Top Hat with 6 inch inlet/outlet

[onesojourner]

I picked up a Grizzly G0548 from the outlet center the other day. I was strongly considering going with the HF collector, but I got the grizzly for $325. Anyways this will allow me to go with 6" ducting. I am building my top hat out of junk I have laying around. The diameter is 2 inches and the height is 12 inches. The slot is an inch and an 8th and the top and bottom are both 1/2". The sides are 2 layers of glued up aluminum flashing. I am not sure if this is to tall or not. The inlet is a 6" metal hvac duct that I have made a rectangle to get more of the air flow in contact with the sides of the separator. Here are a few pics:

[onesojourner]

The inlet is in. It still needs to be cleaned up and sealed.

[onesojourner]

Alright I have things nearly set up now. I have done some testing and the Thien top hat is performing. I have the outlet set at 3 inches from the baffle. I have it set to be adjustable so I may play with it a bit.







The bag had no significant increase from what was in it. I did see some very fine just coming from an uncapped hole in the collector, so I am not sure how it is doing with the fine stuff.

[ducky911]

Nice! good job

In the back of your pic it looks like you moved your motor up on your new DC.  Could you twist it and than put your baffle under it for a direct connection to get rid of the flex pipe that is twisted. Could see a good increase in CFMs.

[onesojourner]

My original plan was to have the separator right under the inlet, unfortunately grizzly thought it would be a  good idea to make the connector not quite square so without some sort of welded up connector there is no way for the inlet to point straight down, or up. I will clean the connection up so that it shorter and straighter.

I did some pretty heavy clean up the other day including sucking out everything in the bottom of my cabinet saw. The bag has a light dusting of fine stuff on it but no significant chips made it through. I think this thing is just about done. The only other test is going to be when I have it hooked up to jointer or planer. If it can digest that stuff I am calling this done.