Building The Dust Extractor System

[Opelblues2]

After reading many hours of information on the web, I took the advice of the better informed than I and started looking at a proper cyclone unit. Please understand that the process of this build is restricted by area of installation and costs and the time frame that I had to comply with council.

In the beginning I was looking down the path of metal so I put up a post for anybody that may have a manual rotary swage and jenny former. I did look at the prices on line, new and second hand from sheet metal shops for ducting to be made for me, and so far the price was in the region of "we really don't want the work, so we will overprice it " and as I had posted the cost for the lowest price was $ 2380 for

6 @ 150 x 1200 pipes/tubes
3 @ 100 x 1200 pipes/tubes
3 @ 150 lobster back bends (400mm inside curve)
3 @ 150 Y connections
1 @ 150 square to round

In the post there was a lot of forum members that offered lots of help “Thank You All” plenty of links for companies, that build great equipment and it would be a long term investment to buy brand new, don't get me wrong I have factored in the cost for a sheet metal company to buy the gear over a long term.

I have done very little woodworking in the last 6 months, due to factors outside my control. As I stated in the post looking for gear, beware government bodies are looking at backyard hobbits as another income stream.

Lots of forum members did offer one idea plastic storm pipe and offered help to do such, I checked the price of such “ouch” well will hurt the pocket. Anyway a couple of weeks down the track and with little progress on the system other than the cyclone, total cost $85.
In my job I have access building sites around the Mackay Region, Whitsundays Region, and the Isaac Region and as luck would have it, there was two high rise apartments and two estates being constructed in Mackay, well got to know the site foremen and asked if there was any off cuts of 150mm storm water pipe that was being dumped YEP. “In the bin I go” with the words in the back of my head “dad were did you get that, I know don’t tell me”

I had collected lots off cuts and two full lengths of 150mm storm water pipe, now to start on the duct system, I know where it is being placed as I had allowed for such when I started to build the work area in the shed. Now the floor is 200mm off the container floor giving room for the pipe to go under, the cyclone is in the back right hand side of the container with the blower unit beside the collection box on the floor, the blower is vented out the side of the container. This has been done this way to give me the most height for the cyclone.

Coming out of the cyclone it is 150mm square to round, with the pipe is fixed to the back wall, first off the large radius bends and down the left side wall going under the work area floor, in this length there will two branches that will go to the floor sweep and the Bandsaw,

down under the floor to half way up the container where it will branch, the second radius goes across under the floor and up under the miter saw station on the right hand side, the main line on the left hand side of the container will branch again under the drill bench, will follow through to the doors of the area were the router bench is mounted, each station will have it own blast gate.

[pjt]

You have done well by the looks of things, long radius bends, 150mm pipe, slant into the cyclone.

The pic that does stick out is the outlet from the cyclone, square corners are not good, I'd say that you do know that and you are restricted with height so it had to be, a potential improvement to the square corner would be to add a curve inside the duct on the outside of the square corners just like I have done here
off evap bidirectional.jpgfront directional curve.jpg
If you look closely at the first pic I have taken the air in two directions with an upper and lower curve, in the second I am guessing this is the same as your duct outlet re the square corners, I couldn't do much with the internal corner but I can help the flow with the external part of the corner. It's just a simple bit of sheet metal, I think I might have cut a square piece of ply to size then cut an internal radius which I just nailed the sheet to it give it some shape.




Pete

[Opelblues2]

Thanks for the reply.

I have a radius inside corners, the box forms the outer shell for the draw line. at the moment im in the process of recovering a hard drive the failed, the photos that were posted "should have said that in the first post are off that drive. as for the build I would like to make this post as detailed as possible, to be able to show others how cheap I am

[pjt]

Thanks for the reply.

I have a radius inside corners, the box forms the outer shell for the draw line. at the moment im in the process of recovering a hard drive the failed, the photos that were posted "should have said that in the first post are off that drive. as for the build I would like to make this post as detailed as possible, to be able to show others how cheap I am

OK all good



Pete

[Opelblues2]

The cyclone started its life as a brown built cabinet, picked up for five dollars at a garage sale, now the main problem I did encounter was if I made the cyclone to the recommend height and angle for the cone, it would stick out the roof of the shed and the collection bin would only be a twenty liters. Lucky I have mate who has Auto-cad Mechanical and does flow design for a company down south. Gave him the area I have to work in and three months later I got the final drawings with vortex, flow rate set out. It takes a long time to do this when you only pay in Bundy rum.


