At the begining of this year I purchased a cyclone dust separator from ClearVue cyclones. These are based on the Bill Pentz design and are incredibly effective.

UPDATE 7/14 ==> Added additional pictures to show the installation better. Please forgive the shop mess... 

A Cyclone separator acts as a 2 stage dust collection system. A blower is connected to the cyclone which draws air through a series of pipes into the cyclone body. The cyclone spins the air at a high rate of speed and this causes the dust to drop out of the air stream. Clean air (or reasonable clean air) is then exhausted out of the cyclone into a filter stack where any remaining dust particles are trapped and clean air is returned to the shop.

Why is this important???

• Wood dust is a known cancer causing agent.
  
• Wood dust (especially exotic woods) can trigger sever allergic reactions in many people.
• Long term exposure to wood dust can trigger multiple health rishs (e.g. chronic skin and eye disease, chronic bronchitis, lung capacity,asthma, emphysema, pneumonia, etc.)

To read more about the effects of wood dust, read this report from the Department of Health and Human Services.

Most hobbiest solutions commercially available today are less than adequate. The single stage, cloth bag collectors available are prone to leak more dust into the air than they will trap. For me, having a basement shop and a young daughter at home, I could not run the risk of having a lot of dust in the air which is what prompted me to upgrade my system.

I had a JET 1900DC with a 14" impellar and a 3hp motor.  To save money, I canabolized this system and used the blower to drive the cyclone from ClearVue. This blower is actually the prefered blower by Bill Pentz. The motor runs at 3800rpm rather than 3600rpm giving a little more air-volume.

I purchased 2 9L300BL filters from Wynn-Environmental.  This provides 600 sq/ft of filter media... available filter square footage is one of the biggest limiters of air-flow in hobbiest dust collection systems.

I could not be happier with the resulting system. It may not look like a million bucks, but it collects dust better than anything I've seen or had in my shop...