Some of you have been asking about follow-up videos
for my homemade machines, in terms of how they're holding up.
For the most part, I just use my homemade machines,
there's really not very much to report
But, this homemade dust collector, which I built in 2012
and used until 2014, this one I learned a lot on.
as in, there's a lot of stuff about this one
that is not ideal. There's a hose that connects
onto here, and the then the air goes through the cyclone
the heavy dust falls into the bucket below,
the lighter dust goes through this transfer here, through
the filter here, and then gets shot out the blower here
which is powered by this motor. All these components
work on their own, but none of them optimally.
Let's start with the hose connector.
The hose connector goes on here, which means it's ideal to have
where I'm working out this way,
but the exhaust air get blown out here, which basically means
this dust collector is usually blowing the air out
where I'm working. Not ideal.
The air goes into the cyclone here
and this is built-up out of lots of segments
to make this cylinder. That was an awful lot of work.
I later had the idea of just using a bucket to make
the cyclone, which is one of the reasons I built a new one.
The collection bucket just presses flat against the bottom
of the cyclone, and that doesn't make for the very best seal.
So, I added some felt along the edge here, and that helped
a little bit, but that felt unfortunately tends to attract
sawdust, so there's always bits of shavings and stuff
so felt is not an ideal sealant for a dust collector that takes
planer shavings. It is nice that the bucket comes out
easily, so if I suck something up that I didn't mean to,
I can just pull it out and fish it out of the bucket.
The slot on the bottom of the theme baffle
is not as wide as it would ideally be
so quite often, when I suck up some piece of scrap wood,
it ends up staying in the cyclone up there, and just
going around, and around, and around, and rattling.
So, often what I end up doing is opening this up here,
and then reaching into the cyclone and fishing out whatever
it is that's rattling around. When using it with a thickness
planer, sometimes the long shavings would completely
plug up the slot, and then the cyclone fills up.
And, of course, it's not transparent, so I can't see
this happening and then all the planer shavings come out here
and go into the filter, and that's a real pain to clean out.
So, I added this wire mesh here, so that the course shavings
would get caught in here, so that it plugs up here,
instead of filling up the filter.
But, that wire mesh is also kind of annoying to clean out.
Next problem area is the filter.
This one uses a furnace filter, which in many parts of the world
you can't get. I first used a really fancy furnace filter,
but that ended up letting through a lot of dust.
But, I found out that just a piece of felt would really clog
up with fine dust, and becomes very effective at filtering.
So, this is actually a homemade filter made out of harbor cloth
and it's completely coated with fine dust, which makes it
very effective at really filtering out micro-particles.
But, unfortunately the air resistance is quite high.
I really should have 2 or 3 times the surface area for this.
In my new dust collector, I just used two shop vac filters
which I know you can get everywhere in the world.
Furnace filters like this, only in places where you have
forced air central heating, like in North America.
Let's take this one out to shake the dust out of it.
So, behind the first layer of filter, which takes out
most of the dust, I just have a piece of felt
that I stuck in there just for the heck of it
And, behind that the furnace filter
which really isn't doing much good at all.
I just left it in there, because it doesn't provide much
air resistance, and just for good measure,
because most of the filtering happens in this layer here
The very heavy fine dust on here,
filters out most of the dust
Arrgh!
In here is the blower,
and the impeller is about the size of this box here
and the next major problem with this thing is
it's way under-powered, it barely makes it up to speed.
So, it's actually not getting up to speed at all
because there's too much resistance to turning
from all the air resistance, so if I slow down
the air flow a bit,
now it's up to speed.
And, the motor has more torque at speed
so now it's able to maintain that speed.
I was really pushing it with the power of the blower
for that one third horsepower motor.
Let me show you by putting a camera in the air stream.
Part of what makes the blower seem so powerful
is that it shoots the air out this very small nozzle.
Really not that much useful. And, also the size of the blower
just means that this dust collector takes a good
five/ten seconds to start up. And, if the weather's very cold,
that motor actually won't even get up to speed at all.
So, it really wasn't such a great idea
to put such a big blower on such a small motor.
I should have just used a much bigger motor.
If it's really cold, sometimes the grease is too thick
and the motor won't turn at all, so I cut away
part of the screen back here, so I could reach in there
with my finger, and give it a kick.
It was the first time I used a wooden impeller
to build a blower, and it worked out
quite well in that regard
I was pretty happy the impeller didn't blow up
cause I wasn't sure about that at all when I built it,
and I learned a lot about efficient blower design.
It's been tempting to try to fix the shortcomings
of this dust collector, but to do that I'd have to
replace the cyclone, I'd have to replace
the filter box, I'd have to replace the motor,
and if I do all that, I might as well just
build a whole new dust collector
and that's what I did, which is why I still have this one.
I did cannibalize the nice caster wheels off of it though
and replaced them with these crappy
office chair casters. They'll do just fine
for a small dust collector. And, as a follow-up
to the follow-up, here's how my second dust collector
fixes these problems. I made the cyclone
out of a polyethylene bucket, and I actually put
an LED lamp behind it, so I can see
what's going on. This bucket cyclone
was much easier to build, and it comes off
so by detaching the pipe here,
and that's how I change the bucket.
And, the cyclone actually doesn't occupy
the full height of this, so this extends the bucket
upwards a little bit, which means even if the bucket
isn't transparent, I can see it filling up into here.
And, the other advantage of that is
when this thing gets completely full,
it fills up into here, which actually means I have
my bucket heaping full of dust that I just have to
compact a little bit with my hand, so I get more
capacity out of one of these buckets.
The seal is actually just a seal from
the bucket like, it's got a rubber sealant here
which is attached to this bucket here,
so when it's placed on here, that makes for an
air tight seal.
The filter is two shop vac filters in parallel,
right in here. And, I also have a screen
here so that if the cyclone fills up and I don't notice,
the shavings get caught in here, so I don't have to
clean all the shavings out from the filter plates.
The motor is a two third horsepower motor
which also, I wish it was bigger,
but it did allow me to make the blower a little bit bigger
and still have it start reliably.
And, then the air gets blown out here.
This can is a resonator, which cuts down on
the noise a little bit.
I have lots of videos and articles
about my first homemade dust collector, and this one
and I'll put links to those in the description.
Another homemade machine where I learned a lot
was my first homemade bandsaw, so I'll make
a follow-up video on that soon.