Triton DCA300 Dust Bucket

[edform]

I have one of these Triton dust extraction systems and it certainly keeps my shop vac clean. The slightly transparent bucket allows me to see, however, that there is a cloud of dust recirculating from the bottom of the bucket, up the centre towards the outlet pipe in the centre of the lid. The device has a cloth filter inside the lid which stops the dust leaving the bucket, but it clogs quite quickly in use and has to be rapped against the bucket to dislodge the dust layer and restore air flow.


As you'll see the lid has two inlets, each with a blast gate and a diverter to introduce swirl. With one gate open, the incoming material can clearly be seen swirling around the side of the bucket and descending to the bottom, albeit with recirculating dust rising through the centre of the swirl. I don't understand why there are two opposite facing diverter vanes which must surely produce opposing flows, although this isn't an issue to me as I only ever use a single inlet hose from whichever tool I'm using at the time.

The bucket is 20 litres, adequate for my very small workshop - it's a single garage.

My proposal is to modify the inlets with a single diverter hood so that material from both inlets will be swirled around the bucket in the same direction, and to add a Thien plate a couple of inches down the wall of the bucket. Has anyone here done this with this product?

There is a detailed description on the web of a modification that stacks the Triton bucket on another cannister and inserts a large funnel between the two, plus a long extension of the centre outlet, but it seems a lot of trouble to go to if a simple Thien plate would prevent recirculation.

I'd make my plate from steel sheet cut on a waterjet, and probably mount it on a long bolt, replacing the bolt that holds the cloth filter to the lid. in this way, the plate would lift out with the lid for ease of emptying the bucket.

Comments would be much valued.

Ed Form

[edform]

No one have any thoughts?

Ed Form

[Kelly Bellis]

It appears that you are primarily/ only dealing with very fine powdery dust. My understanding is that the Thien Separator is more typically utilized in dust and chips separation from sawing and planing. If you make a thorough search of the volumes of material on this forum that have been posted by many users, you might find some discussion on its exclusive use with sanding machines, reducing the drop slot's opening width, etc.

The only bit of insight I might offer has to do with the violent cyclonic action rubbing against plastic walls and the resulting charged dust particles. My experiments were limited to the type of plastic used in my old Craftsman shop vac and the conclusion that, at least, certain types of plastic walls should be avoided.

[edform]

The collector is used for output from sawing, routing and sanding so the collected material is a mixture of large and small particles. The material you see on the dust filter inside the lid is fine and results from the process I described in my original post - the bigger stuff stays in the bottom but fines rise up the centre of the bucket.

I'm aware of the static charge spark problem and will probably use copper tape as a discharge path to prevent trouble, although there is zero evidence of static build up - the walls of the bucket remain clean.

I'll search for posts dealing with situations where fine dust is the main material.

Ed Form

[tommitytomtom]

I'd start right at the source of your issue. The separator isn't efficient enough for separating the fines as well. A better design will be more efficient and require less filter cleaning. If you want the separator to be small, check 5 gallon sized designs. If you can benefit from a larger designs, then Phil's design is great. You won't get ALL of the fines collected but you can certainly gain better performance with Phil's design or modifications here.