Hi Eric, come to think of it, the shopvac idea probably wouldn't be practical anyway.
Although it would produce a vacuum at the pipe's end it probably wouldn't shift the CFM at the entry end by the surface grinder.
The suction pipe is about 2" diam at the business end, and if you go to 4" square at the intake to get all the dust as it come off the stone when you dress it, or the spray when you run it, then the suction at the intake would probably be down anyway.
The larger snail cam type centrifugal blower with a decent size motor runs quieter but shifts a lot more air, and doesn't need to produce anything near a vacuum cleaners suction, just capacity.
I think my analogy is out on this one as CFM is CFM no matter what the suction level.
The difference would be that a larger slower moving air mover would require ducting at the same size, but progressively bigger the longer you go, to deliver the CFM without loss due to skin friction in the pipe, whereas the higher vacuum type starts off with a small bore pipe and shoves it along at a higher compressed rate, something like high voltage electricity with power line sizes and low voltage power with heavy cables etc.
Usually the shopvac type vaccies fail when the bearings go, so that's what you pay the extra for in the industrial model.
Ian.  |