I was running a couple of wood projects yesterday and having a blast. I did make a small mistake and drop a machine vice which then bounced into my dust collector tub (fitted to my dust cyclone).
This put a small crack in my brewing barrel that I was using. Nothing duct tape can’t fix right?
Anyway I’m now looking to replace my broken dust barrel with something better. What kind of containers are people using? Not I can’t use anything crazy big due to space and don’t do loads of wood work.
I have severe space contraints too, I bought a cheapo ash collector from the hardware store, sealed the hole where one would normally plug the vacuum cleaner hose, then bolted my cyclone onto the other hole where the ash collector hose was, then used a glue gun to make the base of the cyclone air-tight, and called it a day. It’s been working fine for me all this time.
I used a brewer barrel but it also collapsed under the pressure until I made reinforcement rings. I assume you don’t have any issues with a metal one?
I’m considering mounting mine to the wall I don’t have any floor space to the side of my machine any more I was wondering if a small plastic box say 10L like this would work:
The metal one I use is rock solid, and it was around 20 euros.
That plastic box could do just fine I guess, but I would we worried that the pile of chips/dust may not spread over the full width of the box, and that you would have to empty it long before the full volume has been used. But then again, the cyclone itself being quite tall, if your height is very contrained…
I happened to buy a second of these metal ash collector to put inside my downdraft sanding table, I bought a low-profile 12liter one that is about 25cm high, which once the cyclone is assembled on top, and the hose on top of that, fits in 65cm height overall.
Luke the concern I’d have about the particular box you showed is that it would implode under vacuum. It’s early for me (pre-coffee) so I probably haven’t thought this thru but my Oneida UDD is a pretty stiff walled container and when I turn on the sucker I can see the walls slightly compress.
Amazon sells a lot of varieties of plastic barrels:
Personally I like Julien’s metal drum. A 10l container is very small and will require emptying very often. I have my dust deputy on a 40l or so plastic paint bucket and I experience the walls being pulled-in especially if I use the hose to suck dirt and it gets a seal and the suction increases and the bucket wants to collapse. Since I use it mostly for the dust shoe, this does not happen regularly but Julien’s metal bucket would work well. I’ve looked for these bucket at home but could not find any.
I doubt it would work very well when gravity is not helping ? but I never tried.
How about you get rid of the cyclone and go for @cgallery dust separator design instead ? Never built one myself, but it looks like the Thien separator would take much less height than a cyclone.
I use a salvage drum I bought off of Amazon, along with a trash can cyclone lid from Woodcraft. They work great together, and the drum comes with a locking lid you could drill out to mount a cyclone.
Luke, whatever route you go make sure to account for static electricity. The early UDD had an issue where an incomplete grounding path zapped the Festool CT electronics. Not sure if metal is better than plastic or not in this situation.
Guys,
I thought I would add my 2 cents here as well. I heard about a product named the Dustopper while in Instagram. It is a cyclone but does not need near the height of a Dust Deputy. I’ve been using it with my shop vac for several weeks now and couldn’t be happier. I was also able to buy it at Home Depot instead of a specialty store like Woodcraft.
I was wondering if a small plastic box say 10L like this would work:
