Something to watch out for!

[dbhost]

Phil et al.

I posted this thread originally on Lumberjocks, but felt it important enough to copy and paste the relevant sections here. The original post is here http://lumberjocks.com/dbhost/blog/14712.

So I was continuing with my planter box build tonight, and would up thinking, gee the air coming through the quick connect is sort of weak tonight, and I was verified when I made the first pass through the planer and the hose clogged up. Shut the system down, and started tracking down the culprit. It would appear that a single plastic Home Depot Bag got sucked up, somehow made its way past the Thien separator, and up to the cross piece in the impeller grate. Some cleaning was in order, and a quick blow through to get the lines cleared sucked stuff past the baffle and into the DC bag. So I emptied the approximately 2 gallons of debris, including packing peanuts, and lots of curly shavings from the planer. This all got emptied, the bag reseated, and the separator cleaned. I completed my runs with the rest of the lumber, made my needed cuts, and have since glued and pinned the assembly together,

I cut the cross piece out, not sure how smart that was, but in theory, if stuff like bags, and curly shavings don?t get caught on the impeller itself, they SHOULD get passed through to the bag. I must say to those using a single stage DC with a separator like a Thien , if you lose suction, it may be something slinky enough to bypass the separator (plastic bags, LONG shavings etc? that has the inlet jammed up like Houston traffic? Check that first!

[phil (admin)]

A good reminder.

I'm still impressed you sucked up a plastic bag and didn't notice.

W/ my shop vac system I'd notice that.  Actually, I think I'm going to try it this weekend and see how bad it is.

[dbhost]

I go machine to machine currently. I typically plug the DC in with the power switch on, grab the hose, and then attach to whatever I am working on. It would appear that there was a bag a little too close to the hose when I started it up...

[Vaughn]

[Apologies in advance if I previously told this tale, but it's another "don't do this" teaching moment.  ;D]

I cut the crosshairs out of my Harbor Freight DC inlet as one of the first mods. My Thien separator is built into the DC between the plastic bag and the Wynn filter. I while back I noticed a drop in suction, so I figured the filter was finally getting clogged with fines after months of not having to clean it (courtesy the Thien baffle, BTW). To remove the filter, I have to remove the baffle. Here's what I found:



Turns out the filter had a lot of junk in it, but I'm sure that was due to the interrupted airflow the foam mat edge was causing. It had gotten hung up on one of the wood dowel standoffs that holds the baffle in place. The foam survived the trip through the impeller just fine. I had no idea I was missing it. But I've become more observant when I'm using the DC hose to clean the floor around the lathe. I've also sucked up paper towels accidentally and had them get hung on the edge of the cut-out part of the baffle. In all those cases I was able to see it, so I just removed the bag enough to reach in and pull the paper towel out.

[dbhost]

Wow, now I don't feel so bad... I know I've seen that pic but I totally forgot about it!

It's stuff like this that makes me wonder if that isn't enough airflow and suction, what is?

[phil (admin)]

Wow, now I don't feel so bad... I know I've seen that pic but I totally forgot about it!

It's stuff like this that makes me wonder if that isn't enough airflow and suction, what is?

If you can suck up a standard office chair (with arms), you're almost there.