J. Phil Thien's Projects

Thanks for the input.  I also have my daily driver..55 gal drum with the traditional Thien seperator with a Fein turbo 2 Hepa.  Works awesome.  I now have a 4inch dust collector old delta..I need to build a seperator for it and I was just going to build the traditional top but maybe I should try the top hat for this one. 

Ohh man!  This sounds right up my alley!  I currently have a material handling impeller old delta and I am converting the dust collection system (currently a bag for a vent and its rolling canister over to a Thien separator with a Wynn filter for the output rather than the bag.  So now the impeller would not be handling the heavy materials any more.  Would making my own impeller help out my system in this case?   If so, which plans are you following?  I am googling it now but there seem to be a lot of variations. 

I see a lot of people making top hats now rather than the standard Thien separator design I made. 

Is the Top Hat just that much better?  Why the change up of design?

I need to make another one for the Delta really old Dust collector I now have that has the 4" hose and it is sitting on a barrel already. The top had is exponentially more difficult to build than the standard so this is why I am raising the question. 

The other one I made out of a 55 gal drum was for a 1.5" hose.  And I still need that one.

Thanks guys!
-Eric from Colorado

Great discussions!  That top hat style is neat. 
I primarily have been cutting balsa and basswood and ply and this has been great.  I am now going to be cutting a lot of carbon fiber and G-10 and have a 3 year old that likes to hang out with me in the garage.  So, I built a negative pressure room--mini clean room for my CNC to keep the dust contained.  I have been reading up a lot and I want to be sure I am containing the very fine dust the Thien separator can not spin out.  I have an old Delta 50-179 that I am going to use for the dust "room"  and I would like to retrofit the dust bag to a canister.  Is this just silly or a waste of time?  I need a new Bag filter for the old Delta and I figured I would attempt to change that out to a canister type somehow.  I will keep looking around on this site but I am having a hard time finding just a canister filter setup I can just plumb my existing exhaust into.  Any help to point me in the right direction?  I figured I would replace the bag with a Wynn filter of some sort but not sure how to patch just the filter onto the exhaust port instead of the bag. 
I would post a picture..but do not know how  ???
Thanks!
-Eric

Howdy,

I am Eric and a cnc router user in my garage in Colorado.  I have been using the Thien separator for about 4 years now on the top of a 55 gal steel drum.  Wonderful design and it has worked wonders. 

Thank you very much for sharing your design with all of us!

-Eric