The main is 500mm in dia, 900mm high. The cone is of course the same in dia but 1200 mm high. All seams are pop reverted from the inside then sealed with super-flex with aircon tape, the aluminum ducting tape, at the bottom of the cone there is a 100mm flange that goes inside 900 x900 square box and is sealed. With a door at the front that can be unscrewed to be able to empty the contents, it has foam tape around the edge to seal. The tape is the stuff that concretes’ use between slabs, recovered from skip bin, the cone was cut with plasma cuter using a radius jig. All parts were hand rolled



There are to support rings one is at the top and the other is where the cone and main body come together, these were used to fix the unit to the wall, and larger area to put sealer for the joints of the body.



The intake ramp is 150 by 150mm at the intake side to 200 by 200mm @ 10deg to horz 500mm long and extends to the midpoint inside the upper body, were a spiral takes over and forces the air flowdown, on the draw line side the pipe is 300mm that is in the centre of the upperbody , what you cant see in the photos is on top of the cyclone the box that goes down to the blower tapers from 300 by 200mm down to 200 by 200mm before going down the side to the blower

[Opelblues2]

Sorry about the slow reply, nasty week. builders back on the ground running, want bins and porta-loos "NOW" on sites from Mackay to Collinsville.

150mm Extraction Plumbing

With this part of the build, I had already had used Sketch Up to do the layout for sheetmetal ducting, for the inside dimensions off the shed, floor setout, and miter saw station, drill station, router bench, bandsaw, floor pick up points and the rolling layout bench. But because I had collected150mm I/D PVC pipe the out side dimensions are different, I had to go and change the pipe size to 160mm O/D this all so changed how the lobster back radius bends and the transitions were constructed.

With this fixed, I made a jig for cutting the segments for the bends, and using the sketch up layout I transferred the sizes to cardboard for the transitions and the junctions. Where the sections came together I bevelled the joint ends, a little dab of Loctite superglue to just hold the joint while hot beading/glue was laid down, I was using this glue on my R/C boat and it worked without any problems on wood, the inside was the sanded and polished, once this joint had harden, air-con aluminium ducting tape was then used to finish the outside of the joint.

The fun starts

Installing the pipe under the floor
Fixing the pipe to walls
Bring pipe work up through fixed cabinets
Installing DIY blast gates
Sealing the final joints
Relaying the floor

Cost: pipe Free/ skip bin
Glue $50.00 app
Tape $37.00 large roll
Pipe hangers leftover 18mm form ply from skip bin
Blast Gates leftover 18mm form ply from skip bin
Pipe Cutting jig As Above

[3 toed sloth]

Hi Opel, fascinating reading. I am thinking about the big dust extraction project also and, although I'm nowhere near as resourceful as you, it's great to see how others go about it. I sometimes find myself on building sites also and it's unbelievable what gets thrown out.

That was a huge bonus having a mate in air flow design! I was wondering what you did for a blower/impeller combination. I've been trolling through the Bill Pentz stuff trying to make sense of it all, like many others, and it's a huge learning curve.

Cheers, Peter

[Trav]

Hi Opel

Not much to add but I'm keen to hear how this works out. I've bought the junctions and bends for the 150mm stormwater ducting, but haven't started the ducting yet.

Keep up the good work!

Trav

[Opelblues2]

Thanks for the replies and likes,

it just a short one tonight as I have walked in the door a hour ago. some of the detail I though of today, the angle of the jig that was made for cutting the lobster back joints was at 11.2 deg from centre, this made a 22.5 deg total segment in bend.
To the find centre line for the pipe I marked it by using a piece of 50mm @ 3mm angle iron 400mm long, using he open face sitting against the pipe I then scribed down the length of angle using the edge to guide too both ends of the pipe and this gave me a reference point when cutting.

I found that the angle doesn't seam to change even if you use different size pipe or the inside radius of the curve is 300mm or 500mm. I remembered this from my fabrication/welding days.

