Yesterday Joe Mec and I decided to make a dust collection system for my glass
bead
cabinet.
Yeah, the ole shop vac hooked up to the cabinet sort of works for 3 minutes til
the filter clogs up and if you run the vac with no filter, the motor sounds real
funny after a couple days of sucking fine glass beads in it.
So.....a couple of Italian heads, some good ole yankee ingenuity and a bunch of
junk from around the garage and we made a wet filter system that so far seems to
work.
You will need;
1 shop vac (the small $20-30 1 gallon size works fine)
1 empty 5 gallon spackle bucket with tight fitting lid.
3' (min) of 3/4 or 1" ID rubber or vinyl hose.
2) 3/4 or 1" (see hose size) PVC ribbed couplings.
Drill 2 holes in the bucket lid to fit the ribbed couplings, if they are not
real
tight, caulk or seal them where they go thru the lid.
Cut a length of hose to fit 3/4 of the way into the bucket.
Cut a short one inch piece of hose for the inside of the other fitting, angle it
towards the side or make a splash diverter so to keep the water out of the short
hose.
Insert a length of rubber hose to your blast cabinet where the shop vac is
supposed to hook into or make a hole in the cabinet for the hose.
Run the other end of this hose to the bucket fitting with the long hose inside.
Hook up the shop vac to the fitting with the short hose.
Fill the bucket 1/2 full with water or an anti freeze solution (in cold
climates)
When the vac is turned on it will create a suction in the water filled bucket,
dust from the blast cabinet will be drawn into the water.
No dust gets into the shop vac.
So far it works great for me. Some playing around with the exact water level so
it
does not wet the vac filter was needed or a foam filter would work too. Be sure
to
use a wet/dry vacuum for this project.
K-mart has/had the 1 gallon shop vacs for around $20, the fittings are PVC and I
picked up a 4' of 3/4" ID vinyl hose. The whole project cost less then $30.
(but I
had the vac for a year or so)
If you saw the dust and dirt around my blast cabinet, you would know why I did
this. If I used the shop vac directly, the filter clogged in 5 minutes so I just
gave up until now. I don't want to dust up my new garage, at least not yet
anyway.
Foreseeable problems.....
As the dirt fills the bucket, the water level will rise.
Water freezes in the cold so now a place for your used antifreeze :)
Improvments......
As my buddy the plumber came in while we were "creating" this thing, he wants to
add a drain and an automatic fill valve to the bucket. Of course this would make
it completely automatic but it's not THAT hard to empty a bucket every couple
months. Unless you mounted it up high in the lower portion of your garage and
have
the blast cabinet upstairs like I do.
--
Frank Clarici
Toms River, NJ
A few Sprites
http://www.exit109.com/~spritenut
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