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I've been very pleased with my Harbor Freight dust collector (HFDC). From the get-go I added a 0.5 micron pleated filter and a neutral vane to improve the performance. Here's the story on that part. However, every time I emptied the lower bag I had to remove the filter to clean all the embedded chips and sawdust from between the pleats of the filter. The solids were not staying in the lower bag like they were supposed to.
I'd read good things about the baffle designed by Phil Thien, so I decided to adapt it for my Harbor Freight DC. If you're not familiar with Phil, he came up with a nifty baffle, and uses it in a trash can chip separator. I wanted to see if it'd help my DC without a detached separator unit.
The baffle is essentially a piece of 1/4" Masonite, placed between the intake of the DC and the lower bag. Here's the basic shape of the baffle...
Here's the separator, removed from the DC and turned upside down...
The inside diameter of the separator is 19", so I needed to draw a 19" circle on the masonite. I don't have a compass that big, but I do have a nail, a pencil, and some scrap wood...
Then I needed another circle, 1 1/2" inside the first one. Same approach, just a different hole for the pencil...
According to Phil, the part that's not cut away from the edge should be 120º of the circle, so I laid out that part...
And got busy with the jigsaw...
More in the next post...
I'd read good things about the baffle designed by Phil Thien, so I decided to adapt it for my Harbor Freight DC. If you're not familiar with Phil, he came up with a nifty baffle, and uses it in a trash can chip separator. I wanted to see if it'd help my DC without a detached separator unit.
The baffle is essentially a piece of 1/4" Masonite, placed between the intake of the DC and the lower bag. Here's the basic shape of the baffle...
Here's the separator, removed from the DC and turned upside down...
The inside diameter of the separator is 19", so I needed to draw a 19" circle on the masonite. I don't have a compass that big, but I do have a nail, a pencil, and some scrap wood...
Then I needed another circle, 1 1/2" inside the first one. Same approach, just a different hole for the pencil...
According to Phil, the part that's not cut away from the edge should be 120º of the circle, so I laid out that part...
And got busy with the jigsaw...
More in the next post...