Mini Cyclone Dust Collector Built from Shop Vac

this is my overarm dust collector for my table saw and this is my shopvac cyclone that i built a few years ago and together these two work really well at collecting dust from the above the blade on the table saw what would make this setup better though is to have a dedicated one of these just for the overarm that's smaller and maybe mounted on the wall so it's out of the way and always hooked up i like how this one's been working ever since i built it so i'd like to build another one just like it except quite a bit smaller because the volume of dust that gets collected here is not that great so in this video i'm going to show you how i turn this old shopvac into this mini dust collector i'm going to start by making the blower since it's the most complicated part of this and i've already got the blower housing marked out on this piece of plywood and i got two of them stacked together so i cut out the top and bottom of the blower at once well i already messed up these two pieces of plywood aren't the same size i thought they were big enough to cut two pieces out at once but obviously this bottom piece isn't big enough to cover the top start over i didn't cut all the way up to the pencil line so that i could finish sanding right up to the line using my vertical belt sander before i separate the two halves i'm gonna put a hole right through the center so that i know where the center is and i can line them back up both the top and the bottom of the housings have holes cut in them and the bottom housing has a two and three-eighths hole which i haven't had a hole saw floor so i'll cut that using the hole saw and the top has two different hole sizes cut into it one that is all the way through and one that is just halfway through and those are much larger so to cut those out i'm going to use my favorite method for cutting circles and that's my router with a circle template and my circle template is just a piece of plastic screwed to the router base with a drill bit drilled in at the right location for the pivot point so the wood pieces are pretty much done and so next to connect them together to make the housing i got this piece of sheet metal which is just cut from some hvac vent piping that would be in your house and it's pretty thin so it's easy to cut but it's stiff enough that it'll make a decent housing so i just got to cut it and since it's pretty thin i'll just cut it with a razor blade so [Music] [Music] [Music] to make sure no air escapes between the metal housing and the top and bottom wood plates i'm gonna put on this foam gasket and that'll seal between the two parts if i go to put a screw through this foam right now the screw threads will probably bugger this all up and twist it so i'm gonna cut out each one of the holes with just a piece of brass tubing and that'll cut through the foam and leave a hole for the screw to go through [Music] i added some more of the foam gasket to the top of the blower housing where the motor is going to connect to seal the motor to the housing and with that the blower is pretty much done and we can move on to getting the motor mounted the motor of course i'm going to steal from this old shop vac and i've already taken it apart and taken out the motor and the impeller that is inside the shopvac and these are the only two components i'm going to use from the old shopvac now i need a way to attach my motor to the new blower housing and to accomplish that i've 3d printed this motor mount and it screws onto the motor just like it did in the shop vac and then this whole thing drops down into the blower housing and this flange adapts it to the housing and provides a place to screw it all together let's test it out with the blower working now i can move on to the rest of the dust collector which is the collection bucket and the cyclone portion and that's really just a whole bunch of more circles and rings to cut out so let's get to it [Music] hey is [Music] [Music] hey off camera i went ahead and finished up cutting out all the rings that make up the collection bucket and cyclone and so we've got the bottom of the collection bucket here and then the top of the ring for the collection bucket here and then above the collection bucket will be the cyclone chamber and that's these two rings and also the baffle right here and then on top of all of that is this top ring and that encloses the cyclone and that's also where the blower will mount to to start connecting these rings together i've got this piece of 1 16 inch polycarbonate and i'm going to cut this into two strips one will be for the collection bucket and one will be for the cyclone chamber and since this is pretty thin and easy to cut i'll just use a razor blade [Music] with the polycarbonate sheets attached to the rings it's starting to look like something now but i still need to close up this seam where the polycarbonate comes together and for that i'm going to cut two strips on the table saw out of some more plywood the outside diameter of the polycarbonate is 10 inches and that so happens to be the same diameter as my table saw blade so i'm going to use that to