Hi there.
My name is Nils with LRN2DIY and I'm holding here a $6 blast gate for a
dust collection system. Now,
if you've worked with these blast gates or seen these before,
or know anything about them, you know they have one critical design flaw,
and that is, over time,
they get to the point where they're clogged and they can't shut all the way.
It really just ruins them.
And it ruins the whole efficiency of your dust collection system.
So I'm going to show you how you can use a piece of duct tape, one single piece,
and a little bit of sawing to fix this for good and actually make it so that
it's much more efficient than its more expensive alternatives.
Now I ran some tests in another video using what's called an anemometer where we
hook this up and we ran and recorded the wind speed coming through this when
it's open and when it's closed,
we compared it to not only the aluminum blast gate,
but also a few of the 3d printed blast gates that we've tried out,
including a ball valve, a 3d printed blast gate and a butterfly valve.
So what we found is that this $6 one was the most efficient.
So it was by far the best value, the least expensive, the easiest to come by.
And it had the most air flow while it was open and it had zero airflow while it
was closed. The problem was, as you probably know, they get clogged the easiest.
Easier than any of these other ones.
These things get clogged and they lose their ability to control that suction and
close off. So if you've got five of these open in your wood shop area,
then you've got air flowing through each of these,
which means you have minimal section coming through the one that you need.
So we'll make one simple modification to this to make sure that this thing is
not only the best as far as numbers and efficiency when they're brand new,
but it's best in numbers and efficiency for years to come.
So we're going to start with our standard $6 blast gate here.
First thing we need to do is cut off this little piece right here.
We're going to cut everything up to the top of this line so that we have the
complete opening available to us.
I'm just going to run it against some sandpaper without the machine on just to
clean it up as best I can.
So once we've got everything cleaned off here and we've got a nice flat surface
to work with,
I'm going to grab some duct tape and we're going to cut off a piece that is
about as wide as this whole thing here.
So that will easily cover that whole space.
I'm going to push that out of the way for now. And then as far as the duct tape,
what we're going to do is just fold over a really thin flap of it.
So we're going to pull it tight, full over a thin flap.
I'm guessing this is 3/8 of an inch.
Now we take the gate and we're just going to cover this up.
I think one of the easiest ways to do it is to just put it just past
the top lip here, that folded part,
and then start pushing down on the flange only.
So we're going to start with that. Then once we've got that stuck on there,
you can take a blade, Score it,
cut it there. Then we're going to push this down
to make our hinge.
Now I think it's worth noting that I did try similar techniques with some foil
tape, but I found that foil tape either with,
or without a piece of cardboard or wood inside of it just was not flexible
enough to close properly with that small amount of opening.
So I tried that without it.
And then I found that duct tape was actually definitely the way to go.
And that's it. I'm just going to tighten everything up,
make sure we're good here. I'm also going to cut a little piece off this flange,
cause I want to have maximum exposure of that flange so that it fits as far
into the tube as possible. Like, so,
and I think we're good to go. Let me show you how this works.
So now with our bucket of sawdust and shavings here,
we can go ahead and pack all this in all we want,
try to fill in these nooks and crannies here,
put it right towards the back there where the duct tape is. That's fine.
Open the gate all the way and we'll just pack it in.
Okay. So that's hopefully about as, Oh, I've got a little spot here.
We've got an opening. Okay. There we go.
That's probably about as bad as you're actually ever going to have to deal with.
So it is crammed all the way in there. Check it out though,
because we have an open flap here. All I need to do is just release it.
There we go. It just pops itself right out.
And now I can continue to just close this all the way,
which is exactly what we want.
Okay. We've got the dust collection system turned on.
We've got a connected to one of our four inch pipes.
And here you can see the nice thing is when it's all the way open.
Everything's good. When I close it, I can always close it all the way,
no longer having that issue of having debris,
blocking it from closing and losing suction to the whole system.
So that part is taken care of when I opened it, the flap stays put,
but watch what happens as soon as any pressure or any suction is applied to it.
So that flap just wants to be closed if there's any resistance at all,
which is really nice. You can even see that the more you close that up,
the more it closes up and it just wants to stay there from that point on.
So it does a great job at staying in place,
sealing everything off and kind of put it to the test. Let me show you this,
now that we can close this off all the way I'm going to do the paper test here.
So basically this thing, even putting it right up against it,
it will not suck it up. If I cover it,
it can I, there we go. I can get it to hold,
but if I let go, there's just not there to actually do anything.
So it's doing a great job at sealing, everything off,
which is something that these are notoriously bad at doing.
So now that you've seen how we can take a cheap $6 blast gate with some duct
tape and turn it into a much more efficient system,
you might want to check out some other things we've done with dust collection.
Like what happens if you put a ball valve into your dust collection system or
a butterfly valve like this one, you can check that video out right here.
I'm Nils with LRN2DIY. Thanks for watching. And we'll see you next time.