Vacuum cleaners are very handy, but if you use them in your hobby room you may notice that the dust bag gets full very fast, especially if you let it suck in sawdust and small wood pieces from woodworking. The bags are quite expensive and and my vacuum cleaner is an old one which got exchanged because of the worn bearings (which are quite loud). For this reason, I didn't intend to get a new one without a dust bag. I decided to upgrade it with a homemade cyclone seperator which would filter out the bigger particles and reduce rubbish getting into the bag.
I used a transparent bucket, a plastic pipe and a thick plastic hose. The bucket is closed with a cover made of wood which is sealed by a ring of foam and held in place by 4 trousers rubbers. I had to put a ring make of PMMA into it because on the strongest vacuum setting the bucket tended to collapse. The bucket has a big nipple made of thick plastic hose on the bottom which slides exactly into the original suction hose hole. This way, I can pull of the bucket if i want to empty it.
As you can see in the pictures, even the quite fine sawdust is kept in the bucket.
Copyright (C) 2007 by Wiesner Thomas
Last change: November 10th 2007
