Dust Collector - Project usage

I've been using the setup described in my series of post for my dust collector retrofit for about 6 months now and I am still satisfied but need a few improvements, mainly in managing the dust in the bin once collected.

I had the opportunity to run the dust collector for milling lumber for some projects and resewing lumber which produces a pretty good mix of dust/chips in the mix.

I can say that the seperation of the dust is pretty good and really only the smallest of the dust particules goes into the filter.  The rest, gets in the bucket.  That is unless I forget to empty it.

Dust collector mishaps

35 gallons fills up pretty quickly, faster then anticipated.  I can't really remember what was the capacity of my old setup for the dust collector, but the bag had a small window to let me see how filled up the bag was.The fiber bucket that I ordered is of a capacity of 35 gallons.  

It fills up and not having an idea how full it is, I got caught that it filled up and back filled the filter canister with large chips.  It filled up a few times.Last time was last night and found a nice thing about the filter by accident.  

It is suspended at the top by a ring and has a small bucket to collect the dust when you cleanup the filter.  Well, I found out that the filter turns to be able to reach around it to clean.  Very happy now that I found this out.

What next

Well I still need to address 2 points :

1. level of dust un the bucket.

   1. I need to prevent overflow of the container and empty its content more often.  I looked at the Oneida Dust Sentry from Oneida but find it maybe a little bit on the expensive side.  Maybe it's me but will keep looking but really like the idea

2. Ease to empty the bucket

   1. I haven't got a decent source for plastic bags that don't cost a fortune.  I am sure that the bags that Oneida sells specifically for their buckets are great, but in the last 2 weeks, I would of spent about 30$ just for the plastic bags...

All in all, I am pretty happy but still some work in progress for some items.  Keep Making dust :-)Here are a few articles regarding the build of the dust collector : 

Dust Collector - Reconstruct

Dust Collector - Supporting Structure

Dust Collector - Up and Running

Dust Collector - Post Upgrade

Dust Collector - Project Usage

Dust Collector - Bucket Liner