Meet Breezy, my new dust collector. It’s a compact 1.5HP 110V model. Not a ton of power, but it should be plenty for a one man shop that does do a ton of power tool work. Mostly just stock processing. My previous system, to give it a generous name, was a large shop vac pulling through a cyclone separator. That worked pretty well. If I didn’t overfill the 20 gallon paper drum the cyclone was mounted on, the shop vac got almost zero dust in it. That meant it’s suction didn’t drop off like it would if you were using its internal storage.
But, that setup didn’t keep up with the planer, about 10% of the chips were spewed out the front. It was OK with the jointer and the router table. But was ineffective with the bandsaw and the table saw. They just have too much open space and it wasn’t moving enough air.
In addition, a lot of floor space was taken up with the cyclone/dust bin and both that shop vac and a small Freud HEPA vac dedicated to the sander. Plus it was annoying to faff about with the hoses to connect it to each tool as needed.
So, a new fancy DC with dedicated plumbing. The floor space was previously a wood storage area, so it’s a net gain of space as well.
The one annoyance is that this is nominally a 15A 110V system. Fifteen amps is a push for 110V lines which typically have 15A breakers. And in reading the reviews, it appeared that this one wanted all 15A for itself. Normally you would step up to a 220V system here where it would only be 8A or so. But there was a $200 premium on the identical model in 220V which seems steep considering it’s the same motor wired slightly differently and a different magnetic started switch. Plus as you can see in the photo, it’s installed right under the shop subpanel. It’s connected to its own breaker by all of 3′ of Romex. So there shouldn’t be a problem.
Wrong. When I test fired it connected to the table saw, it worked fine. Though I didn’t run it long or actually turn on the table saw. You can’t run these without some resistance though or the motor spins too fast. Yesterday with all the plumbing run, I fired up the planer to test it with a reclaimed shelf from the mantel. Turned on the planer and hit the remote start on the DC and fed in the board. And watched the clear connecting tube fill with dust. WTH?
Shutting down the planer, I could tell the DC was off. Yep, tripped the breaker. Reset the breaker hit start on the DC, tripped the breaker. Gah. Well, it’s an old 15A breaker and they die a little every time they trip. Mayne a fresh 15A will work. Nope. Off to HD to get a 20A breaker. THAT worked of course, though, just to be safe, I think that 3′ run of Romex will get swapped with 12-2 as that 14 gauge may heat up if the DC is running for a long time.
After all that I was too disgusted to play with power tools any further. So I got out the jack plane, stuck in a fresh cambered iron and set about making shavings. This is the staked bench project where the next step was tapering the octagonal oak legs . Something you *might* be able to do on a power tool, but is simple to do with a jack plane. And relaxing.
