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20th July 2016, 07:02 PM #1Intermediate Member
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Help please with clearvue and spiral head cutter. Help!
Hi all.
I have a cyclonic dust extractor. I made it from steel, exactly to the clearvue extractor plans. It has work brilliantly for the last 4 years.
Last week I fitted a 24" spiral cutter to my thicknesser. Now almost 100% of the shavings get dumped out the air outlet with next to nothing getting collected in the barrel at the bottom. It seems as though the shavings are so light and delicate that the blower sucks them through the Cyclones outlet before they get a chance to be trapped in the centrifugal current.
Turning the blower speed down seems to have little effect.
Can anyone suggest a solution or has experienced a similar problem? I'm in a pickle as I use this thicknesser daily, and can easily produce a few 44gallon drums worth of shaving in a day, and that's all going out the window. The neighbors are getting cranky too.
Thanks in advance. Marcello
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20th July 2016, 07:28 PM #2.
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I'd say you have a leak in your system.
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20th July 2016, 07:29 PM #3
Mercello....I made my own cyclone using Bill Penze drawings and have powered it with the 2 Hp blower unit from a Gasweld brand 2 bag dusty. Yes it does work well!!! My Thicky is a 300 mm version using standard knife blades. I have noticed that I too get some stray shavings blowing out instead of being contained! Saw dust off the Panel Saw seems to be caught OK just some Pine shavings, and not every time. Perplexing! Some body may have a cure
Just do it!
Kind regards Rod
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20th July 2016, 08:08 PM #4Senior Member
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Another thought - and only a thought - might be for you to take a bigger cuts, which you certainly can do with the new helix head.
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21st July 2016, 12:49 AM #5Novice
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Check for leaks
Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk
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21st July 2016, 03:37 AM #6SENIOR MEMBER
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Help please with clearvue and spiral head cutter. Help!
As Bob says, you may have a leak on the cyclone connection to your waste bin. I also think a blockage at the bottom of the cone is possible.
Don
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21st July 2016, 12:40 PM #7Intermediate Member
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Thanks to all those who have responded. I have checked for leaks, there are none. If I take bigger cuts the problem remains.
My theory is that the shavings (now in a much greater volume for a given weight) are entering the cyclone far to close to the inlet of the blower. Despite the internal forces the cyclone creates, it seems as though the really fluffy and light shavings off the spiral cutter can be sucked off the cyclone walls and straight up the Cyclones outlet. Pity my cyclone is steel. I would love to be able to see inside the unit as it is running to confirm my theory.
I wonder if it would be worth extending the internal "ramp" in the cyclone body to help align and compress the shavings against the walls for just a bit longer before they enter the main chamber of the cyclone? Has anyone tried this?
Either that or make the opening for the shavings at the bottom of the cyclone larger in diameter to reduce the chances of them blocking the opening?
Any thoughts?
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21st July 2016, 12:54 PM #8.
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Minor point but the shavings are not compressed or decompressed wood so have the same volume/weight wood ratio as similar weight chips.
Large shavings do have a greater surface area to volume ratio than chips.
This means they have greater aerodynamic drag than same size volume chips so even though they are larger in weight and volume they start developing some of the gas like behaviour of finer dust.
What you could try is some sort of a chip collector, e.g. a 200 L drum with a simple in-out before the cyclone. You will lose some flow but it may be the only way you can do this.
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21st July 2016, 01:13 PM #9GOLD MEMBER
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A thought about what's happening inside the cyclone. Is their a way to put a GoPro type camera and a strong led flashlight near the top of the waste barrel looking up? For a few moments at least, before it's buried in dust, you will see what's going on above.
Pete
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21st July 2016, 05:39 PM #10Intermediate Member
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Thanks bob. What you said is correct in reference to density and the like. It's exactly what I meant but I didn't really word it correctly. Glad you knew what I meant. The spiral cutter just makes such I huge volume of light shavings that it swamps the cyclone. I have made some adjustments to the collection bin and found a spot in the ducting that was not flowing as well as it should have and it seems to have made a bit of a difference but I guess time will tell. I'm thinking that as long as there is no blockage it might now be fine.
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21st July 2016, 05:41 PM #11Intermediate Member
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Pete that's a great idea. I bet it would not be too hard to achieve. I will look into that. Thanks
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21st July 2016, 08:30 PM #12GOLD MEMBER
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22nd July 2016, 12:58 AM #13
Just my experience.....The only time my cyclone spits shavings out the exhaust is when the cone becomes blocked which is a result of the bin filling up, if a leak developes in the bin/door seal there will be an increase of dust over time as the leaks gets worse, I didn't experience any problems when I switched over to a shelix cutterhead in the the thicky.
Pete
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22nd July 2016, 09:43 AM #14SENIOR MEMBER
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While your thicknesser is 24" I doubt that you are routinely passing 24" wide material through it. A clearview( Bill Pence) designed cyclone should be able to cope easily with that amount of material.
Has any thing else changed at the sametime as you installed the spiral cutter head. Is the cyclone now somehow starved of air flow from the thicknesser- partial blockage in ducting etc
Are you having similar problems with your other machines eg saw dust from a table saw etc.
Would be very interesting to see your thicknesser conected to a transparent Clearview to see what is hapening but thats obviously impossible given the size of your machines .
Anyone else having simmilar problems with a spiral cutterhead?
Hope you sort it soon.
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22nd July 2016, 10:14 AM #15.
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