Portable Planer/Jointer Milling Station with Dust Collection

Not sure how to improve…........all I know is that the bucket is way, way too small. That will fill almost instantly.

Nice cart!

What is the supposed CFM of the vac? It might be too low for the volume and CFM that the planner can put out on its own. You might actually get less back pressure on the planer if you simply take the vacuum out of the equation ( though you would still need it for the jointer). I've seen people just running the hose from the 735 directly into a box with a screened vent on the top and have no problems just letting the fan on the planner do all the work. You could try taking the vac out of its compartment and making a box to slide into there and feed the hose directly into it. I actually do use my old Craftsman shop vac with a bucket cyclone with no problems at least until the bucket fills up because I forgot to check it, but I don't often run high volumes through my planer. If nothing else, take the elbow going into the Dust Deputy out to get a straighter shot into the cyclone.

Anyway, nicely done.

I have a large shop vac with a Rockler cyclone bucket mounted on top of it as a pre-filter. If I manage the cyclone bucket well and empty before it gets 2/3 full it will keep most chips out of the vac bag which is stage 2 before hitting the plated stage 3 filter. This set up won't fit in your table but in my setup it barely works. I have had to open up the DW735 on more than one occasion to unclog. This leads me to wonder if I switch to helical style head will the chips be smaller or finer? Of course it will also cost another $450.00 or so to add. When I was unclogging I noticed that the shavings were long noodle like fibers. Just trying to help. Very nice station build there.

I have a vacuum just a little bigger and I still get a few chips come out the front ..especially on a high narrow pieces where there is lot of open room under the cutter head. I do think that bucket is way too small. You will be emptying it 2-3 times on a planning project. I have my deputy on a 33 gal barrel and it only last about 5 jobs before it need to be emptied. I once filled it and the vacuum to the top and I got blasted with chips out the front!! Good clue to empty them!!

Cheers, Jim

Thanks Guys for the insights. A few notes:

1) I'm just a hobbyist, so haven't had issues with the bucket size. I've made two cutting boards and a few drawers and the bucket is less than half full. Had the big 5-micron DustRight bag originally and did fill it up, but took months of projects so it was a conscious decision to accept the smaller bucket size

2) Vacuum is 110 CFM. Tried a 155 CFM vac (Ridgid 14 gallon), a 138 CFM (Festool CT-26), and a 130 CFM (Festool CT-MIDI I), all 3 were better but none of them could prevent the blowback. I tried these vacs both with, and without, the planer chip ejector running. (It's very easy to remove the chip ejector impeller on the DW735, search YouTube for a great video on that. 10 minutes tops, and just as quick/easy to put it back on.)

3) Ran the machine with no vacuum attached (default config), blowback is a little worse than having a good vac attached.

4) Ran system with bucket removed, and no vac. Basically just blew chips right through the cyclone and out into the rectangular cavity. Did this to verify the cyclone by itself isn't creating the blowback. This resulted in almost no blowback, confirming (in my mind) what I need is a bigger exhaust, like the filter-door versions made by Kelly and Matt.

5) Also thought about the s helical head option, may go that route eventually but am not convinced it will solve blowback without better exhaust in the setup. To give you an idea how bad it is, I can run the planer with no material, and feel air blowing on my hand at the infeed side.

6) One other idea I considered is to modify the bucket itself to have a filter in it/on it. However this seems messy and complicated compared to Matt/Kelly's implementation.

7) Sorry forgot to add, pics are original. Now the planer hose is 4" all the way to the dust deputy, where it meets a 2.5" reducer to fit onto the dust deputy inlet port

8) similarly, tried 4" hose on the vac side, again requiring 2.5" reducers on both ends since both the shop vacs and the dust deputy are 2.5"

The larger hoses made for a small improvement, so I kept those in place as my new baseline.

i think the problem is not enough volume of air flow,i dont a shop vac is gonna do it on a planer.

i think the problem is not enough volume of air flow,i dont a shop vac is gonna do it on a planer.

- pottz

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Thanks, as noted I've tested with no vac attached, similar (slightly worse) results compared to a high CFM unit. But to your point, with bucket removed entirely (so no seal at all around dust deputy) the blowback is eliminated so it seems it's just a matter of getting good enough air flow while still catching the shavings - which leads me back to the Kelly/Matt solution.

I have my DW735 hooked up to a Thien separator. 4" hose to a "top hat" on a 75l trash can. Cheap, relatively easy to build out of shop scraps. It catches all of the shavings, rarely has any issues with blowing back onto the tables for the planer. If you need dust filtration you can put an air filter on the outlet of the separator, but I always wear a respirator(dust allergies) so I just let it vent into the shop.

Nice cart jimk... love your engineering configuration... at least "on paper", as you are apprehensive on its effectiveness.

I'm no engineer and all these quantuum figures and add-ons quoted by others have my head reeling… so I can only speak of my practical layman's experience…

I've found that for large volumes of sawdust, a shop-vac just didn't cut the mustard and I had to resort to my 2+HP dust extractor… with lots of overhead and flexible ducting and blastgates.

I limit my shop vac(s) to hand manipulated powered/cordless tool (sanders etc), vacuuming and SWMBO's primary mode of automated transport (as opposed to a broom). The only large dust generator I have hooked up to a shop vac is my mitre saw(s), but that is just a token gesture as I still have to vac up around 50%+ of the escapees.

Nice cart jimk... love your engineering configuration... at least "on paper", as you are apprehensive on its effectiveness.

I m no engineer and all these quantuum figures and add-ons quoted by others have my head reeling… so I can only speak of my practical layman s experience…

I ve found that for large volumes of sawdust, a shop-vac just didn t cut the mustard and I had to resort to my 2+HP dust extractor… with lots of overhead and flexible ducting and blastgates.

I limit my shop vac(s) to hand manipulated powered/cordless tool (sanders etc), vacuuming and SWMBO s primary mode of automated transport (as opposed to a broom). The only large dust generator I have hooked up to a shop vac is my mitre saw(s), but that is just a token gesture as I still have to vac up around 50%+ of the escapees.

- LittleBlackDuck

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Thanks LBD, gave me a hearty chuckle with the quantum physics observation! Agree the vac is only for the jointer, am looking for a solution with the planer going straight to a dust bin. Think I'll try to implement the idea from Kelly/Matt, copied this pic from Kelly's post to illustrate.