Thread: Home Made Vacuum Cleaner

It all started when I bought one of the small plastic (forgotten name) cyclone separators from the US. I only have the house barrel Dyson vacuum, which as you can imagine fills up in 5 minutes. Once I received the cyclone, I found it to work very well, but to be a pain in the butt, having it separate from the cleaner, and trying to move the lot around the garage. I would rather use the Dyson, & have to empty it all the time.

In the end I started thinking about making my own cyclone based, automatic vacuum cleaner. After a bit of research, design work & general mucking about, I settled on the design you see in the photos.

I got lucky & was given a vacuum motor by a local repairer (ask & you shall receive, well at least sometimes); it had been replaced during warrantee because it had a noisy bearing. One of my main objectives was to make the vacuum as quiet as possible, so a fair bit of sound deading effort, went in to the top section, where the motor is. The noise level difference between having the motor exposed (remember it has a noisy bearing) & having the cover on is substantial.
Another objective was to have an auto function on the machine, so I could plug the tool directly to it. I found a switching unit at Jaycar that I was advised would do the job. Fortunately, I worked out that it wouldn't cope with the amps required by the vacuum motor, 2200w, yes it’s a big sucker (sorry about the pun). Once again I got lucky, as a mate of mine know lots about such thing, & had an appropriate second hand relay that would do the trick, lying around his business. When he turned up, he also bought a delay switch that could be set to make the cleaner run on for a determined length of time, after the tool was turned off. The wiring was beyond me at that point, so he put the finishing touches on it for me.
I put an A/C pleated filter above the cyclone which turned out to be a complete failure; it cut down the suction way too much. I have installed a fabric filter but unfortunately it’s a token effort as I don’t think he helps a great deal. Having said that, the cyclone unit does a very good job of separating out the debris.
Originally the castors where the bottom section of an office chair, in the end I removed the castors from the chair base & installed them directly to the bottom box, basically because they looked really stupid and increased the height.
The bucket that collects the debris has a foam ring installed around the top. What I didn't realise was the foam is memory foam (bought wrong sort) so when the vacuum is running it sucks the bucket up & compresses the foam, I eventually realised what was going on, because of the clunk when the bucket dropped down when the vacuum was turned off. This did not seem to be a problem until one day the bucket somehow moved sideways and left a gap, so when I turned the cleaner on, the cyclone effect was not in action & the cleaner sucked great loads of fine dust out of the bucket up thru the cyclone, through the filter (as I said, filter no good) thru the motor & spewed it all over the garage. It's amazing what a mess can be caused in a few seconds, easy fix though.
Well that’s about it really, oh except, the day after I finished it my brother rang me to tell me Albi where selling industrial type vacuum's for $89.00 grrrr. The plywood alone cost me more than that. If you can’t beat them, join them. I now have two vacuums.
Awe yes, it’s an ugly sucker as well.
David