Introduce yourself...

[WoodCzar]

Howdy, ......... Always wanted a DC. Then, thanks to the internet, see that it more than simply going to the store and buying one, needing to mod them. Thanks Al Gore.

[SlingBlade]

Hey All,
I'm going to be a bit of an anomaly here as I'm not a woodworker. I found the Thien Cyclone on YouTube and am intrigued. I've built a couple of my own coffee roasters to roast commercially and had the base model Penn State Industries cyclone (2HP!) for chaff separation effluent evacuation and bean cooling. To put it mildly it was overkill. I was roasting 10 pounds of coffee per batch so how much chaff do you think there would be? After roasting 500 pounds of coffee there would be maybe a gallon of chaff.

Anyway, I'm building another roaster and want to try something different. The new roaster will be a 5lb batch size, so there won't be much chaff to pull off.

Would it be sacrilege to build a Thien cyclone from steel?

How small can the diameter be and still be effective? I was hoping that 6-8" diameter could work. I have no estimate of cfm and don't know how to calculate it.

I'll post this in the discussion area too but at least I've introduced myself now.

TIA,
SlingBlade

[Dorald]

Just found this site. I was researching the HF DUST COLLECTOR improvement options. Looks like all of you have solved that already. GREAT FOR ME  ;D

Anyway, might be new here but not new to woodworking. Started this "hobby" in high school so I could make mom a set of salad serving forks and before I knew it, WHAM, I'm retired and still working with wood.

BTY: Mom did get those salad forks and thought they were the best gift she had ever received. In fact, they passed on to my son recently.

Anyway, lookin forward learning lots here and hope I can contribute a little along the way!

REMEMBER, THE EARLY BIRD MIGHT GET THE WORM, BUT THE SECOND MOUSE GETS THE CHEESE!!! 8)

[Brentley]

I just joined, I live in Northern CA, and have been doing remodel projects for about 10 years (not the same one). 

Started to get into serious woodworking about 3 years ago.

Have been lurking and reading here for some time but just decided to join up and participate this weekend.  Built a quick and dirty first build after I got tired of my dewalt planer clogging my HF dust collector repeatedly.    Now that I have something that works I will be building another one. 

Have to say that I am quite impressed with some of the craftsmanship and design skill that has be demonstrated  in many of the designs posted up here.

Brentley

[neal4552]

Hello everyone, I am a novice woodworker, and am looking forward to building the Thien Cyclone. Also, where are the plans?

Thanks

Fred

[ninja]

Hi I'm new here, my name is ninja from china. my father is a woodworker. I want to build dust collector for him, and I'm a hobby woodworker. very nice to see you all

[BernardNaish]

Hi, U probably want to build a top hat separator. This is the best build to copy:

http://www.jpthien.com/smf/index.php?topic=563.msg3024#msg3024

Let us know details of your build hopefully with photos and some results. Hope it goes well.    Bernard

[mrblint]

Hello. Henry Blint.  Amateur woodworker.

[County Mounty]

 8)
Hi Everyone from the Land of Snow, County Mounty here from New Brunswick Canada. I've lookint at the Thien Baffle and yes I was Baffle until I started READING about it.. You know Men and Instructions lol. I like making dust and kindling for the garage and I've started Carving wood yup more dust and Kindling but I'm having fun. I plan on building one of these baffle to help remove dust in my carving spot and one for the garage. I'm sure the Mrs will be impress. Also looking at how to reduce the NOISE so she will not be able to find out where I'm relaxing because we all know that It drive's them .... to see us relax..lol she may enjoy my absence after being together for more than 35 yrs lol. Thanks for allowing me to see your wonderful ideas.
:-X

[Mike F]

Hi everyone,

I am in the UK and do a lot of CNC machining for my hobby and for other like minded folk. I generally machine epoxy board, aluminium, MDF and Corian and a few other materials. As you can appreciate, these materials, with the exception of the aluminium, produce a lot of dust and my current filter bag gets clogged very rapidly and needs constant cleaning - not the easiest of jobs. In my quest for better dust and chip removal I have done a hours of googling and research and eventually found the Thien Separator - bingo!

My hobby is competition model aircraft, with an emphasis on composite materials, hence the machining of epoxy modelling board and the like. To achieve this I made my own CNC mill/router capable of 1800mm x 480mm x 120mm (X,Y,Z). I also have an 80W laser cutter, drum sander and large band saw, all ducted to my extractor.

I really need to make one of these separators and hope to make a contribution to further its development. To that end, and with the help of this forum, I have already drawn up a curved entry that I intend to mould in epoxy glass. My system uses 100mm ducting and the entry goes from 100mm diameter to a rectangular section 142mm x 54mm. I will start a new thread with the details and will be looking for advice also.

Many thanks for the forum,

Mike

[egardner1970]

Hey folks, my name is Eric and I am (odd to this group) a custom and classic car restoration guy primarily media blasting cars. However, a large portion of my booth work is with walnut shell media for very fine finishes on high end automobiles that you just don't take to any old idiot with a pressure pot and some coal slag. Anyway, not only do I want to build a Thien plate for my walnut shell dust, I want to design the plate to be adjustable in many ways (damper, neutral vane or otherwise manipulate the airflow) to actually allow fine dust to exit the exhaust while keeping the heavier media in the drum. I would then take the dust to another Thien collector optimized to take as much out as possible before hitting the vac. I am a mechanical engineer of 25 years by trade and do understand that running two of these devices (or cyclones or whatever) in series will make for a pretty substantial pressure drop. The purpose of doing this is obviously economic. If you were to research media blasting reclaimer cyclones in my industry you would quickly understand the raping that happens. Prices for reclaimation are absolutely ridiculous even if they are made of stainless with wear plates! I have substantial experience in 3D CFD software and hopefully I can contribute some info in return. Cheers! -Eric

[egardner1970]

Has anyone purposely tuned their plates to drop only chips and then exhaust dust? 

[johns-mpls]

I'm a hobbyist woodworker in Minneapolis, MN with a basement shop (7' ceiling) in an old house. I've done some lutherie work but these days when I have time it is mostly home improvement. I've been looking for ways to improve upon my Jet dc1100 ever since seeing the dust cloud that wide-drum thickness sanding a spruce guitar top made through the canister filter some years back. Have been reading with interest off and on ever since the mention in a FWW article. Already have a better filter, but now looking for ways to keep it cleaner without blowing the budget or having to raise the ceiling or lower the floor.

[BorgDog]

Hi my name's Dan, I make sawdust.  Not much else, just the dust :)  Just picked up the HF 2HP DC and looking to add on the separator.

Thanks for all the great ideas and plans.

[woodworker100]

Hello all, my name is Fred. I am just getting back to cutting wood after a few year hiatus. I came across this and am very interested in both a shop-vac version as well as for my Delta 50-850 DC.

Thanks for all the great info.