Dust Collection Systems from Laguna

If you're not currently running dust collection in your woodworking shop, you certainly should be. Remember that a reaction to wood dust is a cumulative thing. So although it might not be a problem for you today, it could very easily become a problem in the future. So you want to protect yourself. The reason I'm mentioning this is I want to talk about three really cool new dust collectors from Laguna. So let's walk through what's going on here, it's some pretty cool stuff. This unit is called a B Flux and it's about 550 CFM, cubic feet per minute. Now here's a pretty cool thing. We've got a filter on top of the canister here, a plastic bag below, and it's got a beater bar on it. And the reason for that.... Is so that the filter keeps working. What that's doing is, it's knocking accumulated dust off the inside of this filter. The thing to remember with any dust collector is that if air can't get out, then air can't get in. So, we need to be able to keep this as clean as possible to have optimal air flow on the input side. Another thing that's pretty cool about this one is depending on your application, this horizontal component can be flipped over. So if it's better for you to have that four inch port pointing down toward the floor, we can take the bag and the filter off, flip everything upside down, put it back together and get maybe better use out of it for your particular application. 110 volt, so plug and play. This is their B Flux unit. Now let's march our way up the alphabet. Next thing we'll talk about are C Flux and then just a little bit of P Flux. So this is the C Flux unit. Three horse, 220 volts and we have a cyclonic system going here. So this is really cool, it's very well engineered. As dust comes in, we get separation here. And again, remember part of our goal with these babies is that we don't want fine dust to end up on the inside of the filter. So the more of it that we can drop out on the inbound side, the better. The other thing that's cool is that notice that the horizontal pipe coming in is below the fan, below the impeller. So, let's say you're using this to vacuum up your floor and who hasn't accidentally vacuumed up a chunk of wood when you're actually looking to vacuum up dust. So, on a lot of dust collectors if that inbound chute is in line with the impeller when you suck up a piece of wood or a screw or a bolt, next thing you're going to hear is a big chunk when that item runs into the impeller. In this case, because we're below it, that's not going to happen. So it actually can maybe save the life of your fan depending on how big a chunk you accidentally draw in there. Emptying the dust barrel is real easy on these and the units work the same. So I'm going to show you how that works on the other unit, but it's a great feature. This one's also got a remote on it. We'll look at that on this unit. And how cool is that? So that when you're standing at the tool, you can very easily click the collector on, click the collector off, rather than walking over to it all the time, or just having to constantly leave it running as you're going from tool to tool. So C Flux unit, filter on the output side there to keep that air coming into the shop nice and clean. Next, P Flux. So let's hit back on that remote idea. So again, high frequency remote. Great feature so that no matter what tool you're at you can kick this on, kick it off as needed. 2,800 CFM or so on this unit for air flow. The other thing that's great is we've got a unit, we've got indicators on here that are going to tell us when the bag is full, an indicator that's going to tell us when the filter's getting clogged. So again, in order to optimize our performance, we want to make sure that the bag is empty and also that the filter is clean so that we're getting good air flow. And again, we're protecting that filter a lot by having the cyclone here, a well engineered horizontal chute, that's going to make a lot of that dust never even get to the filter. Let's have a look at that filter chamber. On this unit, this is cool, we've got a HEPA filter in place. And that's important to make sure that the air that is coming out through this is as clean as possible. The other thing that's cool about this is they've acoustically insulated the inside of this compartment. So the decibels coming off of this are lower than off of other comparable units, because we've got that acoustic insulation in there. Who wants to hear any more noise off a dust collector than you absolutely have to? Now, getting rid of that dust. I like this system a lot. So we get an indicator that our barrel's full, it's time to make a change. This kickstand goes up, the barrel comes down. Out she comes. That bag can be lifted out, taken to the dumpster, taken to the trash. Once it's empty, rolls back in place. There's some guides in there that help channel it into just the right spot. Kick her back down and that's sealed up and ready to go. So if you're looking for dust collection, three cool new products from Laguna, one of which might be a good choice for your shop to make sure that you're using dust collection, keeping the air clean and keeping your lungs nice and clean too.