Paint bucket Thien Baffle - CTL 26

[carrera4s]

I recently built a Thien Baffle dust separator from a few spares I had at home.

Apart from the paint scheme (which probably was not necessary), I had all the components as spares / left-overs in the garage (and I had to buy the 3 elbows - c R 25 for all three (c US$ 2.00).

I firstly built the box which took a while (I also made notches that it can lock onto the dust extractor) while the lid is held in place with 4 x 8 mm rods & home-made star wheels (with a nut glued into the bottom).

Building the Thien Baffle was actually quite quick.  I set my bandsaw table at the same angle as the sidewall of empty paint bucket to ensure the baffle will be horizontal once installed.  It is then simply attached with 5 screws from the outside. The baffle was designed at 240/120 degrees  (as per Mr Thien's original) but I just guessed how wide I should cut it out - but it seems to work better than I expected.

Attaching the inlet pipe was not too difficult either:  I firstly cut the 50mm drain pipe to roughly follow the outside diameter of the paint bucket and then traced the shape onto the bucket.  I then drilled a hole & the coping saw finished the job. The two bolts & nuts made sure the pipe stayed in place while applying glue with the hot glue gun.

The bottom of the bucket was simply cut out leaving c 20mm rim to attach it onto the box (which got the same sized hole).  Lots of screws & silicon ensure a tight seal.

The paint bucket lid got two plywood disks to support the extraction pipe, but the disks were kept relatively small since I wanted to retain flexibility in the lid for mounting & removal if necessary.  (In hindsight I should maybe have made them bigger for more rigidity).

Lastly, to make sure the  hose fitted over the inlet pipe, I wrapped masking tape around the pipe until I got a tight fit. (Same was done where the pipe enters into the Dust extractor).

I completed it on 15 November last year, and this weekend I opened it the first time - I was amazed to see how much dust I made in such a short space of time!

Seems to be working very well!

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[McNally Family]

What a clever design.  How did you know when it was full?

 

[Michael Kellough]

Looks like it works!

I'd like to see a closer photo of the top of the lid.

 

[carrera4s]

What a clever design.  How did you know when it was full?

I did not know it was full - I was just curious to see how full it was and I was surprised to see it was full.  My friend suggested adding a clear plastic "window" in the side / top of the box to be able to see inside.  I will try it sometime, not sure it will work, will see.

 

[carrera4s]

Looks like it works!

I'd like to see a closer photo of the top of the lid.

I will post one tonight / tomorrow morning.  But it simply have the same diameter plywood disk on the top as on the bottom. 

 

[guitarchitect]

just curious, did you ever test how the strength of suction drops when you use it? I've had something similar in mind, but I'm not going to both mounting it on top of the vac... both will live under my workbench.

note that because your bucket was full, everything made its way into your vac... that's the unfortunate thing about the two-stage systems - the first stage never stops the system from working, it just turns the system back into the old one-stage when it fills up.

 

[carrera4s]

just curious, did you ever test how the strength of suction drops when you use it? I've had something similar in mind, but I'm not going to both mounting it on top of the vac... both will live under my workbench.

note that because your bucket was full, everything made its way into your vac... that's the unfortunate thing about the two-stage systems - the first stage never stops the system from working, it just turns the system back into the old one-stage when it fills up.

Hi Guitarchitect,

Sorry for the late reply.

No, I did not test the suction drop yet - still plan to do that, though.  But I find that it still gets the job done, so the testing will just be out of curiosity, rather than need.

Agree on the getting full, but I empty it when the box is full - at that stage it still has lots of space left in the bucket itself, so no overflow to the vac yet.

 

[tallgrass]

Just a FYI , home depot sells such a thing that fits on their buckets. It works a treat.

 

[sandy]

tallgrass wrote,

Just a FYI , home depot sells such a thing that fits on their buckets. It works a treat.

The Home Depot item he referred to is called a Dustopper.  The problem with both the paint bucket used by tallgrass and the Dustopper is that the collection box must be narrow to fit onto the top of the Festool vacuum.  Tallgrass addresses that issue by leaving a 20 mm rim on the bottom of the paint bucket.  However, that means that you cannot decrease the height of the paint bucket as you need the bottom of the bucket to attach to the top of the collection box and the top of the bucket to attach the vacuum hose, so the unit with the paint bucket and the collection box is quite tall and unwieldy, much like the designs that place a Dust Deputy on top of a collection box.

While the Dustopper, sold by Home Depot, has a relatively short height, the problem with it is that its diameter is so close to the width of the collection box that it is virtually impossible to mount and seal.

After playing with various designs using the Dustopper, I came up with a design I call the Festopper that incorporate the Dustopper with a collection box that attaches to the Festool vacuums, but which results in a low profile unit that can actually fit under an MFT/3 table.  Plans for the Festopper can be found on Etsy athttps://www.etsy.com/listing/680688...per&ref=sr_gallery-1-1&organic_search_click=1

 

[Michael Kellough]

[member=3194]sandy[/member]  you can simply the lid connection by replacing the four protruding knobs with just two latches, assuming there is some kind of registration dado or shoulder keeping the lid aligned with the box sides. They can be sprung or simple toolbox type latches or even bungee.

This will be sufficient because the lid will be pushed down onto the gasket (there is a gasket right?) by the atmosphere when the vac is running.

 

[sandy]

[member=297]Michael Kellough[/member],

As Yogi Berra has been quoted to have said, “In theory, there is no difference between theory and practice. But, in practice, there is."  So, if you think that atmospheric pressure, aided by a gasket and vacuum will do the job, feel free to try it and let us know how it worked out in practice.