Another Cyclone-Vac Build

A buddy liked how well my shop vac-cyclone system worked so much he asked if I'd build him one. Because I was down to a few thousand projects, and had escaped favors to family members, I said I would.

As you, probably, know, Dust Deputy cyclones, normally, sit atop a five gallon bucket, but his is going to get worked hard, so he bought a 20 gallon can, with a flip ring lid, which I recommended, so he could open and close it without tools.

Once he had the cyclone, collector can and a vac, he brought them over for me to start playing with and, from then on, I was unsupervised (insert manic laughter here).

I had one piece of black pipe left from building mine, to move the intake port from the side to the bottom of the can. So that was a done deal.

Couldn't remember what I'd done to alter it to fit the input on the cyclone, so I turned a cone, with a slight taper, which I used to expand the pipe to fit the top of the Deputy, after heating the black pipe with a heat gun. Also, used my Foredom grinder and a quarter inch rasp bit to grind much of the interior away, just cause (that's all I got on that one).

I had a six foot piece of Allthread I picked up for walking sticks, so donated a few feet of it to the cause (there's still enough left for a cane). That and some fancy tubing I had took care of two front posts, to support the vacuum atop the collector can lid.

I cut the two tubes to a length that put the vac level on the can lid. Their length is, with the vac mounted, the same as the distance from the bottom of the vac to the bottom of the cyclone.

I cut the allthread long enough to go through the bottom of the vac [with a washer and nut on the end, in the vac can] down through the tubes, through the collector can lid, through any supporting plywood and with enough extra to add washers and nuts on that end.

I had some monster, 2" washers. I used them above and below the tubes covering the Allthread, where the tubes rested against the plastic bottom of the vac and the plastic top of the cyclone collector can.

I offset the position of the cyclone on top the collector can lid. Because the altered vacuum port has to be at the outer edge of the vac can, to avoid conflict with the filter, this put the vac at or near at center of the lid, when mounted.

The system really pulls down on the top of the can, when you close off the intake, so I had to reinforce it with plywood. I won't show you pictures of that, because I refused to cut a good piece to donate to the project, so made a really scary/major ugly support system, which solved the problem.

Once everything else was done, I added a view port to monitor the fill level. Which has proved invaluable on the other three cans I've done this to.

When it was all said and done, I used a LOT of hot glue. Every hole in the cyclone can lid and the bottom of the vac can had to be sealed. The pipe for the modified vac intake has a lot, to hold it in place, just in case. Last, the view port needed to be well sealed.

I buy my glue sticks in ten pound boxes and they are the long ones. In all, I, probably, used about ten or twelve.

The only improvements I can see would be, a handle on the can, to tug the system around and, maybe, wheels, like the ones on my big can.