J. Phil Thien's Projects

It's been awhile since I have been on the site but I came across an interesting source for 55 gal drums that may help out members looking for such a thing. We were doing some home improvements and when we were looking at insulation we decided to go with Icynene foam. Once they showed up at our house yesterday I noticed that the materials were stored in 55 gal drums that looked like they have a banded top where you release the band and the comlete top comes off instead of a sealed two bung style top. So I talked to the guy that runs the company and he said that they do not disppose of the barrels but give them away to people that ask. The other thing I found out is that the barrels that the foam material come in can be lightly cleaned with no leftover residue and they are perfectly reusable for anything and even have a liner in them sprayed by the manufacturer. The other barrels for the hardener are not as useful so we are going to use one as a burn barrel. So if you want a hopefully cheap local source for barrels look in the phonebook under insulation and see if you have an Icynene installer nearby and he may just give you some barrels for free. Just thought I would share this in the hopes that it helps someone else out.   ;D

Paint it white with some blue pinstriping and a 10x loupe and you are looking at copyright infringement beware of Lucasfilm. Next up a DC that would look like C3P0.

Looks like a pimped out R2D2. ;D Good job Benny way to think outide the box.

Ret, you could use a flexible plastic slip fitting with screw clamps to connect the DC to the seperator so you don't have to rais it I think if you peruse the other posts you will see a post with what I am talking about. I am not sure about the bearings but they may be sealed and should work in any position.

JakesDad, I think that with the efficiency of the separator you should be able to use just the filter. I would first do a test with just the filter attached to some flex hose to make sure that the amount of material that makes it into the filter is of an acceptable type/amount for you and if this test works then do something more permanent. With all of these great ideas floating around I can't wait until I can get a DC approved by the budgetary committee (aka the wife).

I am not Phil but it could be that the way the fitting seems to direct the chips at the baffle and not in a circular motion this could cause the chips to impact the baffle and not be directed gently in a cicular motion like an elbow fitting would do. Just my two cents.

I like the design. The only drawback I see is mounting the motor to the lid. It would make it very heavy to take off the seperator everytime you empty it. I would possibly place the motor assembly higher up and put a straight pipe with some sort of union or those flexible rubber couplers you can get at HD or lowes that screw on to allow you to seperate the lid from the blower motor. Then you could also do a top of the lid outlet if you do not want to do an angled side one.

here is one on e-bay.
Blower

sorry did not see that it was sold or ended. Here is another one from everyones favorite hardware store.
HF Blower

or the big orange box
HD Blower

I will have to look through my magazines but one had a good design using a squirrel blower and some house filters to use as an air cleaner. If I can find the project I will try to scan and post somewhere for use or will e-mail if someone wants. Wish me luck I have about 200 magazines to look through. :o

DB, I think that you would be able to test at least using good old 2x4 and 3/4 inch plywood if you have the scraps. Then if it works you could get fancy and have a metal frame fabricated. If you are worried about strength I would think that the only thing you would have to worry about would be torque when starting the motor but looking at the pictures I don't think that would be much of an issue as the base does not look very thick in the pictures. Actually looking at the pics again you could do it exactly like the shop vac. Make a 2x4 frame and a L shaped 3/4" plywood top and you could cut a hole through the bottom and lay the vac on its side and then bolt the base to the upright part of the L and you could even use metal plumbers tape to secure it down. I know it may not look pretty but it would be cheap and you could do it yourself in a day. Just a thought. You know what would also be cool would be to do the external separator and then to also do the one that others have done inside the metal ring that holds the bag and filter. You would have two chances to separate out all of the fines and would keep the coarse chips from hitting the impellers which is by itself a huge plus. Anyways just rattling off some more ideas tonight. Have a good weekend. I get to cut down 15+ trees too bad they aren't suitable for woodworking.  :(

Why don't you unmount the blower on the DC and raise it higher more on the level with the inlet for the filter and then you could shorten the flex house and place the separation under the motor like you did on the shop vac. Another thought would be to test and see if the DC motor has to be in that position. Can the motor be unmounted form the base and then rotated in any way and avoid a performance hit? If so it would then allow you even more flexibility to raise the motor of the base an even reorient it so that you gain more space on the mobile base to put the separator. Just some thoughts from what I can see in the pics.

PS if you can move the blower to test it try unmounting the blower and laying the blower on its side with the inlets pointed down and if it works fine then you could place a straight pipe to the separator right below it.

I believe there is a post where someone did the side entry for the separator using a part that was similar to the air-tite top collar takeoff. the only thing I would say was to maybe find a way to smooth the transition in the bottom left of the square part because I would think if left alone it would cause turbulence as the chips and air slam into the side maybe rivet in a flexible section of sheet metal to smooth it out.

I have not built it yet but I got a sweet deal on a 50 gallon drum (free) so I am going to use that and the 2.5" vacuum fittings from Woodcraft. I also bought a 2.5" extension from Home Depot to go from the separator to my tablesaw. One other thing is that once you build the seperator you should not have half the issues that you are having with the filter plugging on you. I believe this to be true because there are to many people on the forum that have had nothing but success with this project.

Actually I have been reading all the posts and Phil actually started out with it seems like a Ridgid shopvac and it worked extremely well for him. I too have a Ridgid and what I did was go out and buy the HEPA filter for the shop vac I own it says it filters down to the 3 micron level and is cleanable I believe it is made by Cleanstream and if I remember correctly they do make them for Shop Vacs. There are lots of guys doing this with shop vacs so I say go for it. I to have to move my mahcines around so I was going to make a rack similiar to some here that have the shop vac stacked on top of the seperator and then add casters underneath to make it mobile.  This is just my 2 cents.

Oh so that is all. I thought it was kind of like a serious health hazard when using plastic and dust collection because you see the pipe with a ground strap as well but I guess that must be to keep the wood chips from sticking in the pipes. Thanks for the info. I think I will be starting work on the separator today.