Shop vacuum

[Karl_T]

Well, I FINALLY pulled the trigger on DAYTON 4YE63 55 gal drum top vacuum. Cost was 5 Ben Franklins. I spent endless hours on this selection for some reason. I'm normally a pull the trigger quickly kind of guy. But I just did not like the look of the plastic toys at the big box stores after having an industrial unit for the last 30 years.


Went with this vendor:
http://www.sustainablesupply.com/Da...I7IGBgN272QIVkbrACh0kBQExEAAYAiAAEgLGAvD_BwE#

 

[TomS]

I have a homemade cyclone separator too, sometimes called a "Thien Separator". Mine's made with a large pool chlorine plastic bucket, 50 lb. size IIRC, and being cheap I used a piece of wood with the appropriate sized holes on the top instead of buying special vacuum ports shown on the Thien website. It definitely makes the shop vac filter last longer, especially with sawdust.

We have a lot of the little air powered vacuums at work, but they're more for spot cleaning than general cleanup... at work they use them mostly to pick up the small parts we make; it's easy to unzip the bag and dump them out. Getting sharp chips out of the bag would likely be a PITA.

View attachment 259248View attachment 259249

That's very similar to mine.

 

[TomS]

KEWL!

Can you show a pic of the inside? You must be turning the airflow to make it swirl.

I'll dig out the magazine and post pictures and instructions.

 

[TomS]

Here's a couple of scanned pages from the September/October 2017 Home Shop Machinist Magazine article. I wasn't comfortable scanning the entire article not knowing the particulars of copyright law. That's just me.

The Bill of Materials is self explanatory. Most any hardware store or big box store will have what you need. The second picture shows the assembly. Note the white inserts in the two elbows. These are PVC adapter rings for the hoses. The inside of the adapter is machined with a 2 deg. taper to match up with the male hose taper. Hope this is helpful.