J. Phil Thien's Projects

This is really cool. I love your moulded bell mouth! What is the performance like?

Andy - did you ever build this design?

Thanks for the reply Clark!

Yeah, I was curious about the humidity aspect of it. The shop vacs for sale where I live are all wet and dry so I think that will be ok. Changing the water all the time... that is more of a commitment. I'll try it and post back once done and tested for a while.

Does anyone have any comments about design ratios and height of the separation zone vs fines reduction or Cosmas' design with a full circular cutout?

Wow! just started looking at ways to reduce bags on a shop vac and stumbled across the thien baffle - it looks great!

I've been looking at:
woodgears.ca/dust_collector/cyclone.html

and

youtube.com/watch?v=avVyCBht8VY

as models for a shop-vac style system. The efficiency claimed by Cosmas B is 99.5% - of course it was a limited test with a small volume of material.

www.youtube.com/watch?v=S7B-2TtKqJc - this guy claims that a increased vertical height in the chamber results in better fines separation, and an increased vertical height seems to be common to all three quite efficient systems.

It seems like both Cosmas and Matthias are getting very high efficiencies with what seems to be a taller separation chamber. Any thoughts on whether Cosmas design with an open 360 degree circumference for the baffle is better than a traditional 1/3rd closed thien baffle?


So... I've looked at a bunch of threads in this discussion forum and there seems to be suggestions scattered all over the place - but there doesn't seem to be one place where anyone has collected all the suggestions about the ratios and characteristics that are needed to make a thien separator the 'most' efficient it can be. Any thoughts on some ratios or principles to follow? - I did find the pdf diagram here: http://woodgears.ca/reader/hector/shopvac.html




I was also looking at reducing fines prior to the filter and thought about water filtration as a 2nd stage - send output from thien through water and then into the shop vac. Here are some ideas other people have implemented:
youtube.com/watch?v=ZLL0Qha5NOk - sending air from exhaust into a bucket with water - bubble out of water to exhaust.

youtube.com/watch?v=FKlbc2BYy9I -'bong vac' - vac head with inlet taped off bucket, pvc pipe going into bottom of bucket, holes in pipe going into bottom of bucket (across bottom), water, flywire on top, aluminium straps to hold it in. white vinegar to stop foaming, spiral lid with slit on top of all that to reduce foaming and bubbles.

youtube.com/watch?v=l17CLdqyuts
3 stage - dust deputy centrifuge, into water bucket, into and through shop vacuum with filter - looks effective.

I'm unsure if I can be bothered to do the frequent (daily?) water changes needed to make this work - though bleach / vinegar would help with that  :) ... so a bag and hepa filter post Thien baffle might be the way I go. I do like the idea and cost of filtering through water. Has anyone tried it?

Hi Everyone,

Ingenious idea! stumbled across it after looking for a way to reduce the number of dust bags we use. I'm interested in making a Thien baffle to allow better dust collection and more effective removal of fines from the exhaust air.

See you in the discussions!