Separating Sawdust from Chips

The key is to not mix the two in the first place. December 11, 2006

Question
I have a small wood shop and we are doing allot of planning. I have a buyer for all of my shavings but I need to separate as much dust from the shavings as possible. Now for the big question - what is the best dust collector/separator that will remove the dust from the shavings for money? I’m not able to spend a whole lot and any suggestions are welcomed.

Forum Responses
(Sawing and Drying Forum)
From contributor G:
There is no real engineering trick to designing a machine using a combination of air floatation and/or vibrating screens to do the trick, except that they will be fairly big and very expensive. Why not just not mix dust and chips in the first place? Put the planer and shaper on one system (chips) and the saw and sanders (dust) on another.

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From contributor S:
I agree. Keep them separate to begin with. If you use one collector you can make a dropbox (less efficient than a cyclone but better in this case) with all the chip making machines going into it. The chips will drop out here and some of the dust may carry on. Then have your dust producing machines join the ducting after it exits the drop box. This system also has the advantage that the chip drop box (which needs to be emptied far more often) is under suction not pressure so it does not have to be perfectly air tight as the dust box at the end of the line will need.