J. Phil Thien's Projects

Thanks for the info, Phil & Alan. It seemed to me like it ought to be okay, but I wasn't sure if I was missing some subtlety. I'll let you know how it works out!

I'm planning to build a top-hat separator, and I'm wondering what effect the shape of the lower cabinet - the space below the baffle - has on efficiency. What I'm considering is building a standard, side-inlet, cylindrical top hat, and putting it on top of a simple plywood box - roughly a cube, maybe 2' on a side.

Most separators seem to be built on barrels or drums or other cylindrical shapes with the same diameter as the separator. Is this important? I read about "decoupling" the air flow between the separator and the lower portion and wonder why wouldn't  a larger, rectangular box be better at that than a cylinder? It seems to me that in a same-sized cylinder, you end up with a complementary vortex (albeit, at a slower speed) in the lower portion. What happens if the chips fall below the baffle into a larger, flat-sided container? It seems to my clueless, newbie way of thinking, that this would be desirable.

Has anyone tried this? I admit I'm totally new to this whole concept and probably missing something. Thanks for any input! (And thanks to Phil for sharing such a great concept!)

Hi - I just joined today and thought I'd introduce myself. I'm a hobbyist woodworker, working out of a largish two-car garage. Everything needs to be movable so I can pull the cars in when I'm done. 

I have an old ShopVac wet/dry vac that I roll around to whatever machine I'm using. I plan to build a silencer cabinet for the vac similar to the one in FWW #195 (below), and then put a Thien separator on top of the cabinet. Build in a couple of holders for attachments, etc., and I think I'll have a pretty nifty, small footprint, movable dust collection solution.


I also noticed that Mr. Thien has an article on making an alignment tool for a Ryobi BT3100 table saw. Hey, I've got one of those, too!

Chip
(aka drum365)