Shop Dust Collector – Harbor Freight 2HP Collector

I picked up the very popular Harbor Freight 2 Horse Power Dust Collector for about $150.00 bucks. I think Wood magazine usually has the coupon in it.

Harbor Freight 2 Horse Power Dust Collector, freshly unboxed

I am not the original designer of this modification, you probably ran across a few others before you got to this site. This is just my implementation. After unpacking, the first thing I did was paint it up.

Painted Harbor Freight dust collector with the impeller intake guard cut out

As you can see in the picture above, I cut out the guard in the impeller intake. I read in several places that they had issues with it getting plugged and I did not want to take it apart latter. I will be using a cyclone as well, but that will be a separate post.

Wynn Environmental 35A Series Cartridge Kit installed on the dust collector base

I put the base together and added the new Wynn Environmental35A Series Cartridge Kit

Dust collector motor and impeller housing mounted on plywood with vibration damping mounts

Then I mounted the motor and the impeller housing on a piece of plywood mounted to the wall. I also used vibration damping mounts I got from McMaster.

Dust collector mounting holes lined up on the wall-mounted plywood

When mounting it up, I made sure the holes lined up.

5 inch hose sealing the dust collector housing

Sealed it up by cutting a piece of the 5 inch hose that came with the dust collector

Harbor Freight 2 Horse Power Dust Collector fully assembled and tested

Here is a shot of the Harbor Freight 2 Horse Power Dust Collector all assembled and tested. The gaping whole will be filled with a Thein Cyclone, I will cover that in another post.

Finished dust collector setup with the gap left open for a future Thein cyclone