Cyclone

[DennisCA]

The diameter of the pipe should be in relation to the flow ("power") of your blower. Use as little hose as possible, they really kill efficiency.

EDIT: I see this is a smaller vacuum type, not a full size one, they are made to work with the size range of your typical vacuum hoses. You could go a bit higher, I once used mine with a 50mm hose.

 

[KimB]

I have just had a good idea, previously I’d been looking at maybe £50+ for 5m of hose so I thought about it and found that Henry hose can be bought cheap (obviously it’s not genuine but I’ll take that risk) what I can do with this 5m hose is cut 1m off the screw end to go into the cyclone and then use the rest or shorted it for the mains sucking end. Worth a try.
Also, I got two reducers for the cyclone down to hose size. At least with this it’s costing me £12 to try it rather than £50, if it’s no good I’ll ramp it up.

 

[sako243]

I think I've got a bit of old Henry hose in the workshop. Probably about a metre and a bit of it, happy to bung it in the post if you want it. And I've got it...

 

[James1979]

You can buy genuine Henry hose as a spare part. It’s a M/F extension. Your eBay stuff will likely do but there is OEM stuff out there.

 

[rtcosic]

Local Freecycle or Facebook 'Selling' Pages asking for dead vacuum cleaners for free hoses and fittings?

Judging by the skip at our Civic Amenity Site - that I'm not allowed to rummage in any longer - a lot of Dyson and Vax plastic fantantastics in there. The last time skip diving was permitted we picked up a Dyson. Blocked and a broken belt. Fixed in 10 minutes and was thrashed to death clearing building debris.

 

[KimB]

I think I've got a bit of old Henry hose in the workshop. Probably about a metre and a bit of it, happy to bung it in the post if you want it. And I've got it...

Thanks, I may let you know. I’ll see how I get on with this before I become the crazy hoover lady.

You can buy genuine Henry hose as a spare part. It’s a M/F extension. Your eBay stuff will likely do but there is OEM stuff out there.

You can but it’s probably quite expensive I’d have thought. That hose on eBay has good reviews 4.9star with over 100 reviews. I’ll try it and see anyway.

Local Freecycle or Facebook 'Selling' Pages asking for dead vacuum cleaners for free hoses and fittings?

Judging by the skip at our Civic Amenity Site - that I'm not allowed to rummage in any longer - a lot of Dyson and Vax plastic fantantastics in there. The last time skip diving was permitted we picked up a Dyson. Blocked and a broken belt. Fixed in 10 minutes and was thrashed to death clearing building debris.

it’s just collecting stuff like that. It’s such a pain for me with work.

 

[James1979]

To be honest I did have a look after I posted and the genuine stuff is twice the price of yours at least.

 

[northwest]

found that Henry hose can be bought cheap (obviously it’s not genuine but I’ll take that risk) what I can do with this 5m hose is cut 1m off the screw end to go into the cyclone and then use the rest or shorted it for the mains sucking end.

This is exactly what I did and it works on my blast cabinet a treat, but at the end of the day it is a blast cabinet. I use my Henry to vac up in the workshop and I view the hoses as a consumable, they get coated with oil inside and after a while become heavy with all the gunge on the sides and I just replace them, about once a year seems to be the rate at the moment so not really a burden.

 

[KimB]

To be honest I did have a look after I posted and the genuine stuff is twice the price of yours at least.

Four times the price for 5m hose actually

 

[KimB]

This is exactly what I did and it works on my blast cabinet a treat, but at the end of the day it is a blast cabinet. I use my Henry to vac up in the workshop and I view the hoses as a consumable, they get coated with oil inside and after a while become heavy with all the gunge on the sides and I just replace them, about once a year seems to be the rate at the moment so not really a burden.

That’s great to know. I did just read the bore size is slightly smaller on some of the reviews so hopefully it’ll be okay

 

[Pete.]

This is exactly what I did and it works on my blast cabinet a treat, but at the end of the day it is a blast cabinet. I use my Henry to vac up in the workshop and I view the hoses as a consumable, they get coated with oil inside and after a while become heavy with all the gunge on the sides and I just replace them, about once a year seems to be the rate at the moment so not really a burden.

Yep if you suck up oily swarf it coats a thick layer of gunge on the inside of you hose. I keep a separate hose for it, the normal 5m one does general clean-up so it doesn't get clogged.

 

[maz0]

I built one exactly like this and a henry hoover. It collapsed the blue drum with the suction, so either put something inside, turn down the suction or get a sturdier container.

Might be fine for light saw dust but any time there was a clump big enough to restrict air flow, the blue drum squished up and then it kinda struggles to go back to its old shape.

