J. Phil Thien's Projects

Maybe this, but its only a month old.

http://www.jpthien.com/smf/index.php?topic=171.0

The place where I work part time had a length left over from a customer project as well as a length of 24".  Sono tube of this size is usually used for commercial work, not residential.  Possibly a concrete supplier would be able to point you in the right general direction.

 

Here finally are the pics of the 50 gallon Thien baffle separator I built for my shop vac with the 20" sonotube, & the pvc fittings I made to adapt it over to the shopvac.

The Plexiglass window works well, you can see the shavings dropping during use & I will be able to clearly see when its almost full.  Right now its about 25% full

This has been one of the best couple of hours time & low$ investments I made in my shop to this point.

After 2 weeks, I still haven't changed my opinion, IT WORKS GREAT!!  This is removing absolutely everything from my air stream except for a small amount of some very fines. 

I left the bolts long until this point as I thought that I may need to adjust the spacing, but I am going to cut them off now as I really dont think I could improve in any way on the separation %


Thanks Phil




Put Together


The PVC/Shopvac adapter fittings M & F
You can not really see it well in the right fitting, but the top 1"
is just ground out on the inside until the shop vac hose fits correctly.
To make them I chucked a small sanding drum into my drill press &
rotated the pipe pieces by hand on the table until I got them to the correct fit.
Took less than 5 min each.


How it connects to the Vac & is still removable


Side view showing fitting clearances


Angle view showing fitting placement


Side view showing inlet clearance


Side view of unit complete

I got it built yesterday, used 3' of 20" sonotube & MDF to make the 50 gal drum, made the baffle out of 1/8 hardboard, used a piece of plexiglass I had for a window, & piped in the Shop vac directly on top.

I even figured out how to easily make as many male & female adapters as I want, in about 5 min each, from 2" PVC pipe to match the pvc to & from the shop vac fittings.  This means that I was able to mount the Shop vac right on the top of the separator and still keep it removable & I can now run my shop lines in PVC pipe if I want to.

It works beautifully!!  Better than I expected, even after reading all the forums here.  I sucked up a heck of a lot both coarse & really fine stuff with it & even sucked out my table saw dust bin which was full. End result after about 3/4 hour of continuous use, under both light & very heavy loading, was that there was almost 8 inches of packed stuff (about 12 gal) in the separator &  less than a half cup of superfines in the vac filter & virtually nothing in the vac barrel & I was just starting to notice a bit of drop in suction because of the superfines in the filter.  If I had done this same stuff before, without the separator, I would have had to stop & clean out the vac filter at least 12-15 times!.

I have not weighed anything, but its really easy to see that I'm getting very close to 100% separation including most of the fines.

Total cost of materials including the sonotube & MDF was under $30 Cdn so it fit my budget & was exactly what I needed for the air & dust problem in my shop.  My wife even commented how much cleaner the air was than normal when she came down to get me for dinner.

I will take some pictures of what I built in the next day or so & post them.

Next I guess I need to pipe my shop.

Thanks

Rob   

Super,
Thanks for the info

I will be building it end of the week :)

Will try to post pics when done

I am still unsure about the clearances for the elbow fitting.

Are you saying that as per the following, that all three distances  A, B & C are as close to zero as possible?

Thanks for the reply

I'm Canadian so the terms here are probably different.

Sonotube is cardboard/fibreboard tube used to pour cement into for footings

Redi-Rod is all thread

The actual 6' black hose that came with my shopvac is only 1 1/2 inch with a big 2 1/4" fitting on the end that connects to the shopvac, the openings for the fittings on the shopvac itself are 2 1/4 inches and I found that the 2" pvc pipe that you mention is close enough that a wrap or two of vinyl tape will allow my hose to plug securely & tightly into them.  My plan is to replace the 1 1/2" hose with a 2 1/2" shopvac hose which would have the same 2 1/4" end fittings to plug into the collector.  I figure this would give me far less resistance in the pipe and probably more cfm because of it.

Hi Ive been looking at adding any form of a dust collection system to my 11x14 shop and I ran into this site the other day.  I  have a 2HP 10 Gal Shop vac at this point that I have been using only for cleanup, because it clogs up so fast.

This separator looks like just the thing for me & I will be building one in the next couple of days so I can have actually have a true dust collection system.  I work part time at a builders supply store & have access to all sorts of materials.

I browsed through all the posts on building the separator & still have a couple of little questions that I did not get answered clearly.


1) I plan on using a 3' piece of 20" sonotube & a 3/4" MDF bottom which makes about a 48 gal drum.  Do you think there are any problems with this as  I dont see where anyone else has actually built one out of sono tube. 

2) I see discrepancies in the clearances & placements for the inlet pipe & placement.  I plan on using a top fed 2" pvc elbow.
     a) what should the spacing between the top & the separator plate be?
     b) how far should the elbow be placed above the separator plate
     c) how far should the elbow be from the wall ( I plan of trimming the elbow front edge for fit)

3) I plan on using 1/4" redi rod to seperate the top & separator plate.  is it advantageous to slide a piece of vinyl tubing over the exposed threads to reduce turbulance? 

4) is the placement of the (redi rod) supports critcal in any way?

5)) I only have the smaller (1 1/4"?) hose that came with my shop vac at this point, but after all the reading here will be changing it up to the 2 1/2 " asap because it has the correct ports to take that one.  Will I need to make any changes to my separator design when I make this change?

Thanks for your help and a great website.