J. Phil Thien's Projects

Hey guys, I could use some advice. Here's my situation...
I have the small Jet 650 DC. It's an older model, and the "funnel" was below the blower discharge. So I inverted it, and put in a baffle (see below). Recently, I emptied it, decided to check the felt upper bag. There was a TON of debri around the (now upside down) funnel and in the bag too! Looked like some planer shavings, and a lot of fine dust.  One thing I have also done is put a plastic bag IN the lower bag to make emptying easier. I think it may have been interfering with the dust settling down into the lower bag, causing scrub. So I removed the outer bag, and just have the plastic bag now.

So these are my questions....

Is the position of my baffle relative to the discharge correct?

Should I make the "gap" bigger than the 1-1/8"?

And should I add a proper upper "ring" with a smaller center hole? Rather than the upside down funnel that's in there?

Also, my shopvac/cyclon, I call it a shopclone, is working well, but the filter had a LOT of fine dust on it the other day when I went to clean it.... the diameter of the separator is 20", do you think I should make it smaller to encourage the dust to drop out more?

take a look at the pics and let me know what you think. Thanks!!


Here's the DC baffle.



Here's the shop vac.

Sonotube or barrels? 

I'd love to find some 20" sonotube. Or a barrel of similar diameter, that's actually cylindrical, not tapered like a trash can. Anyone? Beuler? Anyone?

OK so I got bored... And I've had an urge to make a separator, but I don't really have the room for one on my DC right now (and I have a baffle in it...).  The recent thread about using  vertical space efficiently got me thinking about integrating a baffle into my shop vac. Plus I was thinking of using it for my sanders etc, and I want it to work as well as possible!

Here's what I came up with.



It started with finding some sort of material I could bend into a cylinder easily... I found a sheet of this faux leather finish in the panneling section at the borg. It was 5 bucks... Couldn't resist :D  Then I laid everything out.  I needed height for the baffle, the inlet, the thickness of the divider/lid, and then room for the filter, which is BIG. Honestly it takes up most of the 12 gallon capacity... Dust bags helped, but weren't perfect. 

So I cut the baffle and the lid, I used a short length of mailing tube, the stuff Rockler T track comes in, instead of PVC.



Then I used a chalk line to lay out where they were gonna go. Don't have a straight edge long enough!!



Setup the baffle and lid with a dowel spacer which I left in, and another spacer which I took out once it was assembled.



Then I started rolling and screwing...



Used some ratchet straps to pull it in.





Here's the inlet strapped in. I used expanding foam to seal it A: because I had some, and 2: because I cut the hole too big... Seems to be working fine. The connector is a little coupler that came with the muffler I got for it, I think at Home Depot...



This does bring up the neutral vane thing again... I purposely had the inlet tube extend into the body of the vac, as opposed to trimming it flush.  Thoughts?

So here's the results after vacuuming up my floor and the inside of my router table cabinet...

Nothing on top...



Here's the tub!



Added bonus, I can actually intake 12 gallons of crap now, as opposed to 12 gallons minus the room the filter takes up! Plus it's completely reversible. If I want to use it to suck up water, I just pull out the whole middle thing, un-cap the stock inlet, and go nuts.

As you can see it nearly doubled the height of my vac!! But it still wheels around pretty easily, especially since the hose is attached low, so it doesn't try to tip it over.

Thanks for all the ideas guys, and thanks for lookin!

Diameter that is... I've noticed that commercial cyclones are relatively small diameter. Not hose diameter, but the diameter of the ring itself. So do you guys think there is any benefit to a smaller or larger diameter ring in a pre-separator, other than larger waste storage capacity? 

I also noticed that cyclones tend to be conical. What purpose does that serve?

I just figured maybe we could chat about design in general here, instead of detracting from other guys' posts about their own unit.