shop DC and Dust Separator Setup in Place!

[footprintsinconc]

well, i havent gotten any ww done in while and so just about three weeks ago, some asked me to make them a round coffee table (simple one - they were going to put some type of cloth over the top)...when i cut the circle, i had tons of dust all over the place and that is when i said "this is enough!"

i had collected a cardboard 24" round canister from work about a year ago that wanted to use to make the dust separator and wanted to get some piping hung on the wall so that i could start using delta DC effectively.

well the journey then begun...instead of cutting the horizontal brace on the DC, i thought why not go ahead and make a 17" diameter (inside) that can be placed under the DC without modifying it. as i started to construct the separator, i asked Phil a ton of question and he promptly answered every single of them. so a big thank you Phil for all your help!

so i took the 24" diameter canister and made it 29.5" tall with an inside diameter of 17". since i was cutting down the canister, i got the wild idea of putting in a slit that shows how full the canister is. then when i was putting the fittings into the lid of the canister, i thought why not put windows in there to see whats going on....so i added a layer of 3/16" poly carbonate to the bottom of the lid.  its pretty cool to be able to see the dust swirling around in the lid and falling out through the slot....see pics below...

i used 4" thin wall PVC piping and fitting for this project. was way cheaper than anything else out there (pipe and fittings). i used a 4" to 4" coupler (PVC to cast iron) to transition from the 4" outlet in the separator to the 5" inlet of the DC. all of the joints are not glued right now, but there doesnt seem to be any leaks, i did a mock up first and tested the joints quickly to see if there were any leaks, but i will test them later to make sure that there are no leaks. see pics below...

now there was only one problem...how do i transition from the 4" DC hose to the 4" thin wall drain piping? so when i went from a fitting to a 4" DC hose, this is how i transitioned: fitting with a 2" long piece of 4" thin wall PVC pipe with a 3.5" long piece of 4" thick walled PVC piping cut to just under 4" diameter. see pics below....

by doing this project, there are two things that i would do differently:

   1. make the separator wider than 17". i dont think i would go less than 20". just seems to small. it is working fine so far, i cleaned up all the dust in the shop from making the table and dust separator, but still i can see a lot of dust swirling around in the lid constantly. if the canister were wider, the outlet from the cansiter would be farthur from the sides and thus the particles may fall out faster into the canister....i may be wrong about this.
   2. the narrow piece of poly that i put in there to show the level of the dust in the canister may not work as effectively as i though it may have...its narrow and the dust seems to like cling to the walls in a downward spiral hence giving a false level of dust in the canister. after i removed the lid to take the picture, in the process i knocked the canister which caused the dust to fall and in the final picture you can see level of dust inside the canister. time will tell how this feature works for me
   3. i would make the top out of like 3/8" or thicker poly carbonate to get a total view of whats going on when the DC is on!

well i cant think of anything else, so here are the pics:

[footprintsinconc]

here are the results of me using my DC as the not just collecting shavings from the machines, but i now use it for vacuuming up the shop after wards too.

Pretty much all the stuff dropped off into the separator and there was about a cereal bowl worth of dust in the DC plastic bag.  i am emptying out the can at the point where the dust had reached the bottom of the baffle.  the peak of the shavings collected in the can was at the end of the cut out area of the baffle.

Here are the pics: