Can I throw away the HF tangential inlet section?

[Anonymous2020]

Have a new HF dust collector.  My plan is to build a top-hat stage and replace the bag with a Wynn cartridge. If I do that, why do I need the tangential inlet part of the HF dust collector.  Why have a top inlet on the filter cartridge (direct from the fan) with a dust pan or bucket sealed to the bottom of the filter cartridge? 

I'm referring to the metal part that the top and bottom bags are attached to.  Can I just throw it away?

[NewCreationWoodworks]

Seems like a shame to throw it away. I'm pretty much doing the same thing as you, and certainly don't need any parts other than the motor and impeller housing. I've had a little extra spare time on my hands lately, so I opted to paint it using various colors. I'll post pictures later, but who knows, maybe I'll turn that big thing into a flying saucer!

[TX_Lenador]

Have you looked at my build and others like it. While my DC was not a HF it was of the same design and I used the tangential drum to create the separator. It works well and have been very pleased with the results. Here is a link to my build. http://www.jpthien.com/smf/index.php?topic=1054.0

[Anonymous2020]

Sorry to be so slow to respond.

The bell inlet is interesting.  What is its purpose and where did you get it?

[TX_Lenador]

Sorry for the late response to the bell mouth. I purchased it online and don't recall the site. It should be easily found. I will say for the one I got that the flange seemed large and after using it a bit I decided to trim it down some. I was concerned that the flange extended to close to the outside of the drum and would allow dust to be drawn to the outlet. If you read in some of the post here it seems that you probably don't need much of a bell mouth in order to improve air flow performance.

[retired2]

Sorry to be so slow to respond.

The bell inlet is interesting.  What is its purpose and where did you get it?

The purpose of the bellmouth is to improve airflow.  There is a table of test data in the thread for my build showing airflow with straight pipe, straight pipe with air straightener, bellmouth pipe, and bellmouth pipe with air straightener.  The latter provides the best airflow.  And TX_Lenador is correct, unless you have a large diameter separator, or a small outlet pipe, the flange on a commercial bellmouth might need to be trimmed off a little to minimize waste bypass.  Trimming a small amount off will not lose much of the benefit of the bellmouth.