Shop Vacuum Thien separator ---Now Finished with more pictures.

Garry Foster

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I made a 5 gallon Thien separator for my shop vacuum and it works great from initial testing, However it wants to tip over all the time and I was wondering if anyone else had built one of these what their solution was to this. I suspect I will have to add an expanded base or attach it to the shop vac someway. But looking for proven solutions. Room(or lack of it) is a big issue.

For the picture police...
 

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shorten the hose from the vac to the bucket and make the vac and bucket on one platform. the extra surface area will keep it upright and stop your troubles and still have the benefits of cleaner vac area.
 
Now that I've made room for it, I should go ahead and do a vertical mount for my setup. Would be much more convenient that trying to unroute it from behind the bench legs when it's being used for something other than the router table.
 
shorten the hose from the vac to the bucket and make the vac and bucket on one platform. the extra surface area will keep it upright and stop your troubles and still have the benefits of cleaner vac area.

That's essentially what I did with my setup. My separator bucket is very top-heavy, so I put it inside another bucket that has been screwed to the mobile platform. I just use bungee cords to hold the vac itself in place.

Dust Devil and Cart - 01 800.jpg
 
That's essentially what I did with my setup. My separator bucket is very top-heavy, so I put it inside another bucket that has been screwed to the mobile platform. I just use bungee cords to hold the vac itself in place.

View attachment 51461

So I need a bigger bucket to put my bucket in?

Never enough buckets!


Also have my HF 2 HP dust collector I have yet to assemble...It is in the cardboard box to the right.
 

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So I need a bigger bucket to put my bucket in?

Never enough buckets!

You can use another 5 gallon bucket...just slip the one with the separator into it. That way you can screw the lower bucket onto a platform (with wheels, if you want), and just lift out the separator bucket when it's time to dump it.
 
Well I got back from Florida and have finished up this while taking time out to warm up.

I decided to add a platform on the bottom of the Shop Vac canister. It had reenforcement ridges molded in so I added some shims and adjusted then with hot melt glue. Added threaded inserts through the bottom....
IMG_0001.JPG


On this platform I added two stops on which I traced the outline of an arc the size of the bucket. Then I band sawed and used the belt sander to get a decent fit to the bucket. These were installed to trap the bucket and elimininate any motion as long as the bucket is held down.
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Yesterday I went to Woodcraft and got a section of 2.5 inch hose. I fabricated some adapters from this hose to the Shop Vac and the bucket lid.
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To attach the hose to the ports I fabricated some adapters, for this I used two pieces of scrap plastic pipe one of PVC and one of ABS. I made them on my lathe as shown. This was tricker than I expected as the pipe was hard to hold in the 3 jaw and really light cuts had to be taken...
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This shows how they fit..
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At this point I was getting close, here it is with the bucket just sitting on the platform. The wheel is from the scrap box and will be added to the end of the platform to eliminate sagging.
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And here it sits all hooked up and ready to collect!
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I didn't have much sawdust around but here is where I picked up what little I generated doing the sawing for this project.
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Looks like a success!

One comment/question - as the separator fills up and gets heavier, is it gonna tip the vac over? You might want to add a caster under the can.
 
Looks like a success!

One comment/question - as the separator fills up and gets heavier, is it gonna tip the vac over? You might want to add a caster under the can.

Jim the little white caster is under the end of the board and does what you are suggesting I think.. Didn't get a good picture of it installed only laying on the bench in the one picture.
Garry
 
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