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I’m a little confused as to what the width of the slot is. I saw a video where the guy said he read it was supposed to be 1 ¼”, but yours looks wider. Does it matter?

 

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Thanks Dave,
I had the same problem with the Plywood size. I have a piece of ½” x16x24 and thought about making the slot bigger, but I decided to wait until the sun comes up to find another piece in my wood shed. I may also have to wait until it gets a little warmer to cut a piece outside since I don’t have any dust collection at the moment.

I’ve been thinking about the support for the center of the slot and I think I’m going the use a steel rod all the way through the housing keep the slot as unobstructed as I can.

Most of the Thien separators I’ve looked at so far have the outlet protruding a little into the cyclone cavity and I know this has a cone, but I was thinking of using some sheet metal around the inside cone to drop down a little just to prevent any dust from getting up on the cone.

Anyway I don't know if it will work but I have a piece of 10" sheet metal duct that I'm going to cut

 

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I just feel that the cone is like a scoop catching the saw dust as its flying around and just want an edge to stop it from scooping. As it turned out the 10” duct I thought I had was actually 8”, so I’m going to have to wait on that Idea.

We had a fruit cake from Costco on the counter that looked like about the right size so I took the plastic cover off and stuck it into the hole. It was about a 1/32 too small but close enough to tape on. I may cut 2” off the top and give it a try to see if it holds up. It has an interesting shape with spiraling ridges turning in a direction that might force the dust downward toward the slot. My only concern is that it may make the opening a little small because its bowl shaped.

I also have a bucket with straight side that I could easily cut 2” down from the ridge around the handle and shove it in the cone hole.

Anyway I was going to use 3/8 plywood but found a ½” piece of MDF and really didn’t want to waste my plywood. The ¼” steel rod is from a cable reel and I’m just running it all the way through an also use two screws on the sides to keep it from tilting. I’m just waiting for the glue to dry now.

 

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You just need the baffle, no cone or bucket in the hole, which would block the airflow to the upper cannister.

The air rotates at high speed in the middle section of the collector. The baffle keeps the heavier particles in the lower bag by preventing a swirling action in the lower bag.

If the lower bag is plastic, like my dust collector, all of the air needs to flow out of the top through the cannister. The air has to flow through the "funnel" in the middle. If you block the funnel then you will not get any airflow through the collector.

Oh No You don't understand, I'm cutting the bottom of the bucket completely off and it was only going to be a ring about 2" in inside the hole. Nothing is going to be closed off, its only a ring around the edge.

Well actually I just measured the depth with the baffle installed and I may only be able to have a 1" ring around the edge because its only 3" from the bottom of the cone to the top of the baffle. I'm not sure that will be worth it.

 

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Well I was going to try operating it outside without the filter bag and see if I can see a difference, but the MDF baffle split in half and I’m going to have to make another one out of plywood or try to glue the MDF back together. I spent about as much time as I can today, but maybe I’ll try again after dinner.

 

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This isn’t the first time I’ve had trouble with this MDF. Its part of a large sheet I bought years ago and I forgot about it because it’s been in the storage shed for a long time. It looks great and then it splits like a stack of newspapers. I should have tossed it when it first happened.

 

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As the back pressure would be different with the top bag off, I don't believe that would be an effective method of testing.

Well maybe if sawdust was flying all over the place, but if it all goes down the sides through the slots then I’d say it was a pretty good test :smile:

 

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Not necessarily....with no top bag the air will achieve faster velocity in the separator, which may help it drop out faster.

I disagree, what I'm saying is IF the the saw dust DOES go down the slot without the bag, then it can only be better with the bag.

If it DOES NOT work without the bag, then it proves nothing.

The Wynn filter is supposed to have no or minimum back pressure

 

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LOL. You just aren’t seeing outside the box. You don’t need scientific figures to know if something works or not. So if water flows down the drain and you don’t have calculations on how fast or how much, does that mean it doesn’t work? :laughing:

The test I‘m interested in is to see if there is a difference between having a ring around the edge to prevent the funnel from skimming or not. I am NOT conducting a test to see if the Thein baffle is working or not because I already have conformation for that. :yes:

All I care about is that most of the saw dust is going down the slot into the bag and not coming out of the top into the filter, which I should be able to see.

Also if I feed it 5 gal of saw dust and I have 5 gal of saw dust in the bag without the filter then I’d say that was working. And if I only have half of what I put in then it’s definitely a fail and it might have to be farther tested with a filter to see if back pressure has much of a role.

The only thing I will not know is how much very fine 5 micron dust is coming out, but after seeing all that fine dust going up in the air yesterday with my own eyes, I think I'll be able to make a pretty good judgement call.:smile:

Here is a test without back pressure at all and in fact it is a negative pressure. Not scientific but it is pretty easy to see if it’s in the ball park. This particular system isn’t exactly what I’d use for an expensive Wynn filter because there was some loss and hopefully it was due to being sucked out instead of blown out.

I am not recommending this, but only using it as a demonstration of a test.

Anyway I’m growing tired of explaining this, if you can’t understand what I’m trying to say and then I just don’t know what else to say.

 

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I decided to just glue the MDF back together and replace the MDF blocks with pine since there really should not be a lot of pressure on it. Only this time I’m not relying on glue alone to hold the MDF to the blocks and used wood screws through to the pine. The photo below shows the support rod that I ran through to keep the gap up. the rod is only 3/16” thick so there should not be any accumulation of dust on it

It’s too dark right now to do any testing so I’ll wait until tomorrow early afternoon. I’m thinking about videotaping the ring test without the filter bag and hoping the camera doesn’t get covered in saw dust. :laughing:

Oops I forgot to take the clamps off before taking the photo. :icon_redface:

 

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Wow, a big difference visually with the ring. Before the ring I could see a fine cloud of dust coming out of the hole and I don’t see anything with the ring. Now that’s not to say there isn’t any dust at all, but defiantly a difference with the eye.

So take it any way you like I really don’t care, but I’m going with the ring because its an easy 5 min fix. I have to say I was very disappointed with the amount of dust without the ring and at that point I was not going to buy a Wynn filter.

 

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I was experimenting a little more and found that if you dump too much like a big hand full all at one time, a lot of saw dust will come through, but it should work fine with normal use. It definitely helps but not a 100% depending on how much is feed to it at a time.

I also tried to make another ring a little deeper into the cavity but I didn’t have any sheet metal long enough to go all the way around and it only made it worst so I’m just going to keep it as it is.