Thread: Home built cyclone cone

3mm is enough,(easier to shape)perhaps you could make a cardboard cone an use it as a template.then use a heat gun to bend the lexan round the cardboard cone?

ok thanks I guess my biggest concern is getting the shape perfectly conical so the air flows properly around the thing. Would be nice to almost have something like a cone plug to put in the center and apply heat to. Could have just given myself an idea...

When I built mine out of wood, I made a 12" circle and a 6" circle then supported the two together. I do not know how long your cone will be but it seems to me that you could use this to hold the plastic together until it is fasten it together.

From your description I am envisaging something like building a wine barrel, but that concept has just given me an idea that might just work. If I was to make a top and bottom circle out of thickish MDF and screw the edge of the plastic to both top and bottom circles with a screw in each, and heat the plastic as I rolled it, that should do a fairly decent job of keeping the correct shape.

Originally Posted by HeadScratcher

From your description I am envisaging something like building a wine barrel, but that concept has just given me an idea that might just work. If I was to make a top and bottom circle out of thickish MDF and screw the edge of the plastic to both top and bottom circles with a screw in each, and heat the plastic as I rolled it, that should do a fairly decent job of keeping the correct shape.

Cyclone Central 100mm Cyclone Build and Review - YouTube
Here is a kit instruction which should help.It looks to be about 2mm sheet?
MDF would probably be cheaper

Have seen their kit, but I don't think it is big enough to cope with a 6" inlet and outlet. I envisage I will build something along those lines though.
Also they are based out of the UK so might be diffacult getting it here in one piece.

Just a matter of scale ?

Bill Pentz has a scaleable design on his site. You could build one out of cardboard for test purposes, I would. Why waste good material on an experiment.

Is your cyclone just for bulk chip removal so you DC doesn't fill up so fast, or is it going to be used to remove finer particles?
I only ask as i have a 44 gallon drum simply with the an outlet at the top (top is removable) and an inlet at the side with hose on the inside of the drum to push into a cyclone. I use it between my jointer and thicknesser to cut down on the amount of bags i use. Only the fine stuff gets to the DC (unless the drum gets too full) Sorry no pics i can take some but it won't be for a week.
I can fill it in less then an hour of work.

Hi HeadScratcher, I recently built a cyclone unit based on the dimensions as the dust deputy sold by Carbatec. The large diameter of the cone being 150mm/6", the bottom of the cone being 75mm/3" and the overall height being 355mm/14".
To make the shape of the cone I stapled a 150mm diameter disc to one end of a 19mm dowel and a 75mm diameter dowel to the other end.
Next I wrapped paper around the two disc to form the shape of a cone, taped the paper together; then I marked the paper where the disc were. I then cut the excess paper off each end of the cone, then I cut the paper along the length of the cone .
When you lay the paper flat you then have the pattern to cut the material to make the cone.
As you can see in the photo it maybe a bit rough but it works exceptionally well, and I don't have to clean the filter inside the vacuum cleaner.
Hope this helps you out.
Cheers Alby

Thanks guys...

Chris certainly don't want to reinvent the wheel if BP has already done the research and made the pattern available for public use. I will have a look and see if I can find it.

Ueee, yes primary purpose it to catch the big stuff and let the filters take care of the smaller stuff.

Alby, would need to probably need to use something a bit stiffer than paper for a much bigger pattern but the idea can still be transposed.

Originally Posted by HeadScratcher

Ueee, yes primary purpose it to catch the big stuff and let the filters take care of the smaller stuff.

Why make the filter cleaning any more of a problem than what it is, you are just making a rod for your own back so to speak. Get the thing as efficient as possible so the filters get loaded as infrequently as possible and you can exhaust near clean air.

The need for filtration is a cold climate thing where the users need to re-circulate the air as to lose it would intolerable, in the US a lot of them are working in basements as well. Here in Australia we sell filters for specific purposes only as everyone else just exhausts the scrubbed air to atmosphere. I could count on one hand the number of filters I have sold to hobby WW's, commercial users of course are different and I have one none WW customer who is buying multiple units and each one gets a filter set.

One thing I have found since I have been involved in CV is that keeping it simple is very apt and if the KISS principle is applied within the known guidelines then it will work. Putting filters in adds two issues, it slows down air flow and gives you an extra job, both things to be avoided in my view.

Hi Headscratcher, yes you could use a large sheet of thin cardboard but as it turned out for me using a large sheet of paper did what it was intended to do, and this time it worked out.
Cheers Alby

You could make the pattern from 3mm MDF, cheap as chips and for the purpose fairly durable.