<\/p>\nHappy new year everyone! Time to review one of my new toys – the GMC 1HP dust collector. <\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
I was due to run some fence palings through the Ryobi 13″ thicknesser for a friend who makes picture frames, so it seemed a good test for the GMC dust extractor. My earlier attempts to keep the dust and chips from the thicknesser from forming a large pile of chips on the floor and a thick cloud of dust in the workshop had only met with marginal success. <\/p>\n
My Ryobi thicknesser did not come with a dust extraction port (the new ones do from last year). So I had fitted the dust port from a Sherwood 13″ thicknesser – it fits perfectly (purchased from Timbecon as an accesssory at last year’s Working with Wood show in Canberra). And I had cobbled up an adapter to the shop-vac but that had been only partially successful – when the bin filled all dust extraction ceased!<\/p>\n
Enter the GMC dust extractor. It came in large box with some simple assembly to do – fit the handle, the casters – which do help with moving the 20kg machine around – and the collector hose and bag.<\/p>\n
First the good points – set up was easy with a clear well illustrated instruction booklet. The construction seems pretty solid – although the 4″ (100mm) hose seems very thin walled and looks as though it would hole easily on a snag. The induction motor is very quiet<\/em> <\/strong>compared with the shop vac, and there was little discernable difference in sound whether the motor was under load or not – ie whether or not the hose was constricted. The bag is a good size for hobby use and is made from a tight weave polyester, and is rated for 30 micron particle size. <\/p>\n What this means is that it will do a great job of clearing the chips and coarse sawdust, but the fine stuff that damages your lungs will go straight through the bag – you can see it as a fine cloud when you start the machine up – so keep the mask on for personal protection. GMC would do well to offer a 4 micron felt bag as an accessory – but I suspect the carbatec or sherwood ones would fit perfectly – and will be on my shopping list.<\/p>\n The hose was a good fit on the 100mm extracator port on the thicknesser and the machine did a very respectable effort at capturing probably 98 percent of the dust and chips – and it did so for a good hour without getting warm. <\/p>\n Summary<\/strong> – this is a good hobby machine for those with limited workshop space who need a solid, but light and portable dust extractor for occasional hobby use. It does not have the capacity or airflow (measured in cubic feet per minute – cfm) of a 2-3 horspower machine, but it represents a good effort for GMC’s entry into dust extractors. I would definitely fit a carba-tec or sherwood felt bag to capture the finer dust, and contrary to the brochure I would not be using this for more than one machine at a time. But at half the price of its competitors (under AUS$100), this is a great accessory for any hobbyist woodworker.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Happy new year everyone! Time to review one of my new toys – the GMC 1HP dust collector. I was due to run some fence palings through the Ryobi 13″ thicknesser for a friend who makes picture frames, so it seemed a good test for the GMC dust extractor. My earlier attempts to keep the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-120","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-technology","category-woodwork"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=120"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/120\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=120"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=120"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lostbiro.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=120"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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