The Home Machinist!

I threw this together over the last couple of days. No plans, I just saw others on Youtube and made one that I though should work. I cleaned the filter and tank on my shop vac and hooked this up to it. I spent the day cleaning the garage and especially all the sawdust accumulated in my radial saw stand. After all the cleaning I looked at the vacuum tank, completely empty. No dust, nothing. The cyclone thing worked perfectly, all the dust and debris was in the 5 gallon pail.
I welded some of the aluminum parts with my Longevity 200PI but the welds are not visible from the outside. I used alumalloy to "weld" the sheet aluminum. All I need to do now is make a cart that will hold the vacuum and the cyclone separator.

Dan

Well done, Dan.
I'm a firm believer in cyclonic separaters. I run a Vacuflo 960 for the shop and house, a twin motor built in vacuum cleaner, with no filters. Performance is constant because it has no filters, and does an outstanding job, thanks to the cyclonic separator it provides. I endorse the idea heartily.

Harold

ya, I have built several for diferent people that work wood and the like. Biggest is a 55 barrel with a 5 gallon bucket in the top. Basically the air comes in and moves around the bucket where the heavies fall down, and a ring of hardware cloth makes a skirt, slowing the fines that drop out with the stilling air, with the air having to bend upward to the top exhaust. Removing the lid makes for easy scoop cleaning. Most often, cyclone cleaners make a VERY fine dust. I use sump pump hose, to pipe the air outside, eliminating any residue.

I'd like to see the You Tube Video if you have the link. It may answer my questions, thanks.

And I thought I was going to open up a thread on a cheap HF slip roll...
Nice job!

I thought so too

will this take care of the swarfs? not have them go thru the paper filter?

oldgoaly wrote:will this take care of the swarfs? not have them go thru the paper filter?

Swarf wouldn't be an issue, as a cyclonic separate drops particles that are quite small. Very fine dust is about the only thing that stays in suspension. Chips, which is really the issue, wouldn't have a chance of getting to the filter paper.

I run a commercial built-in vac (Vacuflow 960) in my shop and house (same one serves both). It has no filter, as it relies strictly on the cyclonic separator to capture particulate matter. It readily traps dust as fine as cement, discharging only a thin cloud of exceedingly small particles.

Not having a filter is a great way to go, as you don't lose suction, but it does require an outside discharge. A bitter sweet proposition, as it gets rid of smells, but it gets rid of warm or cool air, too! The real benefit is not having to smell the dead flesh smell of vacuums that are used in households that recycle the filtered air back to the house atmosphere.

I am not affiliated with, nor do I hold stock in Vacuflo. I am just a satisfied customer. That's particularly true considering that at about age 7, the vacuum unit lost a bearing in one of the motors (twin motors). A phone call and I had a new motor on the way to me, no questions asked. They didn't even ask for a return of the old unit. They have a life-time guarantee on the units, aside from normal wear and tear. It was their opinion that the bearing should not have failed. Considering the attitude of industry today, I was pleasantly surprised.

Harold

I made a cyclone several years ago for a friend that was starting a fire extinguisher charging business. The dimensional proportions were taken from an air pollution handbook I had access to at work. The theory is that by introducing the working fluid (in this case air) at a tangent to the top chamber it is made to spin and the heavier material in the fluid sream is thrown to the outside, where it contacts the wall of the chamber, slows down frictionally, and drops out into the conical portion and out the bottom. The working fluid, to escape the cyclone through the top forms a second vortex within the outer vortex which, because of it's shortened radius of rotation, spins even faster, separating even finer particles. That's the theory anyway. When its done, you look at it, completely empty, no moving parts, fiters, etc., and a little, logical voice in the back of your head tells you that this solution can't possibly be this simple, or work. When I delivered the cyclone, the guy looked at it and almost laughed. The little voice was talking to him too. A couple of months later, he called me out of the blue and said that he had finally decided to try it anyway and, incredibly, it worked just like it was supposed to. Score another one for mother nature. As I remember, the primary elements were a long thin barrel ( something in the 3 or 4 to one ratio), and a long tapered cone, ending with an outlet somewhat less than the inlet and outlet for the air stream. The outlet pipe in the top projected about 3 diameters into the barrel and the inlet came in very near the top tangentially. This arrangement allowed the outer vortex to establish itself and remain segregated from the inner vortex, getting the really fine material out. Hope this helps someone
Bill Walck

I haven't anything to add to theory yet recall my old Sears shopvac. It was from the '70's or whatever, doesn't matter. The canister was tapered this way.

Dan,
Do you have drawings on how you made it?
Thanks

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