 

[badabec]

My blue drum needed a 9mm thick plywood circle wedged inside with a six inch hole in the middle. Otherwise, flat as a pancake.

A typical vacuum cleaner will reduce the pressure inside by three pounds per square inch and so the atmosphere will apply 3 pounds per square inch to the drum, enough to flatten it.

 

[colnerov]

Hi, Would a cardboard drum be more resistant to collapsing, do you think?

https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Lockable...438663?hash=item3d74f85c47:g:tmEAAOSwJStbqKgc

Colin

 

[KimB]

Bored this evening so I fitted the cyclone. Used a compass and scripted a large circle out of the scrap as you can see.

I drilled a centre hole in both to centre it and then drilled the four holes for the cyclone. Mounted that to the lid and thankfully I had a hole saw big enough in my Starett set. Drilled that and fitted it up.

Before anyone says, I do have a plan for crushing issue. I have to make something else for the plan but it’s a project I’ve been meaning to do for years so that’s not an issue for me. I did get a chance to check how bad it crushes and after maybe 5-10seconds of being fully blocked it’ll crush so I think that’ll be fine once I do my modification.

 

[awemawson]

Just a large ring of plywood jammed inside should do the job - may need to be in two bits to get it in, then screwed back together inside.

 

[KimB]

Started making a mount for the hoover and the cyclone together. Used my plunge saw for the first time and a sheet of tracking board I got from work.

Three cut.

Marked centre and stuck a screw in. Then noticed I had a guide for the router that allows me to route along a straight edge, I took the guide off and left the depth bit as you can see then I just made a loop in some string like and using the adjuster I was able to make where I wanted it.

Worked so well.

Then using a jigsaw I cut in the gap where the router bit made and then used a clean cut router bit to just finish the circle off. Annoyingly I marked it wrong so had to make a second one with a hole in but it took no time at all.

That’s it for now but I’ll finish this off in a couple weeks. Should come out nice. Making a similar design to someone else’s on the forum that I saw. I’m going to put the Henry at the bottom and then sit the barrel on top. This seems to be the least space consuming way of doing it in my head. All planned out though

 

[Dr.Al]

Have you thought about adding a window to help see how full the bucket is? I've just finished making a cyclone thing using the same plastic cyclone as you've got (it's fantastic). Mine is a much smaller bucket as I have very little space in the garage, so adding a window was pretty essential.

On yours it's probably not as important, but I can still imagine it being nice for an easy check. I was watching a Neil Paskin video earlier and noticed he's added a window to the top of a bucket like yours. Have a look at 44 seconds into this video (just a brief glimpse of it - blink and you'll miss it!):

Here's my baby dust box:

I'm really impressed by how effective it is - almost nothing gets into the vacuum cleaner itself. With a 5 metre long 50 mm diameter host fitted, I attached it to my thicknesser and basically filled the box to the level you can see above over the course of a weekend and the thicknesser didn't clog even once (except the one time I didn't plug the thicknesser into the power tool socket on the vacuum cleaner and then forgot I had to manually turn the vacuum cleaner on!). Everything I'd read suggested that a vacuum cleaner would never keep up with the dust extraction requirements of a thicknesser, but so far that doesn't seem to be true.

 

[KimB]

I don’t know why it never occurred to me but I do like your design. I’ll give mine a go and see how it holds up. I had a try with it over the weekend and was impressed but as you guys said it sucks in fairly easy. For the time being I’ve just been using the Henry hose I bought which is great for £12.
With regard to the sight glass I did think about it a few times. One thing that I thought was similar to oil level sight gauge where it’s outside the tank on a clear tube but I’ve decided that I’ll probably notice more than anything when it’s full. No doubt it’ll be hard to move or lift. Also the lid takes a split second to remove and finally it’s just another point to maybe leak or break.
Super job on yours though , I can’t wait to get mine finished. I’ll be hoovering up so much sqarf and bits when it’s done

 

[eLuSiVeMiTe]

I don’t know why it never occurred to me but I do like your design. I’ll give mine a go and see how it holds up. I had a try with it over the weekend and was impressed but as you guys said it sucks in fairly easy. For the time being I’ve just been using the Henry hose I bought which is great for £12.
With regard to the sight glass I did think about it a few times. One thing that I thought was similar to oil level sight gauge where it’s outside the tank on a clear tube but I’ve decided that I’ll probably notice more than anything when it’s full. No doubt it’ll be hard to move or lift. Also the lid takes a split second to remove and finally it’s just another point to maybe leak or break.
Super job on yours though , I can’t wait to get mine finished. I’ll be hoovering up so much sqarf and bits when it’s done

The sound when it gets full is obvious and you notice the suction start to drop.