3D Printing A Cyclonic Dust Separator

December 17, 2021 by Lewin Day 20 Comments

[rctestflight] recently purchased a big CNC router, and that meant it was time to arrange for some dust extraction in the workshop. Naturally, he set about building this himself!

Using a shop vac is fine at smaller scales, but they can quickly be filled up on bigger jobs. To stop it getting filled up as quickly and wasting vacuum bags, [rctestflight] wanted to build a 3D-printed cyclonic separator to catch and dump the heavier-than-air particles from the routing process into an attached bucket.

[rctestflight] trialed a variety of designs, from a quad cyclone, to a large single cyclone and even a triple-series design. A diffuser design was also built, that aims to slow the air flow to the point where particles drop out of the air stream. At the end of the day, the large mono-cyclone design proved to be the most effective at removing particles from the airstream.

Fundamentally, if you’re making lots of dust, a cyclonic separator is a great way to go about dealing with the problem. We’ve seen similar builds scaled up to deal with the needs of a whole workshop, too. Video after the break.

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Two-Stage Dust Collector Recycles Blasting Media

November 30, 2021 by Tom Nardi 4 Comments

A critical element of a good blasting cabinet setup is a vacuum system that can suck out the dust, blasting media, and bits of removed material faster than it collects inside the chamber. A cyclone separator can get the job done, but since it dumps all the waste from the cabinet into one bucket, it can make reusing the blasting material a dirty job. But as [Daniel Bauen] explains in the latest Engineerable video, his two-stage dust collector is able to keep the cabinet clear while separating the used blasting material into its own container.

The cheap dust separator only works on large particles.

Basically, the idea here is to to use two different cyclone separators: one that’s very effective, and a cheap model that’s only able to remove large particulates. By running the air from the cabinet through the cheap separator first, the used blasting media is captured in a dedicated bucket. From there, the air runs through the high-efficiency separator to extract the finer dust. Finally, the shop vacuum [Daniel] is using has its own washable HEPA filter to catch anything that makes it through the two extractors; though he notes that it only rarely needs to be cleaned out.

Normally this system is attached directly to the blasting cabinet, and it does a good job of capturing the bulk of the used blasting media in real-time. But to make sure the media is really cleaned up being using it again, [Daniel] will actually run the contents of the first bucket through the system a few more times to separate out any of the more stubborn dust that might be mixed in.

Of course not everyone has the space, or even the need, for such an elaborate blasting setup. If you’re just trying to quickly clean up some parts on the cheap, you can make a basic blaster for around $6. Good luck capturing the media though.

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Professional Results From Cheap Air Compressors

November 30, 2018 by Tom Nardi 21 Comments

The portable air compressors sold at big box hardware stores like Lowe’s and Home Depot are perfectly suited for the jobs they’re advertised for: namely throwing some nails into the wall or filling tires. But if you try to respray your car with that $50 Black Friday pancake air compressor, you’re going to have a bad day. The relatively small amount of air they hold is almost guaranteed to be contaminated with oil and moisture, making it unsuitable for painting or even just blowing the dust out of electronics.

But all is not lost. [Stephen Saville] has done an excellent job documenting his work to turn these low cost homeowner-grade air compressors into something suitable for spraying auto body panels. But even if you aren’t looking to put a sick pearlescent finish on the family minivan, these tips are worth checking out. From increasing the usable volume of air in the system to separating out contaminants, these modifications can unlock a whole new world of pneumatic projects.

The big one (literally and figuratively) is the swirl tube [Stephen] builds out of an old CO2 cylinder. The idea is that this will centrifugally clean the air, not unlike a cyclonic dust separator. As the air enters the top of the cylinder and spins around, contact with the cold metal will cause any moisture to condense out and collect down at the bottom. Oil and other particles in the air should also get spun out, leaving a central column of cleaner air. The collected water and contaminants at the bottom can be occasionally purged out by way of the cylinder’s original valve.

With a source of clean and dry air sorted, [Stephen] next wanted a way to get it around his shop. Using scrap metal pipes he puts together a system that not only gives him air where he needs it, but also increases the volume of compressed air he has available. By using large smooth metal pipes rather than something like flexible rubber hose, the plumbing puts very little resistance on air flow. The pipes therefore can be considered something of an extension of the compressor’s primary tank.

In the video after the break, [Stephen] shows off his new air system by laying down a very nice looking coat of paint on a car hood, but he also goes through the whole build process if you want to see the nuts and bolts of his system. He gives some great tips on welding and working with dissimilar metals which are worth the price of admission alone.

Outfitting the workshop with an integrated compressed air system sounds like the perfect second project to tackle once you’ve got the built-in dust collection system up and running.

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Automatic Dust Collection For The Whole Shop

January 5, 2018 by Tom Nardi 19 Comments

If you’ve got a woodworking area, or even if you’ve just got something that really churns out dust like a belt sander or table saw, there’s an excellent chance you hate sawdust with a passion. It gets all over your clothes, jams up everything mechanical, and as a fun little bonus can be explosive if not handled properly. Thankfully newer tools tend to come with their own dust collection bags (back in the old days, you weren’t really a man unless you were coughing up wood fibers), but if you’ve got a half a dozen tools with half a dozen different dust bags you’ve got to empty, that can get pretty annoying.

