Here's the plans.

[hankh]

Is the width of the drop-slot related to the diameter of the lid/container? If I understand correctly, the plans refer to a container diameter of about 20.5" with a 1.25" wide drop-slot.  I am making a separator that will fit into a drum with a diameter of just under 16". Should I reduce the width of the drop-slot proportionally?
This is my first build. Browzing through the forum, I assume that it will not be my last, as I continue to learn, that is, make mistakes and try to figure out what went wrong. Thanks for your help.

[alan m]

the width of the drop slot should be constant.
althow it is a compromise between wide for the biggger material but less efficient and smaller but only allows down smaller chips.
if you wanted the seperater only for sanding or mdf ect you could reduce down the slot to 3/4" and try that.
its easier to widen later than to narrow

[xtal]

Just recently fired up my 30 gal trashcan I threw together over a year ago
I used  5/8 inch partical board - 2 layer for the top - used standard 4 inch stove pipe  elbo- and exit(straightened)
close fit and bonded with liquid nails , for the baffle I used 3/16 masonite and supported by small wires ,  hanging about 4-5 inch gap , I had to add a small 1-1/4 foam block at center of baffle to keep baffle from side of trashcan.. I never could decide on a blower, but  have now directly top mounted my old sears leaf blower on the center pipe and currently expel back into shop ( I do little sanding ) plan to filter later....
I'm amazed how well this is working ( a 32 gal shop vac ) I see nothing being expelled , but I'm sure fine dust is.
I'm running a window fan(sitting on floor) with a furnace filter attached on slow speed to   to catch some of the fine stuff.  The can in now 1/2 full of jointer and table saw  and floor shavings ....
Problem is now the bearings in my 40 year old leaf blower are going  bad ....
Again I must say my CLUDGE is working great,  then again maybe I just got lucky.......

[tommitytomtom]

Ok, I may be missing something, but are there COMPLETE plans for a separator using a 5 gallon bucket ?

[phil (admin)]

Ok, I may be missing something, but are there COMPLETE plans for a separator using a 5 gallon bucket ?

Nope, it has been done 100 different ways.

[tommitytomtom]

Ok, since it's been done a 100 different ways, has there been a study on how efficient certain designs are versus others ?

[BernardNaish]

 This is a site that encourages independent though, experimentation and sharing results not just plans. There are a lot of builds here with ideas and results from various designs. I wonder if you have read enough of this fabulous web site? With respect that is the only way you are going to understand enough and get the full benefit. It is great fun.
Hope it goes well and please let us know about your build and how well it works.

[tommitytomtom]

I'm ok with the independant thought and experimentation. I can build it, and I have cruised around this site. I will gladly post my designs as soon as possible. My approach will be from a certain ".ca"'s perspective. Looks like I'll build the cyclone at some time too.

[BernardNaish]

Great news. Go to it.

[buzz]

I would like to thank all the contributors of this topic.  I got a HF DC on sale total ~$160.  Turned it on it's side, used the Wynn filter, made the trash can baffle and now have a decent dust collector.  All of the construction ideas was from this site, except for a few minor tweeks. Works well and I am pleased.  Keep up the experimentation. 

[dbdors]

New to this group, been away from woodworking for a while, but starting up again.  I have a Delta 50-760 DC with 5 micron bag.  Now that I'm starting up again, I'm upgrading my DC.  I had a 35 gallon fiber drum that I wanted to use as a separator for many years, but never set it up.  Then found the Thien baffle. I had a couple of 4" connectors from Rockler, but never used them.

After discovering the Thien, I bought a 30 gallon drum, installed a baffle and mounted the drum on the cart with the DC.  Will post some pictures.

Next upgrade is to add the Wynn 1 micron cart.  Hope to have it this week some time.

