J. Phil Thien's Projects

I seriously doubt that you would be happy with a 4" elbow on a 5 gallon bucket. You would have to do a lot of trimming just to make it fit. A 5 gallon bucket is better suited to a 1.5"-2"

Quote from: tvman44 on February 05, 2014, 05:08:18 PM
Bulldog8, how wide is your slot?  I am thinking about a 3/4" wide slot.

I don't remember what my slot width is, but its somewhere between 3/4"-7/8" my original tophat had a wider slot, but in this build I was trying to maximize fine separation. My planer and jointer have helical cutter heads so the chips are very fine. Back when I had a straight blade planer, I needed a wider slot to accommodate the shavings.

Quote from: giovanotti on January 28, 2014, 11:04:23 PM
Fixt Giovanotti said, "I live within walking distance of Thien Baffle nirvana"

Seriously though, nice work. The end result looks like what I imagine a commercially made product would look like if Phil were to take the product into production.

Blocks under the baffle, like protruding from the wall? I certainly don't think it would hurt as long as they were not tall enough to cause turbulence above the baffle. But I really don't think there is much benefit either. In my experience it appears that once dust goes below the baffle it is separated and stays that way. I see a nice cyclonic swirl of dust/chips dipping under the baffle.

Nice work! That is a really nice side inlet and I'm jealous of your stash off buckets.

The 120 degree portion is what breaks the air stream so the dust can settle. If you only had the center portion, dust below the baffle would stay in motion and not settle as efficiently.

Quote from: galerdude on January 27, 2014, 07:43:38 PM

Quote from: Bulldog8 on January 27, 2014, 04:55:19 PM
Last year I remodeled our laundry room. I put new sheet rock on the walls and ceiling. (8x10 room) When I was getting ready to clean up the dust, I used a shopvac and my 5 gallon side inlet separator. It did better than I expecting. I was able to clean the room without clogging the filter, but in my experience it wouldn't do for all day work as you would have to clean the filter several times to keep the vac working.

In the past few weeks I've considered trying it out with ash from the pellet stove. Currently, I use a normal shopvac and am able to get the stove cleaned, but the filter is completely clogged by the time that I am done.

Steve

This doesn't pertain to using a Thien Separator but for the last 10 years I've had success just using a bag with no filter in my 8 gal. Shop Vac to clean out our pellet stove in the house. We only burn about a 40lb bag per day and I clean it on the weekends usually. A vac bag lasts the whole winter season. Have never experienced any blow by. I'll bet with a separator a guy could really get some mileage out of a vac bag  ;)

I am a one time per week stove cleaner as well. I may try the separator and the bag and see how it goes. I use a pleated filter in the vac an the suction drops off very noticeably during the cleaning. When I dump the ash, I fine the filter completely caked.

Last year I remodeled our laundry room. I put new sheet rock on the walls and ceiling. (8x10 room) When I was getting ready to clean up the dust, I used a shopvac and my 5 gallon side inlet separator. It did better than I expecting. I was able to clean the room without clogging the filter, but in my experience it wouldn't do for all day work as you would have to clean the filter several times to keep the vac working.

In the past few weeks I've considered trying it out with ash from the pellet stove. Currently, I use a normal shopvac and am able to get the stove cleaned, but the filter is completely clogged by the time that I am done.

Steve

It worked for me. I used a piece of sheet metal for my baffle. I didn't want to have support rods in the chamber, so I made a  "support baffle" out of 3/4" material keeping it smaller than my metal baffle and then laid my sheet metal baffle on top of it. I did put a couple of flat head screws through the sheet metal into the support baffle to ensure that it stayed where it belonged.

Realizing that there is still an amount of spinning air below the baffle, I chamfered the edge of the support baffle to mitigate any effect that the support may have. It works well in my situation, and really seems to get the fines. I don't have anything in the shop that produces large chips or stringy material. My planer and jointer have Byrd cutter heads. When I had straight knives on my planer, I would get some long strings of wood from poplar and soft maple. They were tough to get through the duct work and would cause some separation problems.

Quote from: revwarguy on January 08, 2014, 08:34:57 AM
I agree with just about everything retired2 said in his 1st post on this thread.  Until there is a way to actually measure "better separation of fines," most of those enhancements based on it are just unknown, and a slight improvement at best.

I would beg to differ, with utmost respect to retired2, about the transparent sides, though - I think it is an advantage to be able to see if anything is clogging inside, and, well, I just love looking at the swirl.  Maybe that's not worth the expense to some (it didn't cost me anything as I had the stuff already) but I would have paid for the plastic sheet anyway.  Just don't use plexiglass (acrylic) as it will be an exercise in frustration.  My Lowe's carries Lexan and you can find it at sign makers or online.  You don't have to get one long, narrow piece - the walls can be done in sections.  Since you are going to seal the walls in place, you don't need to screw into it, either - it just has to be cut with a tight enough fit to stay in place until the caulk sets up.

Having a transparent wall on the inside of the separator has shown me that with about 1 year's use, there is NO wear, scratching, or dulling of the window from the dust against the material, and I believe that worrying about the walls wearing down is unnecessary.  I have only been collecting sawdust however, not cleaning up after sandblasting equipment.  In that case, you should probably worry more about your hose.

Retired2 is right, though - just doing a basic one will get you very close and one you will be happy with every time you look in your bin.

I agree with the use of transparent material for the walls. When I built my first separator a couple of years ago, I used acrylic or poly,  (don't remember which it was) it was just scrap stuff I had in the shop. I found it beneficial for seeing when to empty the barrel, I can see that dust continues to swirl in the separator instead of dropping through the slot when the dust level gets very close to the bottom of the separator.

Looks nice, no suggestions other than your right, need to get rid of the lip at the edge of the plexi wall to maximize performance.


Steve

Well in my case all of the dust was either separated into the collection barrel or ended up in the filter. Nothing remained in the plastic bag. I changed from a filter bag set up to the Wynn and plastic bag and found the increased air movement was really loud. So after seeing that no dust ever went to the bag, I closed the bottom of the filter housing as shown. There is still a bag in there, it's just shortened and rolled up. I open the bottom and let the bag hang down to collect the fine powder dust when cleaning the filter.

Steve

I have a similar system, 2 HP Griz, 6" mains and 4" drops, I get great separation, but see some differences between your baffle and mine.

1. The opening in your barrel is smaller, therefore a tighter diameter in the tophat. (I don't think that is significant, but that is a guess)

2. You have a lip between the outer edge of the drop slot and the outer wall. That will effect separation.

3. The baffle is very thick, that doesn't help the separation of fines.

4. Drop slot is very wide. Should be as narrow as possible. I've built two tophats for my main DC. The original had a wide drop slot due to the shavings I got from my planer. The second was 7/8" as I had upgraded my planer to a Byrd head and get small chips instead of shavings when planing.

5. Could add another ring to the bottom of the tophat to allow a seal of weatherstripping to go in the groove where the tophat meets the barrel.

6. Hard piping from the tophat to the DC is better than flex, but people have done it both ways.

7. If you tested your baffle by dumping handfuls of saw dust into the inlet you will likely find that you get better separation when connected to a machine and dumping a lower volume of dust into the separator.

Bottom line is that I think the greatest concern is the lip when the wall meets the baffle and the width of the drop slot.

Steve

If it's all sealed up, how are you going to get the bell mouth into it?

I think that tall chamber helps. The fact that the outlet is lower than the inlet seems to "pull" the airstream downward. I see a very distinct downward swirl. I produce a lot of fines sanding end grain cutting board with a drum sander. The separator has worked very well to keep the DC filter clean.