ibuild

This is a way to avoid needing to changing filters in your workshop vacuumer every hour. I thought I'd make one and perhaps it could be of some inspiration regarding composites as well...

Here is an image showing the consept, it basically cleans the air by slamming any particles to the wall in the cylinder/cone in combination with the vortex/turbulence involved;




I'll try to put some explanations in there when I get to it...

ibuild

I guess this particular thread might be better suited in another section like Tips & Tricks or something, anyway it's posted now obviously and I just hope it's alright.

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The cone is made from rolled cardboard and fiberglass and I have used spray adhesive to attach the fabric to the cardboard before it is saturated, this is a very helpful method in many situations. The spray adhesive is only applied very lightly like a quick brief mist spray from a little distance at both surfaces, and it is slowly dissolved by the epoxy. I have just set the cone in place in the cylinder at once I was done saturating the fiberglass so it is stuck in there when it's hardened.

With the air inlet I have not used the spray adhesive trick simply because I don't need it, here I have however used a slurry of epoxy and some filler (milled cotton fiber) in all inwards corners. This makes it easier to get the "twill" fabric to conform nicely without attracting air bubbles under it in those sharp corners, and as you can see it also makes nice filled and rounded shapes.

There will be a spiral inside the top cylinder as well to enhance the downwards motion of the vortex inside and I thought perhaps I'd make that from fiberglass too, I will show you how I solved that when it is done.

need coffee... need ... coffee

ibuild

This is what I did with the last parts. I'm not sure if it will work or how well it will work, you can get these ready made too but for some odd reason I thought it would be fun making one - an air cleaner that filters the air without using a filter! That's almost like magic, looks reasonable simple to make as well I guess.

The top lid I thought I'd just mount it with some elastic silicone-like stuff so that I can remove it if it should be necessary. I'm not quite sure how to mount it to the bucket yet, perhaps some clamps of some sort. Another thing I thought of is if the spiral plate would be more effective if it was some gap between it and the top lid? Who knows... this is how I made it this time anyway.

ChuckC

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Clever. Great work and clever use of materials. A long time ago, I just bought a Jet semi-cyclone, I'll call it but does the job the same way. Only not as efficient as this nor as elegant.

Thanks. For sharing.

ibuild

Thanks for that,

Reading your comment I came to think of something I wrote to someone else recently and I said "nice", but I could very well have said "very nice" or "really nice". I wish I did that now but I guess it's never too late for me to do that next time.

I think if my local hardware store had these on the shelf I would not bother to try and make it, it's always an experience though.

I have done a small test with it and two things needs to be improved; first is that there is a small gap between the cylinder and the spiral plate/guide and wood chips would get stuck in that small gap. I will solve that by grinding the edges on the spiral plate/guide so that this gap gets slightly bigger as the spiral progresses down the cylinder. It should work even without that spiral guide so that should take care of the first issue. The second is that I need at least two buckets (one inside the other) to prevent it from buckling. Else than that it seemed to work alright, it should relieve the vacuum cleaner quite a bit.

LN-JET

Very nice indeed! Some years ago, I built one from stainless steel. I mounted the spiral to the outer housing and sealed around the edge, with epoxy. I guess dust and wood chips are more likely to get trapped on the outer edge, as I never had any trouble along the center tube.

​​​​​​regards
Lars

JacobHrr

Post of a great value! I was also dealing with this problem of constantly changing the filters, but then I decided to buy a good dust collector. Best decision in my life! A little bit expensive, but it is worth the money. Searching for solutions, I have found a post on a website with many models and advantages and disadvantages of each collector, and this is how I bought my Festool CT 26 E. If you are interested, I can leave you that blog post with dust collector reviews. But the mechanism you created is simply genius! Thanks!

gaharit

Could you share that website you were talking about? How about your instrument? Is it doing the job?

Rijoli

That turned out to be a very nice piece of work. Looks very good, glad it works well.
If you already give so much attention to an extension of a tool, It makes me curious what your models look like.