Gary Bajus is President of Beaver Creek Industries, a cabinet manufacturer in Canaseraga, New York. His facility uses a 20HP Direct Drive Dust Collector with Air Lock, and Inverted Standing Filter Plenum Assembly made by Oneida Air Systems.
We’ve been using Oneida Air products for at least 15 years and we've had multiple of their cyclone dust collectors. When we added on some equipment, we needed more dust collecting ability. So we looked around but everything was much more expensive. In the end we decided on the 20HP Direct Drive Dust Collector and Airlock. It's been good and it does everything we need it to do in that part of the shop. We also have other smaller dust collectors still in some localized areas.
Before we bought our current system we had a 10HP Direct Drive dust collector by Oneida Air. That collector is in storage right now but is still working good after 10 years. We also have an older model Oneida Air cyclone collector on the other end of our shop. It’s 15 years old and still working!
Our 20HP Direct Drive sucks really good. It does the job. It's getting the dust out of the work area and into the hopper where it belongs. With the larger stand, it’s easier to pull that hopper in and out from underneath it. We’re certainly not cleaning the filters as often as we were with that smaller model that was overworked. That one just couldn't do what it needed to do because we had too many pieces of equipment hooked up to it.
Oneida Air is in a unique position in the industry. It offers a larger, 20HP system but at a more competitive price point. In fact, the air coming out of it is so clean that in the winter we recycle the warm air back into the shop. So helps keep the shop warm too. Then in the summertime we vent the hot air outside.
Along with keeping the work areas clean, it allows us to process parts efficiently. 20 years ago, when we first started in business, we just had a few pieces of equipment and started making cabinets on a table saw. We used a different brand’s collector at the time, though it didn’t last very long. We soon bought Oneida Air’s smallest model cyclone and we're still using it on our original panel saw!
