J. Phil Thien's Projects

Galerdude:

Hope these pictures help out. The cone on top is pop riveted on, don't know if it contains a bearing or not. As smooth as it turns, I suspect it does.The shaft is about 1/2" square with the bottom being round where it goes through the bottom brace. The brace does not support the shaft, it just keeps the alignment straight. The flappers are approximately 24 gauge flat metal bolted to the square shaft. They stop about 1" from the pleats of the filter and have a piece of approximately 1/8" thick rubber bolted to the plate. The rubber piece is actually sandwiched between 2 pieces of metal. The main plate and a piece about 1" wide on the back for support. The rubber piece extends about 1/2 way into the pleats. Hope this helps. If you have anymore questions fire away. If you would like more detailed pictures tell me what specifically you need.

I am not sure how much the dust shows up at the bottom of the filter but this is what I have been fighting. These filters were cleaned after I tried the internal baffle (that didn't work as well as the external tophat design).

I built a cabinet for the wifes sewing room. I used about 30 bd ft of pine, ripping, routing and drum sanding and this is what was in the filter.

Before I removed this filter for these pictures I ran the flappers each direction about 5-6 times. This is the "weak" filter and still has this much dust in it. There is probably another 2 cups of dust on the cone below the filter mount. As stated this is the "weak" filter, the other one fills up faster and seems to collect more dust. On a 2 filter/catch bag setup it seems 1 side is "strong" and 1 side is "weak" for lack of a better discription.

Any ideas why this much bypass please let me know. I am just using it and keeping an eye on efficiency of the separator for now. Trying to figure out what I have done wrong.

Thanks,

Raymond

Check out this flapper design on this website

http://www.wynnenv.com/paddle_cleaner.htm

Ron

RonS: looks like a great retrofit. Too bad that Wynn doesn't sell kits. Their statement about compressed air being better, I will not argue the point. There are a lot of times that I use both. Turn the flappers a few times to knock stuff loose and then use air to blow it off. Works great. If you regularly use the flappers the use of air is reduced. IMHO if you do not reduce air pressure it is easier to tear your filter.

The retro idea looks like it would be easy to do for someone that has that type filter and no flapper.

Thanks for the link.

Raymond

Thanks Raymond for posting all the photos and detailed info. Good stuff! I really like that link that Ron posted! That's the same Wynn filter I have and that project looks totally doable. Thanks, Ron. I'm thinking back and forth now on doing either the flapper mod or just putting an HF filter bag back on it. It does reside outside so to speak. I haven't taken the filter off for a few months but I do go out and slap it around a bit and use the air compressor on it once in a while. I get no noticeable debris falling into the clear bag below so I guess my paranoia about it stems from the possibility of moisture, from being in a unheated space, causing it to cake up in the filter. No noticeable decrease in performance. If it is caking up, my thought was I could at least beat the crap out of the bag if needed. Too cold out there to find out for sure so will wait till it's warmer to jerk the filter for inspection.
   Now, on to your sanding dust situation: I don't do much sanding, not like some of the wood fabricators on here. When I do sand projects I don't use the DC system. I mainly use my ol' trusty dusty Doyle Vac-It that I picked up from an Upholstery Shop going out of business back in'78. It has served my needs well over the years. Included some pics. No filter to clog. The super fines appear to go in the bag (heavy duty bag) and most goes in the canister. I highly suggest anyone picking one of these up if ever available, quite the work horse. Having said all that, my DC system contains the debris from 3 machines; planer, table saw and the cnc router. I don't feel I have a sanding dust situation but if I did, I would venture to investigate the idea of pre-containment at the sander such as RonS's  suggestion to Steve Sawyer in this thread http://www.jpthien.com/smf/index.php?topic=635.msg3651#msg3651.

Thanks again for the quick reply and detailed info on the flappers.

Gale