J. Phil Thien's Projects

Thanks for the response. Its was not at all flippant.  I built a "top hat" variety Thien separator that works fantastically well on a large planer. I thought I'd try it on our problematic drum sander and it collected an amazing amount of very fine dust. Without microscopic analysis, I'd say the dust in the Thein collection bin was basically very short and fine, "fluffy" wood fibers just as you would expect from sanding. The separator that I built has a 1-1/4" slot. Since installing it, our 5 HP Oneida Dust Gorilla has maxed out at about three inches of back pressure on the HEPA filter. If we can maintain that and not cake the filter, we will be happy campers.  In any case,I am building another Thien to be dedicated to the drum sander and I will use a 3/4" slot on that unit.  I will report back on the "fine-fiber" performance for that configuration.  By the way, venting outside is not practical for us. We live in a retirement community, and it would only give the residents another reason to belly ache!

Thanks. Seems that this dust collection issue is somewhat divided into chunks and powder. Our problem is collecting the powder in order to not circulate it back into the shop air while avoiding the inevitable clogging of a filter meant to filter this same fine powder! Somehow, most of the fine powder needs to be removed before reaching the ultra high performance HEPA.

We built a large Thien separator for our shop planer and it works just great. Now I want to build one for use with our drum sander. This sander is responsible for rapidly clogging the HEPA filter on our new 5 HP Oneida Dust Gorilla cyclone.  Is there an optimum slot width that I should use to collect the very fine sander dust? Chunks and larger pieces of wood are not an issue here.  Also, has anyone built a smaller version of the Thien to fit a 30 gallon plastic barrel?

We just started using Oneida 5 HP Dust Gorilla cyclone collectors in our retirement community wood shop. We have found that the large HEPA filters can become very clogged, especially if the dust bins are allowed to over fill. Just wondering if using the Thien separators on our dustiest machines ahead of the cyclones might alleviate this.

I just joined the J. Phil Thien's Projects group and find that I cannot post. I see the list of existing posts, but there is no "New Post" button displayed anywhere on the screen.

I am using a Mac computer. Is that a problem?  I have a question concerning the use of the Thien separator before a 5 HP Oneida cyclone collector to reduce filter clogging.

Thanks