The Woodshop Shed

Again With the Cyclone-Vac System Again

Furnished content.
(from Lumberjocks.com)


A buddy liked how well my shop vac-cyclone system worked so much he asked if I'd build him one. Because I was done to a few thousand projects, and had escaped favors to family members, I said I would.As you, probably, know, Dust Deputy cyclones sit atop a five gallon bucket, but his is going to get worked hard, so he bought a 20 gallon can, with a flip ring lid, which I recommended, so he could open and close it without tools.Once he had the cyclone, collector can and a vac, he brought them over for me to start playing with and, from then on, I was unsupervised (insert manic laughter here).I had one piece of black pipe I'd used for mine to move the intake port from the side to the bottom of the can, so that was a done deal. Couldn't remember what I'd done to alter it to fit the input on the cyclone, so I turned a cone, with a slight taper, to expand the pipe to fit, after heating with a heat gun. Also, used my Foredom and a quarter inch bit to grind much of the interior away, just cause (that's all I got).I had a six foot piece of Allthread I picked up for walking sticks, so donated a few feet of it to the cause (there's still enough left for a cane). That and some fancy tubing I had took care of two front posts to support the vacuum atop the collector can lid. I cut them long enough to go from through the bottom of the vac [with a washer and nut on the end] down through the tubes [that were cut to a length that left the vac level on the lid], through the collector can lid and any supporting plywood. Of course, there is room for washers and nuts.I had some monster washers and used them above and below the tubes covering the Allthread, where the tubes rested against the plastic bottom of the vac and the plastic top of the cyclone collector can.I offset the position of the cyclone on top the collector can lid. Because the altered vacuum port has to be at the outer edge of the vac can, to avoid conflict with the filter. This put the vac at or near at center of the lid, when mounted.The system really pulls down on the top of the can, when you close off the intake, so I had to reinforce it with plywood. I won't show you pictures of that, because I refused to cut a good piece to donate to the project, so made a really scary/major ugly support system, which solved the problem.Once the top was on the can [already mounted to the cyclone collector can top], I added a view port to monitor the fill level.When it was all said and done, I used a LOT of hot glue.

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