J. Phil Thien's Projects

Since I can't find my post, and I am coming back after a few years away due to life events I would rather not go into, I figure it would help to re-intruduce myself.

I am a home DIY / Woodworking hobbyist with a garage workshop in Galveston County Texas. I dove headlong into building the shop on a budget with the blessing of my beautiful bride... And I am SOOOOO glad I did it when I did, man have prices shot up!

I'm the guy that wrote the sticky thread "Heres the plans" for building your own Thein separator. And am a Youtuber, one of my more popular videos is an explanation of how the Thien baffle works. At least to the best of my ability...

I digress.

I started with Thien separators with a 2.5" shop vac based system, including a full tubing setup. It worked, but not well enough. The baffle / separator was great, the vac wasn't even close to strong enough.

I upgraded to a Harbor Freight 2HP DC with a Wynn 35a .5 micron washable filter, and a 55 gallon side inlet separator, using a 5" x 4x4 splitter with 2 4" lines...

I am building a smaller shed workshop, with max SQ Footage of 200 due to permit restrictions for sheds in my town.  Thus I am downsizing.

The 2.5" shop vac version is still around, but only really used for drywall work in the house. I am doing a project to do an internal separator and impeller upgrade to the HF DC, this way I keep the dust collection footprint in the smaller shop down.

My family suffered some big losses several years back due to a large number of deaths of friends and family, so I stepped back from a lot of my woodworking forum activity.

We are back on our feet more or less, and I am trying to get back to my prior hopefully helpful input.

I look forward to doing all I can to promote Phils baffle design. This is a brilliant idea, and so very easy to deploy that anyone could do it!

So I am going to try to at least touch base daily, or every other day until this is done. Progress for today is...

Not a dang thing. Been working my paid job, and a little bit under the weather. I ended up with shingles, and I thought it was mostly done, today has reminded me it still f*#(ing hurts...

So first things first...

I have the 30 gallon steel trash can vac separator on a shelf, needs to go. Going to bring that in the house as I am about to hit a bunch of drywall with my RO sander...

Pull the shelf down, set aside.

Pull the 55 gallon drum, disconnect. I am gonna cut my baffle in the driveway anyway...

Once the existing separators are moved, I can then get to the DC... But I have more wiggling to do.

Pull the small air compressor from under the DC, then rotate the DC and stand 90 degrees so I can...

Roll mechanics tool box to the side so I can unplug the DC... Yeah, there is that little detail.

Still waiting for Wen impeller to ship.

Pull DC apart, and scuff with fairly high grit sandpaper.

wipe down with alcohol wipes.

Tape off parts that don't need paint, and shouldn't be removed,

Lay down cardboard surface as painting backer.

Spray with Rigid / Wen orange. Not trying to copy, I just LOVE bright orange in the shop. The HF cheap Chinese green is disgusting.

Let it cure.

Hopefully by then new impeller should be in.

Swap in new impeller.

Assemble except separator ring.

Cut new separator ring.

Futz with angles and figure out risers.

Cut risers.

Mount risers, cartridge filter, and then baffle.

Finally put on catch bag.

Attach 5" to dual 4" adapter.

Test. I have a big ol pile of various dust and shavings that would work great for test media.

Assuming test successful reposition everything, leaving old separator out.

Take some pretty pics and post here.

So that's it. Wish me luck!

@Phil

Sorry I have been out so long. Life happened ya know...

I am so sorry to hear that some jacknut is stealing your generously shared idea.

I'm no lawyer or anything like that, nor did I spend the night in a Holiday In Express, but if there is anything I can do to help with this issue. please let me know.

@Vaughn

I know it's been a LONG time, and you likely don't check here often if at all any more. But I just wanted to touch base on this.

I went as you may recall, with a side inlet 55 gallon drum separator and now need to downsize a bit.

I am going with your idea here. I was hoping I could get more info on how you made the standoffs.

I figure I will get the angles down, then chuck it in the lathe and drill the holes in the dowel material

The concept of a separator is to allow the debris laden air to slow down enough to drop its load, and prevent it from picking the load back up before moving on to the filter. The problem with hair is it has a very low mass, and large surface area, kind of like a feather does, thus getting hair to drop out a moving airstream is VERY difficult.

