Thread: Home Made Dust Extractor

Gday George, a vacuum is good but is inclined to clog fairly rapidly with the dust & chips you collect.

'Tis best to try & separate as much as possible of the debris out of the airstream before the vac. This can be done by using a filter bucket such as the Triton Dust Bucket available here in Aus; or by making a homemade cyclonic separator.

Can make a cyclone from scratch, google cyclone dust collector or similar; or use the plans available on these forums, have a look in the Best of the Best forum for the Sturdee Cyclone (or try a forum search, should come up). This is basically a couple of 20 litre buckets, one above the other, with a funnel inside that makes the cone of the cyclone & some associated pipe work. Simple & effective.

Here y'go, some links here & here.


Cheers........................Sean

hi scooter....

thanks for the links.

i was doing some searches in the forum before and came up with the cyclone solution !!!! its just a matter of finding out what you guys call these things....so if i don tknow the name i can not doa search for it !!!!

now i know !!!

thanks a lot fot the reply and the links !!!!

George

If DIY is the go you can try one of these while you get round to building the cyclone. http://www.carbatec.com.au/store/ind..._350_1660_1830 Stick it on a big plastic garbage bin. Attach the router /router table to one end with a hose and attach the other end to a vaccuum. make sure you have a bag in the vaccuum to catch the dust. The chips will all be in the bin. Same principle as the triton bin.

Hi pusser,

unfortunately the link you gave me does not want to open here at work..i will try to open it when i go home...

onemore question

provided that i made my own acording to plans others have tried and ARE working, or if i buy something 'basic' to which i will attach my hoover machine and the other end to my Router , how effective overall (provided my hoover and cyclone are working ok) will the dust extraction be ? what i am asking is this basically:

lets say i start teh router and chips and dust is everywhere. how much dust+chips would the dust extractor suck up !!! 50%, 60% etc ??? rough estimations from your experience !!! ???


Thanks again,

George

I use a dusty for my machinery which is excellent. For my portable machines I use a vaccumm from godfeys (1300 watt i think) connected to a triton bucket and a triton hose to the portable tools. The bucket and vaccuum sit in a trolley which makes it portable and holds it all together. It is quite effective depending on the application. Off my sanders and a biscuit cutter I get way better than 90%. Routing is more variable. Using the router with dust extraction on a flat pannel I get about 90%. Edge routing drops to about 60% (at a guess lots gets into the drum but there seems a fair bit laying around. On a table it depends on the cut. If your fence has suction on top back and under you get adequate results depending on the cut. If you are edge cutting you get most of the dust though the fence suction - if your cut is trapped in the wood such as a dado a dado then you don't get much unless you have some extraction under the table as well either through the router base or by some other device. I would not pt too much store on my percentages as I have never weighed it and they are perceptions only. I do know I fill up the bucket prety quickly when routing which is why I got rid of my small (and expensive) shop vacs - they performed no better. If a Festooly is around I must confess that of all the Festool items around, the only one I truly lust after is one of their big vacs.
Apart from Festool envy the biggest problem I have with my set up is the inability to source truley flexible hoses at a reasonable price, The triton ones work and they were as good as on the two shop vacs I tried but plastic hoses are just not as flexible as I would like.

Duke, if you bother making up a cyclone, you will be pleased at the effectiveness.

Mine isn't the Sturdee one, but when I empty the 20 litre bucket I clean out the vacuum bag, & there is only a little (bottom of a cup?) of very fine dust in the vac bag. Everything else - chips & dust, crap off the floor of the shed, etc - is in the drum.


Cheers.................Sean

You could check out my blog on the forums here, on my one I built

Hi George

For another example check my website.

Ken

Hey George... "Feel the pain"

(Duke talk, for you non-gamers)

Ok.

Thank you all for your replies and links.


I will tgry and source the material and since i have many info now thanks to you guys and try to make one !!!!


thanks again,

George