Dust Collection setup in a very small shop

Replacing the bag with a cartridge filter like those sold by Wynn Environmental will improve suction and reduce the amount of fine dust that escapes. Equipping your dust collector with a cyclone will decrease suction by a significant amount. However, it will prevent your filter from getting clogged quite so fast. My experience with the trash can separators is that they only trap the large dust particles and shavings and dramatically reduce suction. I threw mine away.

My experience with a cyclone and a home made cyclone trash can separator mirrors the info cited by ArtMann. I believe that a significant portion of the HP from the fan gets used up accelerating the static air in the shop and the almost static air flow in the cyclone into the 4” hoses. (Inertia) I tried the can separator for pulling shavings from my Bell-Saw planer, since it was quickly filling my 2 hp Jet dust collector. The loss of suction from adding the can separator caused a lot more planer shavings to exit with the output boards. I found a Grizzly 8027 (1 HP) portable collector and replaced the lower collection bag with a flannel bed sheet that the wife stitched into a long bag with a boot lace in a top hem. Tying and clamping this onto the grizzly allows me to run about 20 – 8” by 10 ft long pine boards (sawn 5/4) down to 3/4” std thickness before emptying the bag.

Thanks for your replies. I decided to go ahead with the WinnEnvionmental upgrade and stop there unless I find a cyclone solution that works without significant reduction in cfm. At the moment I only use the D.C. for table saw and a jointer.

-- It isn't as easy as the demos make it seem.