From the photos, the dusttopper looks like it is a rip off of the Thien separator concept.  I don't see how it would be any better or worse than a home made Thien separator.

I am trying to improve airflow in my DC and condense my workshop as I am going to move from my garage workshop that is 18x20, and into a shed workshop that is 12x16, I need to downsize!

My current rig is an older HF 2HP DC with a Wynn 35A, and I go out of the DC via a 5" hose to a 55 gallon blue poly drum separator with a side inlet.

I want to remove the poly drum.

So plan at this point...

#1. Upgrade the pitiful stock HF impeller with a Wen impeller. Already on order.
#2. Build separator for mounting in the ring of the DC.
#3. Move my 5" connection direct to the DC bypassing the drum entirely.

This begs the one BIG question. How do I mount both the separator, AND the 35A filter?

I am assuming the 35a more or less has the one method of the turnbuckles to mount, so that leaves how to mount the separator.

So if you have done this, could I bother you to chime in and post some ideas for mounting? I am thinking about screws through the ring into the separator, and one or two threaded bars to stand off the "loose end"

Quote from: tommitytomtom on September 22, 2018, 05:32:36 PM
Not much work over the last several days but did manage to cut out the baffle and install for fitment. The rest of the work today consisted of dismantling the dust collector down to the motor, fan housing and mounting bracket. I may weld up a frame to mount the motor/blower housing vertically to allow me to place the suction side directly over the tophat with a short 6" flex hose. Eventually, I'd like to mount the motor/blower housing on the wall in the corner of my shop but I'll need to move some equipment waiting to be restored to use. The baffle itself is 5/8" MDF scrap. I pre-drilled holes in the edge and then added one 5/16" threaded rod for support (not pictured). More later. I've been toying with the idea of adding an "air ramp" to help direct the air/sawdust downward. This will be a later experiment.

Just wondering if you had a chance to experiment with an air ramp?

It's on amazon here: https://smile.amazon.com/Jkl-Global-Sales-10002-Overheating/dp/B07H2DVSGY/ref=cm_cr_arp_d_product_top?ie=UTF8

I will post later when I get this all setup, but looks adjustable and should work.

Instead of replacing the bag with a barrel, I thought about just letting the bag sit in a metal trash can.  And, I?m considering figuring out a way to vent the top of the separator outside instead of into the Wynn filter.

Greetings,


I found this handy forum because I was looking to build my own dust separator and was fortunate enough to find a YouTube video (The Considered  Nut) that mentioned the Thien Cyclone separator and outlined the basic principle... I have to say that this appears to be a very elegant design, simplicity in Form and Function...I was thinking of buying one of those fancy injection molded off the shelf cyclone units, but the cost in some instances for something made in the U.S was somewhat prohibitive, especially for something that is basic in  Form and Function, in my view the commercial unit by design implied high level of engineering... perhaps even computer modelling...It led me to think that I might not be able to fabricate something that would function to the level of commercially molded cyclone unit...


However....Thanks to Phil Thien's forum I have been enlightened...this looks like a great unit, I am going to build it....I have an old two stage Mastercraft (Canadian) dust collector that I am going to adapt this too..

Has anyone done one?


About me

I'm 60 years old and near retirement about three years ago I started to plan for my retirement. I decided to build an open-source CNC machine which I completed about a year ago. I wanted to specialize in making antique reproduction wood signs that utilized Bass relief art. I built the CNC  machine and I built the computer that drives it... with zero experience or knowledge... most of the software that runs on is also open source...I think it's important to keep yourself active and to constantly challenged yourself to do different things and push yourself past your comfort zone...I'd be happy to share  and post about the experiences if anybody's interested..


In the meantime greetings to all very thankful that I ran across this form and I hope contribute in my area of knowledge, I would also like to say thank you to Phil for his generosity by way of sharing this design with all of us...

Its  brilliant....and  will make using my CNC machine a lot more tolerable..

Regards,