J. Phil Thien's Projects

Has anyone purposely tuned their plates to drop only chips and then exhaust dust? 

Hey folks, my name is Eric and I am (odd to this group) a custom and classic car restoration guy primarily media blasting cars. However, a large portion of my booth work is with walnut shell media for very fine finishes on high end automobiles that you just don't take to any old idiot with a pressure pot and some coal slag. Anyway, not only do I want to build a Thien plate for my walnut shell dust, I want to design the plate to be adjustable in many ways (damper, neutral vane or otherwise manipulate the airflow) to actually allow fine dust to exit the exhaust while keeping the heavier media in the drum. I would then take the dust to another Thien collector optimized to take as much out as possible before hitting the vac. I am a mechanical engineer of 25 years by trade and do understand that running two of these devices (or cyclones or whatever) in series will make for a pretty substantial pressure drop. The purpose of doing this is obviously economic. If you were to research media blasting reclaimer cyclones in my industry you would quickly understand the raping that happens. Prices for reclaimation are absolutely ridiculous even if they are made of stainless with wear plates! I have substantial experience in 3D CFD software and hopefully I can contribute some info in return. Cheers! -Eric