Especially if you take woodworking as seriously as [Brad Wright] does. Over on his YouTube channel [DIY Builds], he quickly runs through the construction of a whole-shop dust collection system with some very neat features. Not everyone needs a system this intricate, but the tips and tricks he shows off during the build are great and can certainly be adapted to less grandiose setups.

Dust collection connector with closeable gate — One of the scratch-built gates.

[Brad] goes into a bit more detail in this gallery, revealing that the heart of the build is a Harbor Freight dust collection system that he modified into a cyclone separator. Big chunks fall down into the 55 gallon bucket, and what’s left gets blown out of the shop via a louvered vent through an exterior wall. An intricate system of 4 inch PVC pipe is then used to connect up each individual machine’s dust collection port. Even individual hand sanders get into the act via a three way manifold. His table saw lacked a dust port, so he enclosed the motor with a piece of plywood and made his own.

One of the most interesting aspects of the build is the scratch-built blast gates. These are essentially valves which open and close the different sections of the PVC where they mate to the individual stations. This prevents the dust collection system from wasting suction by trying to pull from all the stations at once when only one is in use at any given time. [Brad] even wired up the blast gates with switches that will turn the dust collection system on when the gate is open, and off when it’s closed.

This isn’t the first time we’ve covered the lengths people will go to rid their shop of dust. Cyclone dust separators are an especially popular build, using everything from sheet metal to 3D printed parts.

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DIY CNC Dust Collection

September 14, 2014 by Eric Evenchick 25 Comments

CNC machines are great at churning out custom parts, but they tend to make a mess in the process. [Darcy] has built up his own CNC dust collection rig to collect the dust and keep his workspace clean.

To capture the dust, a custom dust skirt encloses the cutting tool and directs the vacuum. This was made by gluing acrylic parts together, creating a box that contains the dust and provides a connection for the vacuum system.

For $1, [Darcy] built a cyclone dust extractor. This spins air around in circles, causing the dust to fall to the bottom of a container. The result is less dust reaching the vacuum, and much less money spent on vacuum bags.

Since the vacuum makes quite a bit of noise, a muffler was needed. This is just a simple wood box to contain the machine. It can also be used to vent the exhaust outside to further prevent polluting the workspace.

While we’ve seen some similar builds in the past, [Darcy]’s design could be helpful for those looking to build their own system. He also gives us a video which shows the effectiveness of the dust skirt, which you can find after the break.

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Hackaday Links: April 13, 2014

April 13, 2014 by Mike Szczys 13 Comments

Check out this Pokemon Yellow cartridge for Super Nintendo. Wait, what? That is a Game Boy game! Well there is a Super Gameboy cartridge that lets you play them on SNES. This mashes the guts of the two into a custom-decorated SNES cart. Now if you’re more interested in the guts of that Super Game Boy cartridge you’ll want to check out this classic hack which dumped the ROM from it. [Thanks Nick]

Here are a couple of interesting things from our friends over at Adafruit. First off, they have a high-res gallery of the Raspberry Pi compute module and carrier boards which we heard about earlier in the week. Also, the latest Collin’s Lab has a great video on soldering. We especially appreciated the discussion of soldering iron tips and their effect on heat transfer.

[Marius] got tired of the static shock from the office coat rack. You know, like the scene straight out of Office Space? But he didn’t disassemble the infrastructure to solve the issue. Instead he connected it directly to ground. Just make sure you stick the wire in the correct hole!

It’s as if Hackaday is on a quest for the most perfect DIY cyclonic separator. Here’s the latest offering which you can cut out from sheet stock by hand. It’s the alternative for those of us without access to a 3D printer.

If you think it’s too difficult to build what we refer to as a Daft Punk table you need to check out what [Dan] pulled off. He proves that your LED matrix coffee table project doesn’t have to take up a ton of time or cost an exorbitant amount of cash.

We should have mentioned this to you before the weekend so you’d have something to watch: you can now download BBS: The Documentary from the Internet Archive. We’ve watched the entire thing and it’s fantastic. If you know what a dial-up modem handshake sounds like, you’re going to be awash in nostalgia. If you don’t know the delight of those sounds you need to watch this and see how things used to be back in the day when connecting your computer to a network definitely wasn’t what the cool kids were doing. [Thanks Larry]

3D Printed Cyclone Dust Separator

April 10, 2014 by James Hobson 17 Comments

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[Nicholas] has been reading Hackaday for a few months now, and after seeing several people’s dust extractor setups, he decided to make his own 3D printed version. And he’s sharing the files with everyone!

He has a small Lobo mill which produces a lot of dust and to clean up he’s been using a small “Shark” brand vacuum cleaner. It’s a powerful little thing, but has little to no capacity which makes it rather frustrating to use. This makes it a perfect candidate for a cyclone upgrade! If you’re not familiar with cyclonic separator it’s a way of removing dust from air using vortex separation — between rotational forces and gravity, this keeps the dust out of your vacuum cleaner and means you never need to change another filter!

Using Autodesk inventor he designed this 4-stage cyclone separator. It’s made for a 1.75″ OD vacuum hose (the Shark standard) but could be easily modified for different vacuums. We’ve seen lots of cyclone separators before, but this 3D printed one certainly makes it easier to fabricate to exacting standards!