I started off the day by cutting a Tiny Tree on my bandsaw. As usual I had a good dust mask and safety glasses. Before I started the bandsaw I decided to start the filter shaker on the ClearVue filter stack ( the ClearVue dust collector is located in the corner of the shop in its own “soundproof” enclosure, next to the band saw). The filter shaker is a beer coozie size device that attaches to the outside of the 16” x 72” pleated filter stack that vibrates the filters and makes the dust inside them fall to a clean out box attached to the bottom of the filter stack. I usually let the vibrator run for a few minutes. Anyhow, I was happily band sawing out a tiny tree and started noticing that something wasn’t right. The room wasn’t as bright as usual, so I stopped to clean my glasses. That didn’t help much, and in a few minutes everything had a red hue. I stopped the saw and…. Holly crap, it looked like a dust bomb had gone off. After shutting all power off in the shop I found that the 4” cap on the clean out port on the bottom of the ClearVue filter stack had come off and was blowing 1800 cubic feet per minute air through the cyclone and filter stack.
I put the cap back on and turned the dust collector back on with every pick up point open, then turned the 3 room dust collectors on…. And left the shop. I feared that everything in the shop would have a generous coating of powder dust. After running all dust collectors 12 hours I was surprised to only find a very light dusting on horizontal surfaces.