My small shop requires making efficient use of every bit of floor, wall, and air space, including for dust collection. The setup described here has proven convenient and effective.

The Oneida Mini Gorilla is set on the “mobile” stand but since it will not be moved, I took off the wheels and attached wooden blocks under the platform (see photo above) to save a little space and make the assembly more stable. The whole thing is tucked away just to the right of the table saw, with the filter facing mostly away from the interior of the shop.

Using a 5″-4″ reducer, I attached a 4″ flexible plastic-wire hose to intake port of the collector. This type of hose, available from Rockler, Woodcraft, etc., is durable and easy to handle. A 5″ hose seems more awkward to handle and the 4″ certainly handles all of the chip production from my machines, as discussed in the previous post. It also meets the requirement specified by the manufacturer for airflow through the filter.

I simply bring the hose to each machine as needed, which is very quick to do. The default location is attached to the table saw and with some of its length curled under the saw’s motor hood. Each machine – table saw, bandsaw, jointer-planer, router table – and a dust hood accepts a simple press-fit plastic female connector that is attached to the end of the hose. The ports on some of the machines required modifications for the hose connector to fit uniformly on all of them.

The remote control is very handy, almost a must. It works by radio frequency, not infrared, so no optical line of sight is required.

The steel collection drum holds 17 gallons. I empty it into a 45-gallon trash bag, which makes the job easy. Smaller trash bags made the job considerably more difficult. It is fairly tight quarters getting the drum off and back on the machine but not a big deal. I would have bought the super deluxe infinite capacity drum at an untold price but, um, I was told these have been banned because they defy the laws of physics.

The Mini Gorilla can also be ordered from Oneida with a wall mount bracket. This would not have worked out in my shop but you may want to consider it. It allows the use of a 17, 35, or 55-gallon drum, while the mobile stand is limited to the 17-gallon drum.

Now the steel drum is, of course, opaque, and if you let it fill up such that dust gets backed up higher into the system, you will have a very unpleasant time cleaning the pleated HEPA filter. I made this mistake – twice!

A drum level sensor is available from Oneida but my solution was to drill a hole (approximately 1″ in diameter) in the lid and block it with a rubber stopper with a screw eye handle. When my guardian angel taps on my shoulder, I check on the bin by removing the stopper and peering in with a flashlight or just inserting a rolled up piece of paper or dowel as a depth gauge. It works.

The Mini Gorilla motor can be wired as 110V/16A or 230V/8A. I run mine on a 110V/20A circuit with a dedicated outlet. Keep in mind the collector draws a lot of juice and there will always be another machine running with it, so check your electrical capacity and outlets.

The dust hood shown below clamped to an outfeed stand is helpful at various locations, especially for the storm of debris produced by router mortising with an upcut spiral bit. By the way, the shavings under the bench are just fine for a while where they are, without a dust collector.