Patent 7247180 was granted and assigned to Oneida Air Systems Inc. on July, 2007 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
An auxiliary dust collection system can be interposed between a sander or other dust producing tool and a vacuum source, e.g., shop vacuum. A cyclonic separator is connected by a flexible hose to the tool and by another hose to the vacuum source. The cone of the separator is mounted onto the lid of a drum into which the dust precipitates. For a tool that has its own blower, the vacuum source can be omitted, and the air leaving the outlet duct of the separator can be filtered and returned to the ambient. A drop in silencer formed of a sleeve or tube of acoustic foam can be positioned into the inlet side of a filter cartridge following a cyclonic separator. The silencer absorbs a significant fraction of the process noise. The acoustic foam can have a textured surface on the sound-facing side.