headway which I documented and shared in a larger forum post then later on my Cyclone Modification pages, I finally realized that basic design was never going to provide good enough separation to work well with the fine filters I needed to protect my health. The problem is wood dust is full of silica, better known as ground glass and this stuff hangs around nearly forever saying nothing of doing bad things to our respiratory systems very similar to asbestos. It takes a long time, but almost all develop problems and about one in eight at small shop airborne dust levels get seriously ill. I went back to the basic cyclone physics then used my eclectic background to come up with a much better separating and more air efficient cyclone. The result looked good on paper but I had to build “Mount Cyclone” in the backyard to work out the details.
Anyhow, my doctor friend, a fellow woodworker, was impressed and talked me into sharing. I did on a few early forums in the form of additional articles then relearned an old lesson. No good deed goes unpunished. I got hammered with emails. In self-defense I put up my articles, cyclone plan, muffler plan, blower design, downdraft table etc. on my own personal web pages. Soon the traffic and links overwhelmed the available bandwidth of my local ISP and I was forced upgrade to a commercial ISP site plus get a faster connection. I've kept these pages going ever since much to the upset of many in the vendor community who keep trying to sell small shop woodworkers "chip collectors" with finer filters.
Anyhow, that’s a quick overview on me.
bill
