I’ve had this really cool green metal bin floating around my shop for years and I just haven’t found the right use for it . At first glance the writing on the front makes it look like it held some sort of hazardous Material, but it you read the writing, it was for storing wheat and dry food. I think it's perfect for turning into a dust separator.
So If you don’t know, the idea behind a dust separator is that is it helps extend the life of your dust collector and filter by collecting all the bigger particles of wood and debry before it gets to your dust collector. It does this by creating a cyclone inside the bin where all the heavier debrie can fall to the bottom and only the smaller lighter particles can move on to the collector itself.
I’m going to be using the Dust Right dust separator components from Rockler to make easy work of this. It comes with two outside fitting, two inside 90’ fittings, and some handy sizing stickers so you know how big of holes to cut.
Step 1: Cut Out Holes
This bin has a lid that fits pretty tight so all I did was stick the big circle stickers on the top of the lid about two inches away from the side and spaced them evenly apart from each other.
Then I drilled a pilot hole on the inside edge of one circle so I could get my jig saw blade in it.
Then I Just cut out the circle out with my jig saw.
Once I cut out the first hole, I checked the fit and it fit perfectly. So I did the same thing with the second hole.
Step 2: Screw On Fittings
Once both holes are cut out, you simply screw the inside fitting and the outside together through the hole. Rockler couldn’t have made it any easier.
I’s important that the 90’ fittings are in a pointing opposite directions. This is what creates the cyclone effect.
Step 3: Attach To Collector System
Now it’s time to get it hooked up and test it out, I just unhooked the a piece of flex hose that went to my collector and attached it to one of the top fitting on my new dust separator.
I then cut a smaller piece of flex hose and ran it from the dust separator to the dust collector itself.
Step 4: Test It Out
I wanted to test a few different sizes of saw dust or debris. So to test it I first turned on the dust collector and planed down some scrap pine wood.
I then found some bigger wood chip and small cut off and let my collector suck those up. I’m going to be adding a floor sweep so I want to see if this thing will separate these bigger chunks before they hit my dust collector’s-- turbines.
And it looks like it performed pretty well. As you can see, most of the wood chips from the planer were caught in the bottom of bin.
as well as the bigger wood chips and the smaller cut offs.
I can tell This is goanna be a great addition to my dust collection system.
NEVER STOP CREATING
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