Dust Separator

Looks great! If you can, you should tighten up the gap between the two pieces of wood. I am guessing you did this distance because of the angled piece of tubing, but see if you can get a fitting with a tighter bend and replace your existing one. You will get increased collection as well as a lot more space for dust/shavings to accumulate before dumping each time.

Great work – I agree that this is a Must-Have for any dust collector/shop vac!

-bob

-- Man is a tool-using Animal. Nowhere do you find him without tools; without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all. - Thomas Carlyle http://www.ffrf.org

Looks like it really works well! I’d better move this from my “bucket list” to the “emergency” list ;-))

-- "some old things are lovely, warm still with life ... of the forgotten men who made them." - D.H. Lawrence

ah bummer I wanted to read your blog on it but the url is not correct. looks really easy and cheap to put together, I definitely need to do that.!

-- Steve - Wasilla, Alaska

I’ve got to make one of these soon. Thanks for posting. It looks like the bottom disk has a curved notch out of it – is that any certain size or just trial and error? Also, does the sawdust enter the bucket through the center hose or the one on the side?

-- Steve in Lawrenceville, GA - http://www.TheCarmichaelWorkshop.com

I am wondering how effective that lower disk is. It doesn’t look like there is a lot of space for the chips to fall down as the cutout you’ve made is a fairly small area. In my experience with the Lee Valley cyclone lid,which is a very similar set-up, just having the inlet like you have and the outlet in the center would do a lot. Might even be better than having the lower disk (?) because the heavier chips would drop down faster . . .

-- Dwight - "Free legal advice available - contact Dewey, Cheetam & Howe""

Hey all, I’m gonna do Drifter a favor and post a different link to this project (hope you don’t mind Drifter).

http://www.cgallery.com/jpthien/cy.htm

This is a REALLY good page that describes this. The bottom does indeed make a HUGE difference – follow the instructions carefully (they are pretty simple) and you will get fantastic results!

-bob

-- Man is a tool-using Animal. Nowhere do you find him without tools; without tools he is nothing, with tools he is all. - Thomas Carlyle http://www.ffrf.org

Bob:

You are correct. I went with the spacing allowed by the piece of PVC. I thought about the possibility of increasing the force of the cyclone effect by closing up the gap between the plates, but honestly this just started out as an experiment to see how well the idea really work in the first place.

Thanks for posting the link!

AKSteve:

Sorry about the link – first time I have tried it. You can try pasting this one or you can follow Bobs link which will show the idea in much greater detail than my build.

Steve:

Follow the link Bob posted for details on the cutout and its size. The air enters through the tube on the side. I was really disappointed the first time I fired it up – that was until I realized that in my excitement to try it out I had the hoses backwards!!

MonteCristo:

As an experiment it seems to work just fine. If I was to hazard a guess, I would say in this instance that because of the small air space in a 5 gallon bucket – the bottom place reduces the turbulence in the upper portion – keeping the particles from “climbing” back up into the outflow tube – purely speculation though.

-- - It's not worth doing if your not willing to do your best.

Looking at Bob’s link I think I see now why the bottom piece is there. My experience is only with the LV lid on a 50 gallon barrel. It seems to create a pretty good cyclone effect with the big barrel below it. They (LV) took some care in designing their lid compared to some of the cheaper versions where the inlet port is just vertically oriented and is not going to create a cyclone effect.

Thanks to both you and Bob for posting. The quest for dust control needs a lot of foot soldiers !

-- Dwight - "Free legal advice available - contact Dewey, Cheetam & Howe""

It’s high time I made one of these- before I do anything else. Thanks for sharing.

Cheers
John

-- Gossamer shavings just floating around the back yard….-Bandit

I made one of these also by converting the Rockler Dust Right Separator into this kind of separator. It is amazing how well this works.

Just got to make a larger version for the HF dust collector soon. I hate cleaning out the bag.

-- -- Don from PA

That is neat. It must create a vortex like the Dust deputy. I’ll bet is keeps the dust out of your shop vac!
...................Jim

-- Jim Jakosh.....Practical Wood Products...........Learn something new every day!!

I built one of these out of a garbage bin with an almost identical arrangement of wood for the lid. I also used some weather stripping round the top half of the lid to try and seal the leaks. I have no idea how effective that was though!

I need to do some work on it though. The suction from my vac is so strong the walls of the bin crumple when I turn the vac on. I’m also thinking I might replace the weather stripping with some silicone caulking spread round the rim to try and create a better seal.

Never the less, it works incredibly well as the vast majority of the dust and all the chips end up in the bin, which will save me a lot on vac filters.

I made the mistake one time of pulling on the hose a little too hard. The bin caught on the floor and toppled over, spilling all the dust and chips out. Lesson learned and I now have a bungee cord wrapped over the top of the lid to help keep the lid on.

Stormthirst:

I have been thinking about expanding the capacity of my collector and building a rolling cart that has both the shop-vac and the collector together for greater mobility and reach. I have seen similar arrangements in other user projects as well as on other sites – like Mathias Wandel’s site Woodgears.ca

Thanks for sharing your experience – makes the rest of of pause and consider – “What if….”

-- - It's not worth doing if your not willing to do your best.