Making a Dust collector

[DiamondG Knives]

I am thinking of trying to make my own dust collector from used central heat and air unit blowers. My idea is to close off the air intake to the blower down to a 3" hose coupling, then just have it blow out the window. will this work?

Any thoughts?

Thanks
Mike

[millironknives]

I have a blower unit out of a shop furnace right behind my grinder and just right of my buffer and it is mounted to the window frame and when I grind I can just slide the window open and trun it on. It pulls so har that if I don't crack the door it will start pulling the smoke out of my wood stove and completly fog the shop in abot 10 seconds. If it can do that I would say Go for it. I have since replaced it with variable speed blower and I can choose how high I want it to run. So if I am sanding antler I can crank it up to get it out quicker. I would add a length of stove pipe the same size as the opening on the blower and then hook up the hose. I found that if you cut off to much flow it looses all of the suck power. Hope this helps.

[Joe Whalen]

If you have a gas heater or water heater or anything that vents out side you have to make sure you don't suck the carbon monoxide back down the flu. You need to have a fresh air supply coming in to replace the air going out.
Joe

[Geno]

I have a couple of floor fans mounted on the windows that can blow in or out, depending on which way I turn them.
It can pull air out, or blow in fresh air in, perfect.

[Gary Mulkey]

Mike,

Since you are building your own here's something that I have done in the past which is helpful. Build a diversion system so that when you aren't using your 3" pipe to the grinder, the motor is pulling a vacuum through a normal furnace filter removing dust from the air in the shop. Since no dust removal system gets it all removed directly at the source this will keep the shop cleaner. Just a thought.

Gary