About 20 years ago I purchased a dust collector consisting of a vertical mounted 2 hp motor on top of a horizontal fan unit (not sure of correct name) in an aluminum housing on top of a steel lid for a 55 gal drum. There is a side dust discharge into a large cloth bag. I use this mainly for my 12” planer and it does fine for collecting chips and dust. The problem is emptying the drum which requires lifting the very heavy motor and fan unit straight up which I can no longer do. A few years ago I bought a garbage can and placed a plastic lid on top which is a vacuum-in-vacuum-out leaving the chips in the garbage can. All of this equipment takes a lot of space.

I would like to install a cyclone unit on the wall with a chip collector drum straight underneath. The motor and fan unit that I already have appears to be the same or similar to the advertised units in your magazine. What I’d like to do is to find a manufacturer who would consider using what I have. I suspect that most would rather sell everything new and not be bothered with catering to a guy in Ohio. However, I’m hoping that someone can steer me to such a company.