Homemade Vacuum Cyclone Test

I completed the dust cyclone for my shop vacuum. To finish up, all I needed to do was to secure the pipe through the plywood on the top of the funnel. I did this with some rubber strips, zip-ties, and caulking. It may have been the bost choice so I may go back and do it with some 1 min epoxy (I like that stuff!).

Then I glued the plywood into the top of the funnel with a small rubber strip around the plywood to tighten the fit and to help seal it. Then I just used some normal wood glue to hold it in place. We will see how this holds, epoxy would have worked well here also.

Then I simply put the two couplings on each pipe and attached my shop vac hose and I was done!



Overall, the system really worked great. The only problem was that the 5 gallon bucket wasn't strong enough and would try to collapse if I covered the open end of the hose completely. The bucket I have is thinner than normal buckets so i'll just have to get a thicker one then I should be fine I hope.

It really amazed me at how clean the filter and shop vac can was. I sucked up a pretty good bit of saw dust and smaller particles that I swept up off the floor, all in all about 1/3 of a 5 gallon bucket. The shop vac was empty except for a few long shavings some other larger pieces of trash that I was curious about. The filter looked good and clean so this thing really made a big improvment, glad I built it. You should really consider building one too!

Not a very productive day....

Went to the shop this morning and checked on my cyclone. The caulking wasn't are hard as I was hoping it would be. It was still pretty soft to the touch and I am afraid that it may just suck into the seams when the vacuum is turned on. Maybe it just didn't cure enough, so I am going to let it sit for the weekend and check it on Monday.

Today I did work on my workbench a little more though. All I really had left to do was to put the trim around the edges of the table top. I went to Lowe's and bought some 1x3 Douglas Fir and ripped it down to 1 5/8" which is the thickness of the table top. Then I cut the pieces to fit on miters and began countersinking/drilling then glueing and screwing them on.

I had a pretty busy day and I wasn't able to spend as much time in the shop as I had hoped. We will see how next week goes, maybe I will start on some of the cabinets for the shop!

Homemade DIY Dust Deputy - Part 1

I have decided to make my own dust collector for my shop vac, something very similar to the Dust Deputy just cheaper and hopefully just as efficient. I got the idea from a member of Lumberjocks, jcoulam . He built one himself and put a couple of photos on the Internet and basic drawing which gave me inspiration in making my own. I figured I would create basically the same thing and I would provide more photos and descriptions of how it was done.

I went to Lowe's and bought a few supplies that I would need.
-1 8"x24" piece of galvanized pipe that is split down the length
-1 new 5 gallon bucket and a lid that fit securely
-1 2' piece of 2" PVC
-2 2" plumbing couplings
-1 8'x2 1/2" Shop Vac hose
-1 syringe of 1 min epoxy
-A small amount of self tapping metal screws
-1 tube of caulk



The first thing that I wanted to accomplish was to get the funnel made. I tried it without cutting the piece of pipe hoping to just trim it when I had the final shape and it held securely. This proved to be pretty difficult so I went for a little professional help, my mother's engineer at the truss company who is brilliant at this sort of thing.

We sat down and he came up with pattern that I could lay out on my piece of sheet metal and just cut out my funnel. To do this he used all sorts of math from college that I have forgotten and some odd formulas. In a few minutes we were drawing the cut pattern onto the sheet metal. When I put the cut piece of metal to the test and fastened it together it came out perfect! No cutting necessary. When you screw the funnel together it's best to predrill holes in the overlapping piece so that the screws will pull the underside piece tight.

(I will come back and post the dimensions and figures at a later date so that everyone can do this the easy way.)



The next thing I did was cut a circle out of a piece of 1/2" plywood that was a little bit smaller than top of the funnel so that it could sit down in the funnel just a grunt. This ended up being about a 7 7/8" diameter circle with a 2" hole cut in the middle of it to allow for the PVC to pass though.

Next I had to cut a whole in the funnel so that a piece of 2" PVC could be inserted at an angle. This wasn't very difficult, I just held the piece of pipe above the funnel and drew what looked like the correct cut on the pipe then whacked it off on the band saw. It really doesn't have to be perfect I don't think, just close. Then I took that piece of PVC with the angle cut and placed against the funnel where it would go through at and traced around the sides of it to give me a hole to cut. Cutting this with my jig saw was pretty easy with a fine tool metal blade.



Next I cut another piece of plywood that was a bit smaller than the size of the 5 gallon bucket lid and cut a hole in the center of it large enough to allow about an inch or so if the funnel to pass through it, I think the hole was about 3". Then I cut slits in the part of the funnel that was sticking out and folded them back and screwed it to the plywood. Since I was using wood screws to get a bite in the ply wood I predrilled all the holes in the metal flanges first.



Next I cut a hole in the lid of the 5 gallon bucket and fastened it to the bottom piece of plywood.



Now it was time to start gluing a caulking things. I first used the 1 minute epoxy to secure the piece of PVC in the side of the funnel. Don't put the plywood in the top before doing this because it helps to apply some epoxy on the inside of the funnel here.

Then I caulked around the base of the funnel, the seam in the funnel, and in between the bucket top and the piece of plywood. I loosened the screws between the bucket top and plywood so that I could get a good bit of caulk in here. I sat the funnel upright for the night to let it dry before tightening the screws. The weight of the funnel is pretty good at this point and keeps the joint there decently tight. Now when I tighten the screws in the morning the caulk will act as a gasket (learned that from sailboats although most of you reading probably already know that).





That is all I had time for today and I hope to finish it tomorrow and see how well it works! As you can tell in the above picture I didn't have the top piece of plywood fastened or caulked in place.

Shop Vac as a dust collector.

Currenty in my ever evolving shop I am using a 12 gallon shop vac as my only means of dust collection. It works on some machines pretty well: my sander, miter saw, Kreg Jig, and router table. I can't hook it up to my table saw yet or my skil saw which I have been using to rip panels of MDF the past couple of days (which is working pretty well!).

I can't hook it up to my table saw because the dust port is larger than the hose on the vac, probably 4" when the hose is probably 2 1/2"-3". I checked at my local Lowe's but I was unable to find a converter that would work. I haven't really tried to hard to jerry-rig some sort of setup. My Dewalt skill saw just doesn't have anywhere to attatch a vaccuumm hose.

A bigger problem is the fact that the filter on the shop vac gets clogged and the vacuum's suction power deminishes. I have been looking online at the Onieda Dust Deputy system. Basically it's a 5 gallon bucket with a funnel on top that removes the particles and suposedly most of the dust that clogs up the filter.



The Dust Deputy

I have read reviews online and people have given the Dust Deputy pretty good remarks, so I guess I will give it a try. If it works it should be worth the money!