Billzee
I have dug up these postings from Andy King, where I posted some questions, about an article of his in GWW (Good Woodworking): -
"I have found the Axminster system I have fitted to be excellent. I fitted with an inline dustbin extender (which sits outside the workshop with hoses through the workshop wall)this minimises emptying and means the extractor only has finer dust to contend with.
I have changed it slightly from my initial fitting. I started out with double blastgates at each point, one to isolate each outlet and the other to isolate the inline running length so that maximum power was always available. As I didn't have enough blastgates available to finish the system at the time, I ended up with single gates per outlet, and to be honest, over the run I have, (about 28feet), it works perfectly.
My system including extractor, bin extender, extractor system and dustbin came to about £240 which I think is great value for a fine filter system which can also pull bigger waste from my machines. (planer thicknesser, bandsaw, tablesaw)"
and
"I have installed a small system in my home workshop using the Axminster 63mm dust extraction kit and the Axminster WV100 drum extractor. Although the bore size is smaller, it works fine for me, I have it in a horizontal 'U' shaped run of about 28 feet with five blastgate points for individual machines. I had initially started to double blastgate each point to give maximum pressure, but I found it worked equally as well over the distance with singles, just opening the desired port as required.
I chose a drum extractor because I wanted to store it under the bench as wall space is tight, and I also wanted a model that can deal with finer dust particles when I'm sanding or working in MDF. The twin bag systems are fine but the top cloth bag on most of these extractors let the fine dust escape, so are only good for coarse chippings. There are bags available to take the finer dust out though.
As for wall mounted models, we use a Record DX5000 in our workshop which again fine filters, but has a waste sack to catch the chippings. This is fine, but is a bit of a pain to swap over sacks when it is full as they invariably drop to the floor and spill, and as its tucked out of the way and I have to shift everything to get near it!
On my home system, to keep emptying times to a minimum, I have used the Axminster dustbin extender which is a special lid that fits over a heavy duty household dustbin and is connected to the extractor and the system with hoses so that the waste is pulled into the bin first. This lets the heavier chippings fall into the bin and the dust goes on to the extractor.
I find it works very well in my workshop, and to keep valuable space, I have drilled a couple of holes through the workshop wall so that the dustbin can live outside. Although the hoses are 63mm there are a variety of reducers step up adaptors for standard outlets. I use it on a tablesaw, bandsaw and planer thicknesser and it copes with ease."
Cheers
Neil
