Thread: Help please with clearvue and spiral head cutter. Help!

I'd say you have a leak in your system.

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

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.

Check for leaks


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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

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?

Originally Posted by scamp

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.

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.

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

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.

Pete that's a great idea. I bet it would not be too hard to achieve. I will look into that. Thanks

Originally Posted by QC Inspector

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

If you don't have a GoPro camera, you could put your mobile phone inside a ziplock bag, as long as it doesn't get sucked into the impeller! A bit of mucking around with some double sided tape and away you go.

Alan...

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

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.

Originally Posted by ronboult

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 .

Good point.
If you are using the standard 100mm outlets on thicknessers or only 100mm ducting you probably won't have enough air flow.

Some photo's of your setup might assist us with finding a diagnosis.