Your shop-vac may not be the most efficient dust collector, but you can turn it into a two-stage dust-collection system with the Mini Cyclone Separator from Woodstock International. You’ll change the bag or clean the filter less often, because larger chips will drop out into the attached five-gallon bucket.
Woodstock molds their Mini Cyclone Separator from ABS. It sits on top of a standard five-gallon bucket, where it accepts two 2-1/2″ hoses. To empty the bucket, simply lift off the separator.
Look to pay anywhere from $17 to $24 for the Mini Cyclone Separator. You’ll have to supply your own five-gallon pail. If you have 2-1/4″ hoses, you can get a reducer for about $5.
Mini Cyclone Separator [Woodstock International]
Street Pricing [Google Products]
Via Amazon(B0000223XZ) [What’s This?] [What’s This?]
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5 Responses to Cheap-Ass Tools: Cyclonic Dust Collector
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Does this really work?
I see similar items in the catalogs, but am reluctant to buy one without a recommendation.
Nice find!
Lew, I built a chip trap for my shop-vac a while ago because I was having problems with plane shavings clogging where the hose attaches to the shop-vac. It worked pretty well. I see no reason why this wouldn’t work better.
Mine wasn’t strictly a cyclone, I just had a plywood top with an inlet and an outlet, with the theory that the heavier stuff would just drop into the can and the lighter dust would be sucked out the second hose. First I tried using a plastic trash can but found that my shop-vac collapsed it like a crushed beer can. Then I tried a steel can, while that worked OK, but I always got the feeling that if I clogged the hose I’d crush that can too.
I think a five-gallon bucket would be a lot sturdier then my contraption and actually having cyclone action might be an improvement.
Yeah it works. I didn’t buy one of these, but I used a 5-gallon bucket, a couple of PVC pipe fittings, and a scrap of plywood and got the same basic thing and it worked great! I could dump out a 2 foot wide pile of saw dust, turn on my shopvac and all but about less than an handful would be in the separator (bucket).
One thing to remember is to not bet too wild with the hose extensions because the longer the hose the less suction you start to get especially if you have the corrugated hoses. Two hoses like is show in the photo is just fine. Just don’t go installing 30 or 50 foot of hose to make this your built-in dust collection system. Of course if you’ve got the Binford Super 9700 shopvac, go crazy.
Thanks for the responses. It may be worth the purchase.