Powermatic 3 horse dust collector has two bags. One fills 4 or 5 times faster than the other. I might as well have saved money and bought a single bagger. Is there something wrong, or is there a way to get more chips/sawdust to the other bag?

Without seeing a picture of the collector it's hard to make modification suggestions.

Years ago I built a 3-bag collector that had to stand in the basement with the collector cyclone above it on the first floor. The shavings dropped down in front of a secondary blower that blew the shavings horizontally across the tops of the 3 bags.

Like you I had to deal with uneven bag filling. I solved the problem by going with a powerful secondary blower that pushed the most of the shavings all the way across to the furthest bag, and then put in baffles to interrupt that flow over the first two bags, thus making some shavings drop into those instead of being sent all the way to the third bag. Took some experimenting over time but eventually all 3 bags filled relatively evenly......with some variation depending upon the weight of the shavings due to different wood species.

BH Davis

View higher quality, full size image (2048 X 1536)

Are you sure you dont have a leak somewhere in the side that fills faster?

Thanks for the suggestions. I checked for a leak, spraying dish soap along all the seams and feeling along the lower bag. The tops are canisters and I checked them as well. No leaks. I should not have to re-design the collector with baffles or additional blowers. Any other ideas?

Bag collectors like what you are describing will always have uneven distribution of chips. I just got rid of a 10HP triple bagger, it would fill the first bag with heavy chips, the last bag would be wide belt dust. Chip size and how easily its transported will determine where the air flow will be overcome by gravity. Nature of the beast.

Consider putting a cyclone in between the blower motor and the intake to your filter canisters and collection bags. I've done this to several 2 and 3 hp dust collectors in my shop and it works great.
The dust and chips drop out of the cyclones into 35 gallon rubbermaid trash cans on dollies. Much easier to roll out to the dumpster and empty, and the filters stay clean.

*correction: rereading my post I realized a mistake - a cyclone should be placed between the dust source and the blower motor, not the motor and filters.

Duster,
How did you adapt the cyclones to the rubbermaid cans and them not sucking down/collapsing? We have a couple 5HP cyclones that would be great to switch from fiber drums but even a fiber drum if it gets a kink/dent in the side the cyclone will start to collapse the fiber drum. Never thought of tossing a rubbermaid in there.

Mark - pictured is a 3 hp blower and cyclone which drops into the Rubbermaid trash can, exhaust air goes into the canister filter. I have another for my cnc with a wall mounted blower and an Onieda cyclone mounted directly to the lid of a Rubbermaid can. On that one, the exhaust blows back into the original filter bags. I haven't ever had a problem with the Rubbermaid containers collapsing, but these are only 3 hp motors.

View higher quality, full size image (4032 X 3024)

Here's my set up for the cnc. Wall mounted 3 hp blower above an Oneida dust deputy cyclone bolted directly to the lid of a Rubbermaid 35 gallon trash can. Exhaust air goes to the filter bags that came with the motor. I can fill the trash can 10 times, and have only an inch or 2 of dust that blows by into the filter bags. I spent about $250 on the parts to do this, on top of the original dust collector.

Here's the photo of my set up for the cnc.

Not to be left out, here is a photo of a previous installation that worked very well. The sequence was: pipe in from machines, cyclone with rotary airlock below (drop into dumpster), then to the fan and then into the filters. The fan was not first since we had horse people hauling the shavings and they liked them fluffy. It was determined that if the shavings did not go thru the fan, they would remain large and fluffy.

(Sidebar) That meant nothing when they complained that the high percentage of Mahogany was turning the hoofs red and they were getting points off in the show rings. They moved on to other materials, and we just compost it now.

View higher quality, full size image (2592 X 1944)

Let me correct myself..... That photo is of a fan first set-up, used to maximize the draw.

Sequence: Pipe from machinery, fan, cyclone with RAL below, then filters.

We dont even entertain horse people any more as they are too fussy unless your making just fluffy pine chips. We even had several question poplar. Its too much headache when you do mixed work. Our chips are always a varied mix of hard and soft wood (including walnut), ply, MDF, solid surface, particle board, you name it.

Horse people are nutty to begin with so if our chips were ever to go to any animal bedding it would have to be goats or crocodiles.

We burned all our chips (other than solid surface) for a long time but that has unfortunately come to an end so now they painfully get hauled to the landfill.