I’ve been using a pretty standard setup - a dust deputy on a bucket with a shop vac. I used a plain old 5 gallon bucket for months but didn’t like that I couldn’t see how full it was, so I made a container from a 12" diameter clear acrylic cylinder. It’s the same internal volume as the 5-gallon bucket, but a little shorter because of the larger diameter.
I keep ending up with chips in my vacuum. It’s happened a few times & I had thought it was because I let it build up too high in my ‘bucket’ but the last time I checked there was practically nothing in the bucket. So it’s not that… somehow it’s getting pulled into the vacuum.
I’m using the knockoff Dust Deputy, in case that matters. I haven’t seen a real one in person but it has an internal wall that separates the incoming chips from the output to the vacuum. I feel like it’s not this, unless it’s something about the geometry of the knockoff version that’s not performing well.
And I don’t know that it’s happening more with my clear cylinder than it did with the old bucket… it happened then too & I just chalked it up to not paying attention to how full it was.
So, has anybody been through something like this? Any suggestions on what to look at? Thank you.
When I finally got around to emptying my Oneida Ultimate Dust Deputy (it was a bit more than half full), I checked the bag in the vacuum, and it still looked like new, with no discernible dust.
Some of the cyclonic mechanisms will let a lot of dust go buy when they get to about half full. Like others above said check your seal. If the vacuum goes down the chips will go up the pipe into the vac source. It is best to keep your bucket emptied. Many with the Dust Deputy Onieda brand say that with their bucket full they do not get much dust bypassing the cyclone. The generic ones work but you can bet they did not spend as much time testing the effectiveness of their cyclone as Onieda did. I keep waiting for my Jet to die so I can buy a Dust Gorilla with the builtin cyclone. I am not hoping that my DC dies but if it does I will get an Onieda.
Another possibility is that the input is restricted too much, so still too little airflow. One way this happens, is people using a hose that is too small to a dust shoe.
So check for leaks, and make sure your inlet hose and outlet hose are towards the larger end of the size spectrum.
I looked up your VAC on Amazon and 5HP seems substantial but they never give any CFM rating. As Phil Thien said you may have the input too restricted. The hose in the pic of the vac looks like a 2" or 2.5" and most dust shoes only have 1 or 1.5" pipe. So if it is a 1.5" input at t he dust shoe you are restricting the input by 25% over the 2" hose wide open and not restricted. So I suppose you had the same dust shoe and dust hose you used before the bucket change, replace with the original bucket and test if you get any chips go by and then put the new bucket back on and retest.
Hope I have these sizes right… I’m using a 2-1/2" flex hose from the (suckit) dust boot to the cyclone, and a 2-1/2" stock vacuum hose from the cyclone to the vacuum. The vacuum came with 1-1/4" hose but I modified it for 2-1/2" & there are no restrictions anywhere between it & the dust boot.
The old vac used all the same hose.
I appreciate all of the help. I need to pay close attention to what’s going on, and test some stuff. It’s hard to tell because it’s all closed but I’ll figure it out & let you all know what it was.
I finally had time to look into this. I bought a cheap vacuum gauge at Harbor Freight to test with.
Directly out of the vacuum hose I measure 10cm Hg.
I disconnected the hose to my dust boot & measured at the open dust deputy port - about 3cm Hg… terrible.
I used masking tape to temporarily seal all seams on my bucket & retested at the open port & got about 9cm Hg. So as you guys suggested, it’s probably due to a drastic loss of efficiency.
I’ll do some cutting with my masking-taped bucket & see if my vacuum stays clean & if it does I’ll rebuild the bucket so it’s airtight. I’ll build the vacuum gauge into it too, so I can always see how it’s performing.