Dust extraction and Thien separators. My efforts.

[jmee54]

Having started this thread I have been noticable by my absence from the excellent response that it generated. I had never heard of a Thien separator and was amazed when I watched a You Tube video of one working. Thanks Roy for your excellent build write up. I have been busy building a new Kiln room and woodwork shop (I'm a potter who likes wood too). I have got to get the pottery functioning properly first, but will definitely be having a bash at building one to your pattern Roy, as my dust extractor is useless after it has sucked up any finer dust.

Have you tested it on fine stuff yet?
Cheers John

 

[doorframe]

Hi John.

I'm glad you found my WIP helpful. I haven't specifically tested fine dust yet as I am paranoid about MDF, but I do have a couple of pieces tucked away. The extraction system is still WIP with a long way to go, but once it's fully operational I'll do some deeper testing. The closest I've come to a fine dust test is actually hoovering my workshop floor. It's rough concrete and gives an extremely fine dust as it's not sealed. My hoover usually loses suction very quickly doing this, but hoovering via the seperater definately made a massive difference with no noticeable loss of suction. I did find that the hoover filter had a dusting of concrete dust but nothing like the usual caking. I haven't tried adjusting the height of the outlet pipe while using fine dust so that's a test for the future.

I've also added a pressure relief valve to the high pressure seperater. It's a bit crude but works ok.

I've now made about 15 blast gates to add to the 5 I bought from Studders and I've started moving my machines to their final resting places so I'll be piping round to them as I go. I do still need about 2m of 63 flexible and I've put a 'wanted' in the 'for sale' section.... nudge nudge :wink: :wink: .

Roy