Furnished content.
(from Lumberjocks.com)
I know there are a lot of Harbor Freight dust deputy projects on here… But I think I approached mine a little different.Design goals:1) Do not spend a lot2) Portable
3) Small footprint
4) Maximize airflowI did not want to buy/use a lot of adapters, so I tried to come up with a way to hook the fan directly to the cyclone. This will help save money and should minimize the resistance in the system.Instead of cutting the metal side plate of the fan to a 6” opening to match the SDD, I decided to make my own motor plate from plywood. My thought was to pattern match the bolt holes front the original cover and use my router to cut a perfectly fitting hole for the outside of the SDD. To get enough material thickness to match most of the top of the SDD, I ended up glueing a 1/4” and 3/4” piece of plywood together and later added another 3/4” later. This is a total of 1.75” thick of plywood motor plate at the top of the SDD. 6.125” diameter w my trammel made for a snug fit. I applied a little silicon on the SDD sleeve and between the last 3/4” piece of plywood and the motor plate to seal the top.I am happy with the direct connection between the SDD and the HF motor. The top of the SDD sits just a little below the blades of the fan. No extra long transitions or curved pieces between the two.The bottom of my DC is a sealed box to house an aluminum trash can. The one side has neoprene weather sealant on the inside and is hinged to gain access to the can to empty it. The frame is just stud grade 2X4's that I ran through the planner and table saw to clean up the sides and square them up. The door is a piece of 3/4” ply, the sides are 1/4” and the back is 1/2” ply. The various sizes are basically due to what I had in the garage. I glued and screwed all the pieces together thinking the glue would help make the joints air tight. I used a caulking gun to seal all the joints, also.The top of the box has a 6” hole to match the bottom of the SDD. The SDD is bolted and sealed to this directly. Once again, no transition pieces.The 2X4's making up the frame were sized so they would place my homemade motor plate just above the top if the SDD flange. I uploaded a couple pics trying to show some details of the motor plate.I currently have it discharging directly to my garage unfiltered. I made quite a mess making a device to help keep the garage clean. Even without a discharge filter or bag, there was no dust cloud when I vacuumed up large amounts of saw dust. I vacuumed up enough to fill the 33 gallon trash can almost half way. I was extremely happy with the performance of this setup. I was very surprised that the saw dust was captured in the cyclone and not blowing back into my garage.Right now, I have a HVAV 5” transition piece on the inlet, that reduces to 4” to fit my flex hose. I plan to use 5” ducting to bring the suction down to the bottom if the mobile cart and use 5” flex ducting to hook to my tools. I have a small shop that is more often just a regular garage, so I will just hook up to one tool at a time.The next stage is to build a discharge plenum. I'm going to line the inside of the plenum w old carpet to help muffle the noise. Initially, I am going to use my trammel to make a wood ring to match the HF filter bag. The bag will hang down below the plenum. Eventually, I would like to get a proper cartridge filter on the discharge.