Mark & Juanita wrote:
...
OK, lightning is static electricity. If your dust collector can generate a
static spark with equivalent energy to a lightning bolt, some wimpy little
wire wrapped around the pipe isn't going to help you anyway.


Sure it will.

I've seen some impressive sparks generated by a prototype
pneumatic conveyer using PVC pipe. A dust collector is
a pneumatic conveyor. A foot long spark means hundreds of
thousands of volts. But I don't know how much current.
No one was hurt and no fires or explosions resulted so I
expect the current was miniscule.

As others have noted, grounding the system is a good idea to
prevent being zapped by the sparks. They won't kill kill you,
but they might shock you into doing something that will.

--

FF