Yes I am lucky that I have friend that works in flow design, but the problem is, his field is not air movement but solidified liquid, what understand is that air, water, and suspended material move in very different ways, don't ask me how or even try to explain it, for all I understood when mark tried explain it was " This is how it works " from there on it was just white noise.

The other concern was the hot melt glue/plastic weld I used was smoothed down with my finger at first, message to self "hot - melt - finger" I think everybody gets the idea, after that I wore a wet pig skin glove to finish the joint. by the way don't scratch you ear when using superglue. ear hair hasn't grown back yet.

I would all so like to up load two sketchup files for anybody to use, but they exceed the file size, they are the pipe flat layout and the shop pipe plan. any ideas how to do this

I'm glad to be a member of this forum, for it has helped me In ways other than woodworking. Thank You All

[pjt]

And we all benefit from seeing what you are doing



Pete

[Opelblues2]

Very short one tonight, its been asked what I'm using for the blower, It is a 400mm squirrel cage blower. now I will point out this is not the best unit too use, as it's designed to push air. now what I understand is the cage is right but the clearance at the exit/outlet of the body is too large and air will go past this point and go around again. I have been given plans to correct this but I have only picked up a second one about a month ago, and I need to strip I down to just the cage.

The motor is 2hp two speed 1450rpm/750rmp driving the blower

[BobL]

I would not recommend using a squirrel cage fan for wood dust extraction because they cannot maintain adequate flow under the the sorts of back pressure that narrow ports and machinery full of sawdust generate.

These types of fancsy have a great flow rate but only under slight restriction. As soon as a laid is imposed on them the flow will drop dramatically irrespective of the motor size used and will just end up caveatting.

The other BIG problem with them is that will very easily clog with shavings and you will be forever cleaning it.

OTOH they make great shed ventilation fans - just moving air and/or very fine (virtually invisible) dust.
I have two of these types of fan in my shed - one in my welding bay which can pull ~2600 CFM if it needs to but I run it at ~1300 CFM.
https://www.woodworkforums.com/f200/s...g-fans-172512/

The other one vents hot gasses from my forge (@ ~1150 CFM)from the highest part of my shed ceiling.
https://www.woodworkforums.com/showth...07#post1816707

A 2HP motor will not be needed to drive one of these for ventilation.
The first one on mine described above is powered by a 1/2HP single phase motor while he other is powered by a 1/4 HP 3P motor.
A 3/4HP will be more than adequate for one of these types of fans.

If you want to handle shavings and fine dust under back pressure then an Impeller type system spun at 2850 or 3600 RPM will work much better.

[pjt]

Yes, Bob's right, this type of fan is not designed for working against any sort of pressure, I have recently installed one of these for ventilation purposes, I did a static pressure test which yielded quite low pressures, can't recall what they were atm, it did develope a bit of pressure at the end of the speed range but not much.



Pete

[BobL]

Yes, Bob's right, this type of fan is not designed for working against any sort of pressure, I have recently installed one of these for ventilation purposes, I did a static pressure test which yielded quite low pressures, can't recall what they were atm, it did develope a bit of pressure at the end of the speed range but not much.
Pete

It's not just the max static pressure, but the fan curve which drops off pretty dramatically.

[Opelblues2]

Good morning all, and what a great Australia Day. its not raining at the moment here in Palmyra Queensland so it looks like I might be mowing my yard today, well I better as I can't see the back fence.

Thanks BobL, the information I have received and been posted by yourself has always been taken in high regard.

The blower that is in place at the moment was being used to move air around the container before I started to build the extraction unit, as it is all plastic I can't modernize it, It is only been a stand in unit until I build the new one with the plans I received got hold of a wile back. you are correct it is the wrong unit for this purpose. The second unit came from a shop refit and had to wait 6 month for the upgrade to happen, it came with 5hp 3ph motor, pullies, belts, and mounting frame and also got a power box.
Now this gear will be used for another project, that's going to be a long topic to post. COST $$$ " have your truck here when come of the roof "

The reason for the second unit is for the parts, pillow blocks, Keyed man shaft, brass hub (Part Of cage Section will be removed) the unit I will building will have a 18mm structural ply body to help reduce the sound/noise with a 400mm aluminium balanced reversed blade impeller mounted in it. the impeller is being made for me as I don't have access to aluminium mig or tig welding materials anymore or the gear to balance it

I hope this helps exlain