J. Phil Thien's Projects

Dusty,

I did my modification to my 12 gallon Rigid just over a year ago and had similar results. Not as clean looking as yours. See post elsewhere in this forum. http://www.jpthien.com/smf/index.php?topic=1210.0
What I have found over the last year, is that the baffle works extremely well. I have gone from banging my filter clean bi-weekly when in heavy use to once every 2-3 months. Before I had to replace the filter twice a year, now I haven't replaced it since building the baffle. All of the large sawdust or other stuff vacuumed up ends up in the bottom and is easily dumped. The inside of the chamber does get a fine coating of dust, but it does not affect performance. As R2 indicated, the muffler does little for sound, but does diffuse the exhaust air. My 1 7/8" hose with one wrap of duct tape fits snugly inside of a 2 1/2" dust fitting and doesn't come loose with the vacuum running and pulling it by the hose.

I am a tall guy and I like the height of my unit so I don't have to stoop to grab the hose and turn it on. I just drape the hose over the top when not in use. Still no clamps to hold it all together, the vacuum inside the unit does the trick when moving around. My one flaw is the inlet hose connection. I pressure fit the dust fitting in 1/2" ply to take the vacuum hose and sealed with silicone - the fitting does flex a bit. One recoat of the silicone allows it to flex but does not leak.

Randy   

Dave,

See the Shop Vac Style Thien separator thread for some ideas. There are some in other threads on this site too.
I think this will take you to it:  http://www.jpthien.com/smf/index.php?topic=1210.0
Many on the web as well.

I did mine and it works great for wood. Not so well for tile dust, it is too fine. But overall, I am extremely happy with my results! Very little fine dust makes it way to the filter. I generally just use mine for cleanup. Have a separate dust collector.

As a side note, I do not have any external clamps on my vac, just the ones that are part of the top. Once the vac is on, the vacuum inside the unit keeps it together as I pull it around. So I decided I do not need them on the bottom.

Randy

My design all started after being fed up with how easily my 12 gallon Rigid shop vac clogged up when cleaning my shop up. It is an older model with the inlet in the top (orange) portion, so the bags for the newer ones would not fit.

After lurking here for a while, I decided I would make a Thien baffle for my shop vac. I didn’t want a separate separator al la “dust Deputy” or a separate can with the Thien baffle in it, I don’t have the room. I wanted to make my separator part of the shop vac itself. In essence, a cylinder that goes between the top motor/blower and the bottom bin. I empty out my bin frequently so not too worried about the dust being sucked out of the bottom bin with such a short distance to the bottom.

The design I settled on has a chamber for the shop vac filter with the Thein baffle set into the bottom bin a few inches. Conveniently there is a step down in the bottom to help seal it. I had lots of scrap wood to use, so I only bought a couple of items: the 24” x 48” 1/8” Masonite and threaded rod and nuts, and only spent $10 on the whole thing. The rest is all scrap material or dust collector fittings that I had on hand from a previous router table build. The dust collector fittings would have cost less than $15.

There is a lip on the shop vac bottom that was perfect to use as a seat for a groove in the bottom circle. But the groove I cut in the bottom circle initially with a 1/8” router bit, did not sit right on the bottom because the bottom was slightly out of round. I had to widen the groove after I had the separator built. I thought of not making a top ring and just put the edge of the Masonite into the mating groove in the top, but that proved to be a hassle. So I made a top ring. I used ¾ ACX ply because that is what I had laying around: don’t do that! Too many voids.

The bottom of the shop vac is about 18 3/8” in diameter inside of the handles. This was used for the bottom circle diameter. The groove was 16 ¾” inside diameter. The top ring is also 18 3/8” and about 3” wide. I used scrap hard maple for the uprights about ¾” square placed every 30 degrees. Once the uprights were attached to the top ring and bottom circle, I placed the Masonite inside and screwed to uprights. It bends pretty easily. Luckily (it was not planned), the 48” long Masonite fit perfectly for all but one segment of the circle, 330 degrees. That is where the inlet is placed.

The inlet is simply a 2 ½” dust fitting into a separate piece of Masonite and a ½” plywood backer attached from the outside. The internal tubing is 2 ½” flexible hose to an angled fitting to a 2” 90 degree sweep ABS pipe for separator. Because the shop vac filter is offset, this internal tubing is not an issue. The center exhaust through the bottom ring is another dust fitting that sort of looks like a bellmouth – wishful thinking…. The Thien baffle is ½” Baltic birch.

A double layer of ½” wide weather stripping (what I had in the leftovers box…) was placed on the top ring for a seal to the shop vac top. This allows the existing top’s “clamps” to be used to attach the top to the cylinder top ring. At first, I just was relying on the groove I routed in the bottom ring to seal it to the shop vac bottom. It leaked at one location even when I sealed the voids in the plywood. A ring of the ½” weather stripping on the ledge of the bottom allowed it to seal up perfectly and still caught the groove for stability. All joints were siliconed to seal.

The weight of the cylinder and the grove in the bottom ring allowed me to not have to use any clamps between the bottom and the cylinder. I also like the height of the unit so I don’t have to stoop down to grab the hose or turn on the unit. It’s about 40” high. It works great!!! I still have an old filter in the vac, but little if any dust is reaching the filter so far. Even when I sucked up dust from my bin under my table saw, very little dust seems to make its way into the filter chamber. I am thrilled with the results!! Note that I have a "muffler" on the shop vac outlet that cuts noise but does reduce velocity and suction a bit.

Being thoroughly satisfied with my crude separator built mostly from shop scraps, I will make a proper Top Hat for my old Delta dust collector similar to Retired2’s design. I might even paint this one..........

Thanks Phil, for a great baffle and forum!
I have been lurking for a while and thought I would finally join.
Amateur woodbutcher since the 7th grade, which was quite a while ago.  :)

I was tired of my older Rigid shop vac getting clogged so fast, so I was looking for something to help. Stumbled across the Thien Baffle in various places, landed here for ideas and finished my version yesterday. Will post to the shop vac discussion once approved.

Next up is a Top Hat based on retired2's version for my old Delta small dust collector.