Thread: WIP - Yet Another of Bill's Cyclones

Watching with interest, thank you......

Good novel - thanks for posting - keep going!

Oh yeah - and I hope you don't get sick.

Novels are good when well written and entertaining. As BobL said keep it coming.

Oh and stay well!

Regards
Paul

A wee bit more work...

The first two pics show what happens when you don't bend the inlet tabs over squarely or at even depths...you get the grand canyon for joins They soldered up fine in the end (I blew a whole roll of solder just on this bit) and a bit of a bogging will hide the remaining cavities.

It's difficult to see, but in the third pic the tabs on each side of the inlet have been smoothed over with bog. Fortunately the bottom of the inlet is really the only side that could have air going past the tabs and that join was quite good anyway.

The metal work for the top half is nearly done now. It just needs the air ramp put in (it's a bit tight atm and the guide lines for it are wrong) and the transition attached. The transition has all the screw holes prepped and is all ready to be soldered on but I want to prime the interior first and make another ring for the tabs on the round end while it's still free and easy to manipulate.

Hi, I'm intrigued by the photos 11 and 12 where you have made a rectangular shape at one end of the "hood" into a round, and smaller shape. I can't see the joins, only lines on the outside where I presume are scribe or bend lines. Any hints? Thanks

Free to good home: Hints

There is one seam/join there "hidden" at the back of the piece (this is the inlet transition piece btw), but you're right about there being a bunch of fold lines there. There are seven lines coming out from each corner of the rectangle and the seam is hidden behind my thumb in pic 12 but you can just see the line of screws poking out behind it. The attached image is how the piece started off flat after it was cut out of the big sheet of metal.

Bill Pentz (the author of the plans) has a little section on how to do it on his site here and also has a link to this site which I found easier to follow and includes a spreadsheet to help with the measurements.

I found it a tricky piece to make. For each corner there are so many small bends/folds to make that I often over did it. When I figured out that by bends 3 and 4 the flat end should be at about 45 degrees, and by bend 7 it should be at 90 degrees, it gave me a few checkpoints to see how I was going. But it was pretty easy to pull back into line roughly if I overshot.

The big thing to remember is when marking out the piece to cut out, you MUST have additional material on each edge (I used 10mm) for seams, attaching to the inlet and attaching a ring to the circular end.

A little bit of extra bashing just inside the square corners with a piece of steel made for cleaner 90 degree corners and a bit more pressing and hammering at the circular end produced a reasonably decent shape.

On my Facebook album of the project my audience is much less mechanically inclined so I captioned those photos "from rectangle to round...it's magic!!"

Even with the sizing rings in place, somehow I've mucked up joining the upper cylinder to the cone and got half way through soldering the tabs together before I noticed

There are a couple of places where one of the parts isn't sitting in a proper round shape which is producing a shelf or overhang leading into the cone.

My first thought was to bog up the areas but that won't produce a balanced circle and is only a band-aid solution. What I should be doing is fixing the problem itself, so I'm wondering what you'd think about something like this:

- cut off the tabs from both the upper cylinder and cone down to the seam/bend line and smooth out the edges - this should not affect any height measurement as all I'm doing is removing the outside seam edges;
- with a sizing ring in place, tin and solder a ~50mm wide ring on the outside of the cylinder that will also fit over the cone;
- tin and solder the cone into the bottom half the ring - using screws to pull the cone into shape against the ring (probably while a sizing ring is still inside the upper cylinder);
- close up and smooth out any "seam gap" (if any) on the inside with solder or bog.

As far as I can see at the moment, the only problem with this solution is only on the outside where the ring might not be able to be shaped to go down with the cones' shape, and that's purely aesthetic. There should be enough room to get a strong enough solder joint to the cone. As additional support I could put a few "leaves" coming horizontally off the middle of the side of the ring that would get sandwiched between a couple of sheets of MDF that acts as a support shelf in the cyclone mounting frame with bolts/screws going through the leaves.

Just a little one...

I've gone ahead with cutting the tabs off and have separated the pieces. Most of my original score line for the bottom of the tabs is still visible so I'm grinding and filing down to that mark. For the areas where I can't see the score line, I'm running masking tape in a relatively straight line using visible areas on either side as the reference to get the line.

It's looking like a busy week ahead...working on everything other than the cyclone...but I should be able to squeeze in a little bit of stuff worthy of an update of sorts.

I swear, if it wasn't for suburban noise restrictions I'd be heading out to the shed at 3am to keep doing stuff...regulations are no fun for insomniacs

I was wondering how you intend to mount the fan to the top of the cyclone

There's a good exploded diagram here that shows how it all goes together - although mine might be a little different as I'm hoping to use some sort of shelving in the metal box frame that is going to hold the cyclone up.

I haven't gotten around to having a good look at the blower to see how I can attach it but from a quick glimpse I'm thinking that there will be the wooden top layer that sits inside the outer cylinder (that also has the inner cylinder/outlet attached in the middle) and another smaller ring will sit on top to fit inside the lip of the blower intake where it can be screwed to it. I think that ring will need some t-nuts to be able to secure it to the bigger wooden top but that's one of those problems I was going to figure out when I got up to it...which isn't too far away...so hopefully I can be a bit clearer for you then.