[mrlysle]

Hello all. Brand new here. Discovered Mr. Thien's baffle through of all places, YouTube! lol I've been an avid woodworker for 40 plus years, but had quite a spell where I just didn't have the time to do anything. I'm getting a shop back together now, upgrading/modifying some of my tools, building jigs, etc, etc. Just like so many others. I will post a help question in the next day or so, and hope you experienced folks can help me. Before I discovered the "Thien baffle" and all the separators built on it's design, I found a dust collector build on YouTube that looked appealing to me, and from the video I watched, it looked like it worked well also. So I ordered a fiber drum, and built it! Made a couple boo boos, corrected them, and finally thought I was done. Let me add also, that I don't own a DC, but rather use a 16 gal, 6.5 peak horsepower shop vac for my workshop cleanup tasks. I just didn't know any better! I can't really afford a DC right now anyway. OK, having said that, the vac works fairly well for what it is, and I get nice airflow through my new fiber drum collector/separator. But what I'm finding now, is the shop vac is "scavenging" some dust/planer shavings/debris, from the bottom of the drum, even when the hose is just laying on a clean floor, and not actually being used to suck up stuff. It's not extreme, by any means, but it's more than I think it should be. So I'll post some pics of my build, and ask for y'all to help me,and give me guidance/suggestions. Like any other subject with which we are unfamiliar, I'm learning so much, and have become fascinated by this whole "dust collection" subject. I appreciate all the hard work and experimentation you all have put into this, and hope to be able to contribute myself someday, to help others. Ok, enough introduction. Thanks for having this discussion group! 

[BernardNaish]

I am sure a Thien baffle will sort out the scrubbing. Can you give us a link to to the "U" tube build?

[mrlysle]

Hi. Thanks for the reply! Yes, here's the YouTube link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lNDc66V1_64
I also just realized I put my intro in the wrong place. Not totally sure how I screwed that up so bad! lol Anyway, I'll copy and paste it where it goes. I also have pictures ready to upload for a new thread I'll start for my help question.

[jnug]

I am truly impressed by Phil's efforts and the efforts of those that attempt to beat back the dust dragon.

Myself I think that the one thing some of us might have going for us is simplicity. In my case, much of my woodworking activity involves hand tools. I make chips more than I make dust and I make them in a way that allows me to clean then up without much trouble. My power activity is restricted to anything from dust to very fine dust and power tools that are not handheld are two only. I can feed dust from the handheld power tools into a simple dust collection system without much trouble fortunately and my actual tool drops are few and close by each other.

But this dust collection thing is such a complicated area of endeavor. Once you bring multiple drops over distance and different types of workshop materials for cleanup into the picture, the ability to suspend in air the really small dust particles long enough to get them into the spot where you want them collected, combined with things as large as wood chips is a tremendous challenge it would seem. In addition, it does not appear to me to be an environment where larger or more powerful in terms of blower is necessarily a big part of a solution. We would like to think we can always brute force our way through something. But it appears to me that particularly given the need to suspend really tiny dust particles, the right size blower for a particular system vs the largest is not just better but critical.

In my case, I have this Woodstock W1049 lid well sealed on a 30 gal. can for a separator and it works remarkably well. I fully expected that it would not work at all frankly. Yet at least to date, in a rather small sample size, everything that I am making with power appears to be finding its way to the bottom of the can under the lid. Now I have to believe that some very fine dust is up in my canister filter. But cranking the cleaning arm on the filter has yet to drive it down into the bag. My bag is still empty and everything appears to be in the garbage can.

So the things that have to be responsible for my good fortune to date are:
- proper sealing of fittings
- very limited number of drops (basically one 4" tool port and 1 drop to a hood which I also detach and midify for haldhelds)
- very short runs of hose (4" in and 6" out of the separator to the DC)

Honestly I just don't believe that my stretch of good luck will last much longer. So I am going to build a simple Thien in the sense of having it suspended inside the can as opposed to a top hat or I am going to build the simplest top hat version that has plans I can use. I am going to try to retain my 4" in 6" out approach to the hose. I suspect the difference between the two is helping to encourage the dust into the garbage can instead of heading for the impeller and filter of the DC. So I want to try to keep that I think.

I do have a question about the baffle. I saw one proponent of the Thien system who claimed that the baffle drop should be half the diameter of the inlet. So a 4" inlet would make a 2" drop. However in reading posts here, if you are producing mainly dust to fine dust there is the view that a smaller than standard drop is better. Is that anecdotal information or do you guys that really have a basis in information and experimentation agree with that view? If so, is there a size for the drop that makes the most sense? I have seen 0.75" forwarded as a possibility.

Again, I am never going to have a complicated system of multiple drops over distance. So the very reason this most simplistic solution that I have now works at all should also help me make a Thien work more reliably giving me more confidence that I will be surviving on more than blind luck......I hope.