my advantage and set up my table saw and my table saw sled so that i can cut that 10 inch arc into the strip of plywood and that way it will match the outside diameter of the polycarbonate perfectly and will make for a very nice fit the cyclone action of this dust collector is made possible by this baffle which is suspended in the center of the cyclone region and it's suspended with this piece of two inch pipe from the top plate and i already went ahead and cut a notch in this piece of pipe for where the air is going to come in and go into the blower and then this piece gets attached to the baffle itself so go ahead and get that screwed on to prevent any large chips from getting sucked up into the impeller i'm going to go ahead and add this piece of wire mesh around the opening here and that'll help catch anything from going into the blower i need a way to connect the collection bucket to the cyclone and rest of the unit and to do that i want to use the same method that i used on my other shopvac dust collector and that's by adding a couple of locator pins between the two rings to help line them up and then a couple of aluminum latches on either side to help hold the two pieces together so so for the bucket latches i made these two pieces out of aluminum and they're similar to my old ones on my other dust collector except i made them a little bit longer so they're easier to open and close the collection bucket cyclone separator and blower are pretty much complete now so i can move on to the last major component which is the inlet and i'll make that for more of the black two inch pipe and more of this plywood [Music] um [Music] the construction is essentially complete at this point but i need a way to hang this on the wall and for that i'm going to use a french cleat and i already made up this mounting plate that's going to screw to the back of the cyclone here and then the cleat that gets attached to the wall is right here and that will provide a nice and secure way to hang it from the wall yet make it easy to take it on and off if i ever need to now it's time for my least favorite part but probably the most transformational and that's a couple layers of paint i've got two coats of my trusty red and black paint on all the parts and so it's time for final assembly you you [Music] uh so [Music] before i put the last couple of pieces together i need to silicone all the joints to make sure that this is an airtight assembly um [Music] alright i need to give the silicone i just applied at least overnight to cure and so we'll come back tomorrow and finally test it out it's been several days so the silicone is fully cured at this point and while it was drying i added this flange to the outlet of the blower and that allows me to connect this outlet adapter which i 3d printed and it adapts from the square outlet to a 2 inch diameter fitting that will work on my other two inch piping there's more of this foam gasket on the back and it provides a nice seal against the flange you're probably wondering where my filter is at and if i was going to put a filter on here i would do something like this like add a 90 degree elbow to the outlet and then take a shop vac style filter and build a mount for that so that the outlet can vent through this filter however i want to experiment with something different and i want to try venting this to my main dust collection system and so for now i'm not going to build a filter on it and so let's hook it up that way and see how it works i've got the dust collector plugged into a remote controlled outlet up there so i can turn it on and off with this remote and then i've got a short bit of hose for the inlet i've got the outlet hooked up through a blast gate to my main trunk of the dust collector so it will vent through that filter and i've got a pile of dust here to suck up so let's try it out [Music] hmm let's try that again but this time with a smaller diameter hose but a little bit [Music] longer [Music] well i think this turned out really awesome and i'm very happy with how it's working so far even with that fine dust that i was i was sucking up most of it ended up in the collection bucket obviously quite a bit of the finest dust gets swirled around and then sucked through the blower but that's not really a big problem because i'm always going to be venting this either through my main dust collector or through its own filter or i might even try venting it outside so that's not really a problem for me i built this for the intention of always using it with my overarm dust collector and so on my next video i plan on mounting this to the wall getting it all hooked up and taking some measurements of the airflow and the pressures and seeing how the system works and does it affect my main dust collector if i have it hooked to it so thanks for watching this video and i'll see you in the next one what do you think of my blower you

Channel: Justin Depew

Views: 248,849

Rating: 4.9105754 out of 5

Keywords: woodworking, how, to, diy, plans, projects, building, making, creating, make, engineering, design

Id: EHygPzpgQN4

Length: 28min 21sec (1701 seconds)

Published: Sun Nov 29 2020