I'll have some more pics for another update later tonight, and the good news is that my hack to attach the cone to the upper cylinder has worked a treat.

Some deft angle grinding and filing saw the tabs removed from the upper cylinder and the cone leaving a pretty decent edge. Due to the pressure of bending out the tabs, both edges were a little wavy so they were beaten out flat again and tinned ready to take the next step.

I've still got a bit of scrap sheet metal left so I joined a couple of pieces and cut out a strap to make a ring for the outside to join the two cyclone pieces. Where I joined the two bits of strapping, I beat the heck out of it with a ball peen hammer to flatten the high spot on one edge of the join to give it a flat back side. The back of the strap was then tinned and the screw holes drilled.

With a sizing disc in the upper cylinder the strap was held on with a worm screw ring and tacked in place with solder. When I was half confident this idea was going to work I finished up soldering the strap to the cylinder.

I took the worm ring off and gave it a little beating on the inside to make sure all was flat and good. It was only now that the screws were put in place as the worm ring was too wide and covered the screw holes for the upper cylinder. Now, however, the worm ring was able to fit between the two rows of screws so I could use it to hold the shape properly this time.

With another sizing disc in the cone, as each screw went in I bent the strapping over against the cone inbetween screws with a small hammer. When all the screwing was done I went around the inside beating it out flush again. This way I got a smoother outside and a good wall on the inside.

Once all the soldering was done I took out the screws and sizing discs, took a deep breath and took a peek inside...

HUZZAH!!! It worked


I'm finishing off the evening bogging up the screw holes and the join line on the inside. Next up is probably to fix up a ring for the transition to the inlet and put that all in place.

Threw the air ramp in this arvo and slapped some polyurethane caulk around one edge to seal it. I'll try and do the underside later when this lot has dried.

Had a bit of trouble because I hadn't marked out the ramp's line properly on the outer cylinder while the piece was flat. This seems to be a cruical step that Bill has left out of the main instructions - at least in so far as how because it's covered in a FAQ at the bottom of the page.

Anyway, I got it in there in the end and tacked it in a few places with solder before caulking. I only tacked because as the metal heated up, the cylinder edge and the edge of ramp moved away from each other and the solder would fall through. A bit of light clamping helped but I didn't have anything with a deep enough throat to make it more than 1/3 of the way down the ramp.

I'm a bit iffy as to whether it is in correctly or not. The instructions could really use a picture or two to visualise the "wedge" Bill writes about, and how the bottom of the ramp is supposed to sit "not flush" with the bottom of the intake. But it travels smoothly and doesn't feel or look warped (no "pinging" when I put it in) so I guess I'll just have to see how it goes.

BTW: The caulking is flammable - as I discovered when I forgot to remove the screws on the inlet and needed to heat them to release the solder from them to get them out

Looks good RSG, solving probs as you go your past the worst of the trickiest bits.

A few tips I did as I went (moreso with the vacumm cyclone build) was draw and make a "wedge" which I then wrapped around the outlet pipe and then drew a line on the outlet which is where the ramp will (should) follow, this allows the inside of the hole to be exactly trimmed to size, I followed the same process on the inside wall of the cyclone, I also fitted the inlet to the ramp, then I fitted the ramp and inlet as a unit to the cyclone, fitting parts to each other like this meant it all goes together with ease.

Here's my WIP https://www.woodworkforums.com/f200/v...ne-wip-129797/

A few other things is allow plenty on the seam allowance especially on the cone and cyclone, this way if you get a ledge/misalignment between cone and cyclone it is posible to adjust one or the other by opening/closing along the seam line, alternatively leave plenty on the length of the top of the cone, then fit the cyclone into the folded up cone and mark around at the btm of the cyclone, keep the two in a straight line tho, this gives you an exact place to cut the top of the cone making an allowance for a seam.

For the vac build I folded a flange at the cone to cyclone join and clamped with pipe clamp, nice and neat, with thin mat'l this is not as easy as with thicker mat'l


Pete

Nice one There's some techniques there I'll definately use next time...if there is one...

Anyway, I hit another problem today. My Ryobi gear looks good in their cases and fills up the shelves making it look like I know what I'm doing, what with having so many tools and all. But should I ever dare to use them as intended...well that would be foolish. The part of the router that holds the locking pin decided it didn't like being one piece and broke as I was removing a bit. That's the second time this piece has broken. Hopefully I'll still be able to get a replacement part as it's an "old" model that has gone out of production in the last few years.

I still have a Hitachi TR-12 that I could use, but I'd need to make a base plate and mongrel up some handles for it as it's supposed to be a dedicated table router.

So until I get the routers sorted out and get some flexi duct, I'm at a bit of a stand still for a while I suppose I'll take the opportunity to do what I can for the box frame that this will all get mounted in. Not ideal, but better than nothing.