robgul
Barry Bucknell is my hero
As I said I'm pretty low volume for making dust, normally cutting plywood and a small amount of MDF - the blast gates obviously mean that only one port is in use at any one time and the suction seems pretty good . . . I have a "bench cleaner hose" that I can plug into a blast gate port to pick up bench top dust etc .... if you hold your hand over the end of the pipe it's not "sucking like a Dyson" but is pretty strong.
The blast gates are on "flowed Tees" in the ductwork and there is just the one 90 degree turn at the end of the pipe run. When I first made the system I had the hose pushed into 40mm push-fit waste fittings and I got some suction leakage - the hoses are now fitted to the orange custom-made 3d printed connectors and secured with cable ties or in a couple of cases glued - the connectors are all a very tight fit whether to hose or machine port (we made quite a few prototypes to get the sizes right!)
The exception on the hoses is the small planer/thicknesser I have (cheapie Aldi job) - that has a 100mm outlet that I have connected to a reducer (from Axminster) getting it down to a 50mm hose for about 50 cm and then stepping down to my standard 38mm hose and into the blast gate (with custom orange connectors). Again, that works but does fill the collecting box quite quickly as the shavings are bulky rather than just being sawdust.
I am considering trying to shorten the length of the Henry hose to increase suction (I have a spare Henry hose if I need to use it for anything else)
As well as the dust extraction I obviously have a respirator and also a Record AC400 air scrubber (that's fixed to ceiling and works with a remote control) (the grey shrouds are my bikes hanging up
)
I did a bit of research on dust extraction and decided that the 100mm/4" systems just need too big an "engine" for my single-garage woodwork shop - that's shared with a bicycle workshop - hence the 40mm system.
