Five Gallon Pail Separator for a Shop Vac

[ChuckE]

Here's a Thien Separator in a five gallon pail for my shop vac.  I used two inch ABS fittings.  The OD of the Home Depot shop vac hose happens to fit snuggly into a two inch ABS elbow.

[NYwoodworker]

Awesome!  I have been looking for an example of a 5 gallon set up.  How is it working?

[Tacuabe]

I've had very good results with my own setup. IMHO a tophat arrangement is quite well suited for that. For what is worth, you may want to have a look at what I did at

http://www.jpthien.com/smf/index.php?topic=740.msg4266#msg4266

You'll find that, with some ingenuity, a very compact unit is quite feasible. Cheers!

[NYwoodworker]

Very nice Tacuabe.  I really like the taller slimmer profile that gives you.  How often do you find yourself have to empty it out compared to the amount of work to do?

[Tacuabe]

I do not work on a daily basis. Maybe three or four days a week and for a few hours. However, I do couple the shopvac to the table saw, bandsaw and edge sander using it as a mobile dust collector.

At any rate, the dust container fills up in about a month. And the vac container is usually virtually empty.

I check the vac filter each time and usually give it a shake or use a soft brush to get rid of any loose dust. I also wash the filter cover with warm water. That's quite easy to do and it dries in about an hour. The cover is very effective to capture any fines that get through and offers good protection to the filter. At this rate I estimate the filter will have to be changed after one year of use.

Hope this helps.

[NYwoodworker]

That was a huge help.  I will be building one within the next couple of weeks.  I will share when I am done.

Thanks!

[Tacuabe]

If you need any other data (such as measurements) fire away.

[giovanotti]

Hello to everyone. Here are photos of my build. It is made of zinc plated metal canister and some sheet metal for inlet.
Baffle plate is laser cut from stainless steel. Baffle is inserted to the slits on the side walls of canister (made with Dremel).

Exhaust tube is lathed out of steel and tries to mimic trumpet air intake.

Final build is used in combination with cheap vacuum and is used to vacuum ash out of pellet oven. Cheap vacuum was clogged instantly, now I need to clean the filter of vac maximum 2 times in winter. Beside metal build, you can see prototype, made of two plastic canisters (10liters each), some plastic tubes and hot glue gun magic. It works!

Cheers!

[giovanotti]

Team work. Comments welcome.

[phil (admin)]

So doubled separators, how is it working so far?  Any comments on what gets to the 2nd unit, and reductions in suction, etc?

[giovanotti]

I did some experiments.
According to the producer, my vac has 500W motor, which gives at measured voltage 228V current of 2,19A.
Vac out of can only with its own filter, produced 1,84A.

1 Cyclone (under vac) draws 1,79A. Fully closed inlet tube (maximum load to the vac): 1,74A. Using simple U-tube manometer, I measured 510mm water column

2 Cyclones draw 1,8A without load. Fully closed tube: 1,78A. 340mm water column
For info: "regular" shop vac with motor power of 1500W should provide between 2000 - 2500mm H20

Level of separation is very high, still last part of very fine dust has to be filtered with (disposable) bag filter.

I filmed 3 videos, but I still need to reduce file size.

[phil (admin)]

Wow that is great data, I look forward to seeing the videos!

Nice job!

[retired2]

Great piece of work.  I love data!  Anxious to see the videos.

[giovanotti]

Can you see this video? Maybe "Save link as..." and open it from local computer? I do not want to publish over Youtube yet (too amateurish)

http://freeweb.t-2.net/e-stack/MVI_6661.mp4

[Bulldog8]

Nice work! That is a really nice side inlet and I'm jealous of your stash off buckets.