When I arrived this morning, I noticed the main dust collector’s red light was on. The bin was so over stuffed with chips I had a difficult time pulling it out—I’d estimate that there 6 plus inches of chips in the inside the housing. Also, the jointer and planers bins were filled with chips.
Please remember to check and if necessary, empty all three bins after you’ve used them.
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I looked at the jointer and planer bins around 9:30 pm last night, and they were less than a quarter full. Someone was busy milling last night but didn’t take care of things.
Remember that the efficiency of the cyclones on the jointer and planer drops off when they get more than half full.
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Bumping this again. The large dust collector was overflowing again tonight. Leading to decreased suction on all the machines. This also caused a huge mess when we emptied it as piles off dust spilled out.
The Large CNC bin was also beyond full.
In addition I checked several of the vacuum carts and found them full.
We emptied over 100 lbs of dust out tonight.
Please leave time for yourself at the end of your session to take your dust to the dumpster.
Thank you for your help @ewei.
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I see some models have bags instead of a pan (which seems to be intended to use with a secondary vacuum via the port that’s currently facing the wall), can we move to this setup? It would make it much more clear when the filter half needs attention, hopefully long before it backs up into the pleats and prevents the beater from working.
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We tried the bag setup for a while, but it kept blowing the bags up. We should have the large band clamp somewhere still, we just need a stronger bag. It could also be related to the filter being clogges when trying the bags, and causing more pressure on the bag.
P.s. when the bag blows up while it is running, it also creates a huge mess.
@morrism14 thanks for not only cleaning that up, but beimg diligent with the rest of the shop as well.
If the filter side is continuing to fill up. espicially after the filter was packed, its time for the filter to come down for a cleaning. @BillM
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Absolutely right @James Freeman, but I hadn’t been there much lately and had a number of things on my list, so after Mike and I finished emptying and beating the DC, I needed to move on to other pressing issues as did Mike. I move to rig up a system that shuts down the dust collector when It’s full and maybe sound an alarm. That should get everyone’s attention and the users get to enjoy the full experience of an over-full DC. Is the red light not working? We don’t have the members’ attention yet on the ramifications of not doing the necessary, routine tasks. It’s sort of like the main drive bushing on the router lift getting completely stripped of threads from someone deciding it was going to move regardless. I loaned my on router lift and router that’s worked flawlessly for about 15 years to the shop while waiting for repair parts. It took right at 3 days for someone to cross thread the collet nut by severely overtightening (the words of the person that went to help) and ruin the threads on the spindle shaft, while destroying the collet lock button. At some point those of us, yourself included, that constantly clean up after others are going to get worn out with cleaning up after certain members continue to poop everywhere. Sorry for the rant but changes need to happen.
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Pan is already full again, while the bin is nearly empty. I think as a stopgap to whatever systematic changes we make, the filter goes on a routine cleaning schedule. We also floated the idea of a second filter unit to minimize downtime. I know it’s a messy, time-consuming process, but there’s currently no alternative.
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I’ve had the red light pop on even right after I emptied the bag. That trains people to ignore the red light, unfortunately.
However, I suspect that we need to give the woodshop stewards permission to get snotty and zap people about not emptying the DCs.
Does that router table require a certification class to use it? If not, it probably should. At this point, it’s quite clear that the router table seems to attract abuse–I don’t know why. Maybe a class would put a speedbump into that. If it still gets abused after that, then it may be that the router table just has really easy to fall into failure modes–much like how CNC spoilerboards invariably get deep carved by somebody as soon as they get changed.
The red light has been randomly blinking ever since I’ve been there, but it does remain on when the bag is really full. Nobody seems to notice, or it’s the “someone else will do it” mentality, so yep, we need to get peoples’ attention. Options are being considered.
No class required, and it may need at least a “check-out”, but there are classes in the making. The lift we have is not problematic. The temporary one is not problematic. It’s clearly misuse, so that’s what we need to address. Then the issue is how to know who has had the check-out or class or whatever. There’s options on that, too.
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I think the table router has received very inconsistent attention in the Woodshop Safety Class. I spend a lot of time discussing the issue of over-tightening collets, but I’ve heard other instructors in the past haven’t even covered the router table.
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I’ve been spending a good amount of time on it during my classes, and even more so after @mgmoore and I had a brief conversation about it. I think that its definitely possible to adequately teach the router table during the 2.5 hour Woodshop Safety Class. I think it’s one of the riskier tools to use if you don’t know what you’re doing, so I’ve tried to give it a minimum of 20 minutes of the class, with hands on time doing a roundover.
However, I know that it wasn’t covered when I took the class, and I’ve run into a few people who were struggling with it who said it wasn’t covered for them either. If the instructors get on the same page as to how it is being taught we can hopefully close that hole going forward. But I don’t know what to do about people who ‘missed’ that in their safety course. I don’t know if that necessitates a required check-out course for the tool, assuming that people who had it covered properly are doing fine on the tool. I’m also curious how enforcing a checkout class for a tool that people used to have access to would go.
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