J. Phil Thien's Projects

Quote from: markmart74 on July 21, 2017, 07:35:20 PM
Hey fellas. Piggy backing off this post.... I have a top hat over a home depot bucket and one over a square box that I built. I noticed the box will fill 3/4 full before dusts starts going to into the shop vac whereas the bucket fills about a third before it goes into the shopvac. I put a plexiglass window in both and I see more turbulence in the bucket where as the dust in the box is more settled. Is the box better in keeping the dust down? Your expert is appreciated

I'd start another post and add some pics of what you've got.

There shouldn't be any carry-over until the vessel is very nearly full.

I think we put $2.70 of postage for shipping USPS in the US.

Something like eight ounces.

I'll have my wife figure out how much to Canada, if it is only a buck or two more I can absorb that.

I've just now updated the page again with how DIY templates work, so check that out.

For shipping I've been doing padded envelopes via USPS, is there a way to do that to Canada that doesn't add a bunch of shipping?

If you wanted to drill hole into the center of a panel you'd need to remove the template and clamp it directly to the panel.  Absolutely doable but you may want to wait for me to update the page on using the drill bushing with templates you create yourself.  I should get that up on the site in the next week or so.

Multiple separators seems to help but obviously at quite a cost in airflow.  But it seems the more chances you get at an airstream, the cleaner it gets (even the super-fine stuff).

I agree w/ retired2.  Maybe a better solution would be an alarm or shutoff for the existing system, to prevent it from overfilling.

I was hoping there would be an SMF plugin that could go through a thread and "grab" copies of attachments hosted elsewhere, and switch them to hosted here.  But I'm afraid I can't find anything.

Maybe we could turn the thread into a PDF and post that somehow?

This is why I'm anti-change.

Quote from: nucww on June 24, 2016, 07:13:53 PM
Did anyone notice that this collector looks a lot like the ideas in " An inline separator idea  "?

I guess sort of, maybe on steroids.  My effort was to use the existing spin occurring in the pipes.  As soon as you start adding all those components, I imagine the frictional losses would be substantially higher.

Quote from: Toni C. on June 15, 2016, 06:06:20 AM
Hi there.
I am a hobbyist ww from Spain and I am planning to make one of your baffle separators. I don't know if this question has been asked before but what would happen if the baffle was made conical in an inverted funnel shape, would it perform better or worse? I am a complete ignorant about dust collection so please bear with me. I just think that it would help the dust not to stay in the baffle and fall down if any stays at all. My assumption is that being conical upwards it wouldwould be more difficult for the dust to climb up spiraling to the center outlet.

I insist, this is a complete newbbie question, so don't get mad at me.

No dust stays on top of the baffle, there is no need to make a funnel, and the funnel can work against you as the debris builds below.

I think the attachments folder was full, I just made some more room, though, so you can try uploading pics again.

For videos you could always upload to Youtube.com and link from here.

Quote from: Bill in Buena Park on March 16, 2016, 05:12:04 PM
Hi all, I have been a fan and user of Phil's baffle for close to 10 years now and never knew he had a Forum!  And Phil - I felt like I was taking the woodworker's SAT just to register!  :o

LOL, we need to maintain high standards to keep out the riffraff.

Every time I've relaxed those questions, spammers start signing up and posting all sorts of porn or links to online pharmacies, stuff like that.  Of course, I have to okay the first post, but they seemingly consider it a "win" even if only I see their post before canning it.

But I will confess some people get downright perturbed at the registration questions and send me fairly annoyed E-Mails.

To the best of my knowledge, the first person to use the "top hat" name goes by variations of the name junquecol:

http://www.ncwoodworker.net/forums/showthread.php?t=52913&highlight=thien+top+hat

Others before him used DC rings.

My recollection was that we saw DC rings being used first, then junquecol basically made a ring and called it a top-hat, and then from that point on we saw more people duplicating junquecol's efforts and fewer rings being used (although many still use rings).

There really isn't a history of development, though.  Lots of parallel stuff going on.

Quote from: kayak on February 26, 2016, 02:11:27 PM
Thank you for the response, R2.  I guess what I'm looking for is the first person who built their own pre-separator side-inlet Thien tophat, regardless of whether they constructed the tophat from scratch or used a collector ring cannibalized off of a dust collector.  I also wonder who first used a clear sidewall on the tophat.

May I ask why you want that information?  You can feel free to PM me.

Quote from: bbain on February 16, 2016, 07:18:44 PM
Good to know. 

I have a clear top on the "push" separator for my planer and the big chips from the planer usually don't even get a full rotation before dropping below the baffle, I guess I was expecting to see the same thing.  Makes sense that the lighter dust from the table saw might not drop below the baffle right away.

Yep, another kinda surprising aspect for most people is just how quickly chips settle-out.  From our perspective the chips don't look that much different than the dust, but from the separator's perspective it is like mountains and atoms.

Quote from: bbain on February 15, 2016, 06:55:04 PM
Having a clear top lets me see what is going on inside, and I can see that some of the dust is getting caught up high in the airstream and just keeps going around and around.

That seems to be a problem no matter what.  I think there is a perfect size to weight ratio for sawdust that likes to stay animated.  The same thing happens with cyclones.  As long as it doesn't sneak out the exit tube, it doesn't matter.