Workshop Dust Manifold Spreads The Suction Around

July 26, 2023 by Lewin Day 15 Comments

Let’s say you’re doing lots of woodwork now, and you’ve expanded your workshop with a few big tools. You’re probably noticing the sawdust piling up awfully quick. It would be ideal to have some kind of collection system, but you don’t want to buy a shop vac for every tool. This simple manifold from [Well Done Tips] is the perfect solution for you.

It’s a basic rig at heart, but nonetheless a useful one. It consists of a plywood frame with a shuttle that slides back and forth. The suction hose of your shop vac attaches to the shuttle. Meanwhile, the frame has a series of pipes leading to the dust extraction ports of your various tools around the shop. When you power up a tool, simply slide the manifold to the right position, and you’re good to go. Magnets will hold it in place so it doesn’t get jostled around while you work.

It’s a much cheaper solution than buying a huge dust extraction system that can draw from all your tools at once. If you’re just one person, that’s overkill anyway. This solution is just about sized perfectly for small home operators. Give it a go if you’re tired of sweeping up the mess and coughing your lungs out on the regular. Video after the break.

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Impressive Sawdust Briquette Machine

January 16, 2023 by Anool Mahidharia 28 Comments

When you are a life long carpenter with an amazing workshop, you’re going to make a lot of saw dust, and managing its collection and storage poses quite a challenge. [Russ] from [New Yorkshire Workshop] built an impressive Briquette press to handle the problem.

It’s a hydraulic press that ingests saw dust and spits out compressed briquettes ready for fueling his rocket mass heater. The build starts with a batch of custom, laser cut steel parts received from Fractory. The heart of the machine is a 300 mm stroke hydraulic cylinder with a beefy 40 mm rod. The cylinder had to be taken apart so that the laser cut mounting flanges could be welded, slowly so as not to deform the cylinder. The intake feed tube was cut from a piece of 40 mm bore seamless tube. A window was cut in the feed tube and funnel parts were welded to this cutout. The feed tube assembly is then finished off with a pair of mounting flanges. The feed tube assembly is in turn welded to the main feed plate which will form the base of the saw dust container. The hydraulic cylinder assembly is mated to the feed tube assembly using a set of massive M10 high tensile class 10.9 threaded rods. The push rod is a length of 40 mm diameter mild steel bar stock, coupled to the hydraulic cylinder using a fabricated coupling clamp. On the coupling clamp, he welded another bracket on which a bolt can be screwed on. This bolt helps activate the limit switches that control the movement of the hydraulic cylinder and the feed motor. Continue reading “Impressive Sawdust Briquette Machine” →

A High-Powered Vacuum Cleaner For Tough Jobs

September 30, 2022 by Lewin Day 5 Comments

Vacuum cleaners are great for tidying up the home, but they typically can’t deal with the bulky, gross messes of a proper workshop. [CraftAndu] is currently building a sailing vessel, and has found that there’s simply too much sawdust for a regular vacuum to take on. Thus, he built a mighty vacuum of his own that’s able to deal with such conditions.

The core of the build is a giant 3.8 kW dust collector that’s used as part of a workshop dust extraction system. It’s of the type you’d normally use to suck up dust from machine tools. It’s then fitted with a long flexible hose that goes to the vacuum handle itself. The handle is made up of lengths of sewage pipe and several adaptors to fit it all together and hook up to the flexible tube. It’s also fitted with a set of wheels to allow it to be easily skated about the floor of the shop.

It’s a neat way to suck up all the lightweight sawdust that collects around the workshop. However, [CraftAndu] notes that even with the 3.8 kW extraction system powering it, it’s still quicker to use a broom for bigger detritus like wood chips and the like.

A lot of people think that vacuum projects suck, but we’ve always had a soft spot for them. Pun intended, and you’ll find the video after the break!

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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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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!