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Dust collector vibration transmission?

lucky7

Titanium
Joined
Sep 6, 2008
Location
Canada
Might be a dumb question... I'm putting in a dust collection system in a hobby only woodworking set up in my garage. Have a 3hp dust collector that's plenty noisy and I'm trying to limit vibration transmission into the various metal pipes as I live near noise sensitive people and am hoping not to have a pipe system that's even noisier than the cyclone. Does flex metal hose transmit loud vibrations to the pipes or should I use a length of rubber hose? Rubber hose would have more debris flow resistance and might crack in -20deg winters when I'm still woodworking in the unheated space. Thanks for info.

Lucky7
 
Rubber, and flex pipe, both will dampen vibrations. You will want that, to prevent noise from being transmitted. Most commercial systems have a section of rubber coated cloth tube near the fan to prevent vibrations. Good balance of the fan rotating assembly helps too.
 
Taping some rubber onto the outside of the flex pipe in certain locations will also help. If you want the ultimate in dampening bore a hole through both sides of a plastic wastebasket and fill it with concrete after inserting a short length of metal floor. When it is inverted to sit on the floor near the dust collector the mass of concrete will dampen much of the vibration before it can couple onto the flex pipe feeding your distribution setup. There will however still be some vibration from sawdust hitting the walls of the flex pipe.

McMaster also sells a self adhesive elastomeric damping mat similar to the type used by audio enthusiasts to dampen vibration in automotive installations except much less expensive. I have forgotten the P/N but I used it years ago to dampen cabin resonance in a cat back exhaust system that otherwise would have been un-driveable do to the noise.
 
Seconding the suggestions above. Peel and stick damping mat at suggested by Scott does work. Water and ice shield can be used for this purpose as well, don't know how expensive it is compared to the stuff from McMaster.

As Poco suggests you might try balancing your fan assembly. Would require disassembly of dust collector and the building of a little balancing rig, but well worth the effort for something that runs often. I built a very simple one with some small shielded ball bearings with the grease replaced with light oil and mounted to some angle iron for balancing snow blower impellers. It worked very well for that service, which is very similar to a dust collector.
 
When I use a dust collector with a surface planer the air flow through the planer hood causes the planer to howl like you wouldn't believe.
Without the air hose the planer is much quieter.
 
The dust collector itself will transmit vibrations into the building structure. It should be hung on springs or thick rubber pads to reduce transmission into the supporting structure. Obviously this will require some flexible ducting to allow the fan assembly to move around a bit.
Bil lD
 








 
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