Dust collection of a belt sander

[rlmaier]

To all,

I've got a large Delta belt sander that has two 4" pickups at both ends of the machine. These pickup are approxamately 5 feet apart. My guess is that this machine will require alot of CFM to adequately extract the dust. My question is - I can pipe this machine in one of two ways. I can come off the main drop with a blast gate and then a wye and connect each output of the wye to one of the machine ports via flex hose. The other is to attempt to keep as much as possible solid 6 " pipe and come off the pipe with two blast gates (approx. 5 feet apart) - one for each of the machine ports and minimize the use of flex hose. Which of these two methods will result in the best collection of the dust? Is there is difference between having a single 6" opening and splitting it into two or having two 6" openings?

Thanks in advance.

Reid

[Matt]

Hi,

You definitely want to reduce the amount of flex that you use. Whether you use one blast gate or 2 depends on how you use the machine.

Option 1 - The Best result will be to put 6 inch Y then continue with the 6 in hard pipe until you get as close as you can then reduce to 4 inch and then put a 4 inch gate at each pickup using one at a time. Same holds true if you plan to modify your guard to accept 6 in. lines(use 1 at a time).

Option 2 - Next best would be 6 in y to 2 - 4 inch hard lines as close as you can get them to 4 inch gates then flex to guard.

Option 3 - Same as 2 except with 1 - 6 in. gate before the y.

Option 4 is 6 in y to 2 - 4 inch flex hoses with 1 6 in. gate. (May be enough but that would depend on how much pipe before it and the pickups themselves).

If you have a long peice of flex you may want to mock something up to see what you need...if it works with 10 feet of 4 inch flex then you can pretty much do anything you want as that would be really severe.

Personally assuming the guards work decent I would go for option 2 above as you have 1 gate operating 2 4 inch lines which allows you to switch sides without messing around with the blast gate and should still give max airflow through the 2-4 inch lines.

Matt

[rlmaier]

Thanks for responding Matt!

After listening to a couple others regarding another of my posts, I'm enclosing a new drawing of my proposed setup. I decided to eliminate another drop to a sanding center and instead use this one and continue through the belt sander to the sanding center. As you can see, I've got two 6 inch blast gates feeding the belt sander and I plan on trying to reduce to the machine's 4 inch ports at the machine. Is this what you were refering to in option 1? The end guards (which are also the ports) are crap on this sander so I will most likely replace them in the near future.

Thanks for your advice!

Reid

[Matt]

What you have drawn is going to give the best results. Whether you reduce first then use 4 inch gates or put 6 inch gates then reduce shouldn't really matter but if you plan to modify guards later to accept 6 inch then you may want to go ahead and install the bigger gates now.

Matt