Size (depth) of separaror.

[RCOX]

Help!!

I am still getting a lot of bypass with fine sanding dust and some with regular chips and sawdust. I recall comments about the diameter of a separator affecting velocity, which in turn affects separation.

I built my separator like most others have, using a 30 gallon trash can as a catch container, so the diameter of the separator is dictated by the diameter of said container. Because my dc is larger than most people on this site have indicated, I am beginning to question if I need to change the deminsions of my separator to slow down the spin of air. I was watching it yesterday while my wife was feeding some stock for me and I noticed that it is still sucking fine dust back up through the slot from the container below. I have caulked all air leaks that I could find. At Phil's suggestion, I even caulked the trash can which made a huge improvement.

My question is; would it help to enlarge the depth of the separator and be able to lower the outlet pipe a little more? I can also enlarge the diameter and build a funnel to a different type of catch container if that may help.

Or, am I just expecting too much and need to just leave well enough alone?

Thanks for your input.

Raymond

[RCOX]

Mis-spelled separator in the title of this thread. Sorry.

Raymond

[phil (admin)]

Is yours a top-hat design?

About my only suggestion is to make a new top-hat design that is TALLER.  You can make a top-hat as tall as you like.  The larger area will cause a very fast drop in the rotation speed of debris.

If you were to (for example) add 6" or 8" to the height of the top had, and add about 6" or 8" to the length of the outlet tube, and keep the inlet near the top of the top-hat, you should see a considerable improvement.

[RCOX]

Phil: Thank you for the response. Yes, mine is a tophat.

I thought I remembered you saying that making the tophat taller would slow rotation speed.

(For clarification) by adding the extra length to the outlet pipe, this means to fore-go the 1/2 diameter of outlet pipe below the top of separator. Insert the pipe further into the separator and then play with the depth to determine the best separation with the least amount of bypass.

I hate doing 2 changes at a time, but I think I will change to an 8" outlet at the same time. 6" inlet and 8" outlet should utilize my dc to it's fullest potential.

This sounds like a good place to start. I have 2 more projects for the wife and 1 for the daughter before I can start this. I will start collecting the material in the mean time and work on it a little at a time during working on the other projects.

Thanks again for the input. Will update when I have more info.

Raymond