I call this cyclone my 2-bucket cyclone because it collects the sawdust
into a bucket. And its made of
another bucket.
This lid is gonna fit on this cut-off bucket.
And I want to create a ledge on here
so it just fits inside there for a good seal.
Almost fits. Just a tiny bit less.
That's a satisfying fit.
Here's my actual Thien-baffle part of it.
And that is gonna get screwed into the sides right about here.
Have to make sure all the holes are gonna be at the same level.
And that way the baffle is gonna end up in the same level spot.
Next I need to mug this piece of pipe on here
for injecting the air into here and spin it around.
And that shape is a bit tricky to get so
I drew this one up in CAD.
The sides of the bucket are just a little bit conical.
So, to make this mount fit properly
I tilted the table by 1.8 degrees
so that, when I cut this out this circle will make a conical section.
I added some bits of plywood here and here just to make sure this isn't gonna crack
over time. Now I did use
one of these drill press circle cutters to cut that hole.
If you don't have one you should really get one.
But if you don't want to get one, you can just make a piece of plywood
to fit on here. And make the pipe fit into that.
I need to make sure this ring doesn't slide up and down.
Especially once I put a vacuum on there. And the logical thing to do
would be just to put some screws in from the inside.
But I'm experimenting with using a soldering iron
to melt some of this plastic together and
that seems to have some limited success.
I haven't got a perfect joint in here.
I'm just using some caulking
to seal that up.
Next I gotta mount this on here and the part is
where does the hole go.
This bucket is a little bit translucent so just by shining the light through here
I can tell roughly
where it lines out.
With my In-nut so far above the baffle I figure its best to
move the inlet a little bit back from this part here because
when air shoots out here its really not gonna get all the way down here.
So, having placed this I can now start mounting it.
And I'll just start by drilling
a hole in here for the first screw.
Ok, and before I drill any other holes
I'm gonna put a screw in here
to make sure nothing slides around.
I'm gonna put just a little bit of caulking on here.
Just to make sure I get a good seal.
It's tempting to use just felt for a gasket.
But the felt gets caught on the screws when you tighten them so
that always makes a real mess.
This is tighter than I was aiming for.
But, if I can get it in there
I won't have to worry about making a seal. That's for sure.
And then this little tube, here is for extending into a chamber
which will, hopefully make the cyclone work a little bit better.
These shop vac hose connectors are just a little bit too small
for a 2 inch pipe fitting here.
I could go to one and a half inch and just pad that out with electrical tape but
I want to have this as big as possible.
So, looking around I found this
thread coupling adapter and with the threads filed off of it
that just barely fits in here.
That shop vac hose is just too small.
Keeps plugging up all the time.
Well, the idea of attaching it with a soldering iron didn't work out so well.
It let go. There's just too much suction.
So, I'm back to attaching that bucket reel with the screws.
For my next test I brush out the filter from my shop vac.
Wash the insides of it. And I'm gonna use
fine saw dust from my band saw.
So, the bucket with the sawdust
weighs 1830 grams.
And this time I'm using a much more manly two inch hose.
The backlight sure makes the cyclone look cooler.
Now I just need to get that dust back into this bucket.
And I'll just do that by sucking it all through again.
So, let's see. I can't really tell if this is any dirtier.
And in here. There is a little bit of dust in here.
This used to be scrubbed clean so
we definitely lost some.
Let's see how we're doing.
1824. So we lost 6 grams of dust.
With the bucket weighing 1043 grams empty. I work it out that
the cyclone is 99.2% efficient with this fine band saw dust.
So, some of that dust no doubt got stuck in the filter.
But another place where dust got stuck is the bottom of my cyclone.
There's some on here.
And also along the outside edge and I haven't been able to recover that.