Bucket Separator Ideas

[Bill Berklich]

I threw together a chip/dust bucket separator to capture fine dust from my sander and to keep me from having to knock out the vac filter every 15-20 minutes. This is a simple 90 degree elbow in at the edge and strait pipe out at the center without a Thien Baffle. It works great for general chip collection/separation but isn't collecting much of the fine dust from the sander.

The question is would a Baffle help to capture 80-90%of the fine dust or am I just expecting way too much from a bucket?

[Prashun Patel]

The baffle helps I've made 2 and they work well

For my portable sanders, I now use a Dust Deputy or a mini Clearvue CV06 mini cyclone. I own both and they work extremely well.

My only critique of the CV06 is that it is relatively tall, so I find it tippy. That being said I've used it for several years successfully.

Last, there exists a cheap knockoff of the Dust Deputy that I will admit to owning (too cheap to pass up on *bay). It also works just fine. The DD and the knock off require adapters for my 2 1/2" shopvac hose. The CV06 accepts the hose end without an adapter.

These work at least as well as the Thien baffle. The nice thing about the baffle is that you lose some headspace, but gain a lower profile which can be very useful for a shop vac.

[Pat Barry]

Bucket type separators for sheetrock joint compound sanding use water in the bucket to help trap fine particles. I bet that would work for sawdust just as well.

[Prashun Patel]

Pat, that sounds like a giant version of a device I *might* have used in college for less noble purposes...

Warning: use of such a separator is not legal in all states and can induce the munchies.

[James Gunning]

Bill,

You are expecting too much if you are hoping for very fine dust collection from a "bucket" separator. I tried both large and small versions of what you built and the results were about he same as yours. Chips were collected, dust was not. I bought a plastic Dust Deputy and mounted it on the bucket and it's been so long since I had to clean the filter on the shop vac, I cant remember when I last did it. The cyclonic action of just the bucket with a couple of elbow fittings just won't get it done.

Same for the garbage can collectors used with dust collection blowers. It will catch the chips and big stuff and let the fine dust through. A Thein baffle would be a bit better than the bucket, but not much when compared to a proper cyclone.

[Charles Lent]

A Thein Separator design might help. (search for "Thein" Separator on this site) It works in larger trash barrels, so maybe the idea can be adapted to your bucket, but I bought a used Oneida Dust Deputy to solve my dust collection problems. It works so well that my re-purposed whole house central vacuum never seems to collect anything in it's filter. I do a lot of scroll sawing (think very fine sawdust) and this vacuum system works very well for this sawdust and also vacuuming my shop floor, cars, and trucks. It collapsed plastic buckets until I stacked three of the buckets together, using only the top bucket. The ribs around the top 1/3 of each bucket provided ribs all the way down the top bucket when three were stacked together. Problem solved, but I have since changed from the plastic bucket stack to a 25 gallon steel drum and no longer use the plastic buckets.

Charley