Jensmith":1zm4385n said:
Given the dust is so fine, could it be that it is just too light to drop out of the air in the cyclone and is therefore being carried through to the main extractor?
I thought cyclones were designed even to remove fine dust but just wondered.
No they are not designed to remove the finest dust.
They are designed to remove the bigger and heavier particles so reduce the load on the filters. And the way that they work means that, since it seems that your system is charging the plastic dust with static, it will be even less effective.
Unfortunately this means that the cure is not likely to be cheap.
As background if you look at the design of the Festool shop vacs. They have static control built in all the plastic is conductive, connectors and hoses, and they are grounded through the vac itself. Also the paper filter bags seem to filter down below 1 micron. I say that because my secondary HEPA filters have never shown any dust on them.
All this means that the dust doesn't pick up much, if any, static charge. And there is
no really fine dust released into the air.
Of course this is not much help as a shop vac like that is expensive and won't do a great job with a bandsaw unless your saw is designed for the HPLV (High Pressure Low Volume) of a shop vac. HVLP is the usual as then a fairly leaky enclosure isn't a big problem.
You are in experimental country what
may work is anti static hoses and couplings, maintaining the static path all the way through to the filters, and grounding the lot.
The problem is that your static is generated by airflow and friction of plastic against non conductive plastic.
I haven't had the problem so don't know the answer.
One of the reasons I've never had your problem is that the humidity is almost never less than 50% and often over 75% where I work. Therefore I get little static anyway
Edited to remove content that was not correct
