My mini cyclone

[tony2096]

Fed up with all the dust generated by my hand-held power tools I investigated dust extraction. Perused the various threads on this site, got swamped with info from Bill's site http://billpentz.com//woodworking/cyclone/index.cfm and couldn't decide what I needed (Do I really need 6" ducting everywhere? I'm only an occasional wordworker and some of these cyclones look bigger than my house!)

Carbatec salesman recommended I buy their dust extractor, even though their catalogue said they were for large machinery, not hand-held tools. Was inspired by Wayne's min-cyclone http://members.optusnet.com.au/waynedavy/ and Mike's seemed quite simple too http://www.mgsweb.com/woodworking/cyclone/minicyclone.htm so after many more evenings surfing the net I took the plunge and headed off to Bunnings.

Riveter+rivets: $20
1m 6" pipe $28
30l plastic container: $15
Flashtac tape: $37
Aluminium flashing: $33
Aviation snips: $24

I planned to use my old vacuum cleaner and some plastic piping and see if this would be good enough.

Printed out the plans from Bill (Mr Cyclone)'s spreadsheet after setting 150mm as the diameter and off to work. I used the 6" pipe for the main cylinder rather than metal. Riveting wasn't as difficult as I'd thought and the Flashtac tape is great for sealing joints.

Today I finished the main body cylinder and cone so decided to give it a try. Used some masking tape to temporarily connect the vac to one end and the plastic tubing to the other.

Results: seemed OK picking up dust from the floor - the plastic drum was filling up nicely as I started to clean from my last project. Reasonable suction: all dust and small bits of wood sucked up but nothing larger. I was hoping nothing would get through to the vac's dust bag but when I checked there was a handful of fine dust in there.

Questions:
Is it worth tweaking (possible?) to reduce the dust going to the vac to zero?
Any advice on improvements before I attach it to some kind of stable frame (I'll be shortening the vertical tube into the drop bin in the final version)?

Tony

[outback]

You need Waynes help on this, he's the dust guru of the group.
But,
1. I can't see the long outlet pipe helping matters.

2. My first attempt used a plastic drum, and the vac damn near collapsed it, if your'e getting any distortion it may be letting go of the vacuum here, meaning not as much "suction" at the business end.

3.In the pic it looks like the inlet pipe goes straight in and not to the side of the cyclone body, maybe just an illusion.

4. tweak away, the distance the outlet pipe is inserted, and the outlet pipe will all affect efficiency.

5. Depends on how much dust is getting through, and how much is accepteble, Depending on what I'm doing, I empty my 25L steel resovoir twice before cleaning the vac filter. heaps of sanding means I do it every time, no sanding, just picking up regular TS dust, plane shavings, I reckon it would last for ages without touching the filter.

P.S. more pics when your'e finished, I reckon your'e in for a certificate from Wayne and the GRUD

[scooter]

Gday Tony, cyclone looks good, similar dimensions to mine.

I'd shorten the waste pipe even at this experimental phase, it'll be killing your efficiency I'm tipping. To my novice eyes the rest looks OK, from memory the bottom of the large central air outlet pipe (to the vac) should be below the bottom edge of the inlet pipe by about the diameter of same inlet pipe.

Mine is powered by an old Sadie shop vac or an old Electrolux, I've got the hose from the vac to the cyclone as short as practicable but am using a 20' vacuum hose going to the cyclone with excellent suction. so the other hoses should be OK I'd reckon. Bugger all dust gets through to my vac filter so you should find the shorter waste pipe will increase the cyclone efficiency and separate the dust & chips better.

As already mentioned I'd use a metal drum, once you have it sorted the suction is amazing & you'll probably collapse the plastic one. Either build a structure on the drum lid to support the cyclone, or make a new lid with MDF or similar, rout a groove for the drum top lip to sit in (sealed with weatherstripping) and hold on with some sort of latch, springs on hooks, or something.

Good luck mate...........cheers..........Sean

[Wayne Davy]

Tony,

Looks good and the guys are right - that bottom pipe to the drum is way to long even for a test. What is probably happening is the fine stuff is getting pulled back up. Don't even use a bottom bit of pipe, just connect the mini-cyclone cone straight to the drum. Also, shorten the vac pipe (maybe put your old vac upside down). The shorter the better.

And, yes a GRUD certificate will be arriving this week sometime.

Cheers,

[tony2096]

Thanks for the input.

Outback: my vac is obvously not as powerful as yours - the drum doesn't seem to suffer any distortion. Yes, the inlet is angled in and down - even fixed an air ramp on the internal wall of the cyclinder ala Bill's instructions.

I half finished my frame today, intending to have just a 100mm outlet pipe into the drum. Wayne, I'll see if I can still accommodate a direct cone-drum connection.

Will post more pics when I'm done.

Looking forward to that certificate :) !

Tony

[ptc]

love the moggy.
ptc

[outback]

Just a note. I was mucking 'bout with mine this morning, (cyclone you pereverted things).
I thought I had a plane shaving caught somewhere , probably in the cyclone inlet or outlet pipe. I decided to try and backflush the sucker out with compressed air. When I did a fine sparay of dust came out whee the inlet pipe went in. I thought I'd used enough sealant to sink a ship, apparently not.
You'd never see or know the hole was there except for my playing around with it, I can't see how it's helping the cyclone action though.

[Wayne Davy]

Outback,

Small leaks can be hard to find and will stuff up the suction and, possibly, the cyclone action if they are in the actual cyclone of course. I (like tony) have found that flashtac tape very effective (not the prettiest but who cares).

[Wayne Davy]

Tony,

Attached is your GRUD certificate ;) You can download a larger one from
http://members.optusnet.com.au/waynedavy/FunPics/GRUDMembershipCerificate-tony2096.jpg (cant post it due to size limits on the forum).

Cheers,

[outback]

Thanks Wayne,
My leaks are only real little, so I don't think I was losing any suction to speak of, but they sure as hell couldn't help with the efficiency of the cyclone.
Anyway, half a tube of silicone later I reckon I got more goo than hole. :)

[tony2096]

Here are some pics of where I'm up to.

Made a basic frame to hold the cyclone vertical (pic 1).
Araldited the lid of the plastic bin to the bottom shelf (pic 2). Thought this was a neat idea but am having second thoughts as the drum is not that easy to screw on...maybe I'll improve with practice.
Shortened the outlet pipe to the drop bin as much as possible as per advice above.
Re-tested: lots of dust in the vacuum bag :( !
Found the cyclone had clogged up at the junction of the cone with the outlet pipe due to too small an outlet hole so adjusted the cone to go outside the pipe instead of inside (pic 3) and then re-taped it.
Re-tested. Much better: vacuumed lots of dust off the floor and checked the vac bag: just a smidgen (pic 4) and the drum had all the rest (pic 5) including cubes of wood over 10mm each dimension so the suction has improved since the weekend.

Wayne: thanks for the certificate!

Now I've just got to try to connect it to the tiny outlet ports on my hand-held power tools and try it out in anger...

Tony