Dust collector question.

Re: Dust collector question.

Bill Tindall, E.Tn.

With the Oneida system I gently bang on the pleated filter to knock the loose stuff off and then back flush with 90 psi air, creating a large cloud of dust. Dust becomes compacted in the creases of the filter and it will not dislodge by vibrations. I would presume scraping would embed it more.

Re: Dust collector question.

Dick Coers

I made a Thein baffle in mine to change the amount of fines going into the canister. Jet redesigned the latest version to do the same thing. If you don’t fill the bag to the top, you hardly ever have to clean the canister. Mine must be 15 years old. No signs of wear in the pleats.

Avoid the Jet design

Craig

I have an older Jet and one of their newer 3 hp canister designs, the new ones are junk compared to the old one, cheap and redesigned so the cyclone is shorter and closer to the barrel which makes it less effective. The barrel needs to be emptied when it's half full to keep the collector working well It felt like it was falling apart when it was brand new, I think they redesigned it to be as cheap as possible to manufacture in every way and it shows in use.

Re: Avoid the Jet design

Dick Coers

That’s easily fixed with a disc of 1/4” plywood with a slot cut in it. Just Google Thien baffle. I have that in an old design. I can fill the bag within 3” of the top with no dust in the canister

Thien Baffle has me baffled

Yonak

Dick, I have been confused by what is meant by a Thien Baffle, and that is probably why I have not pursued incorporating one as a project in my shop even though I have been, at times, unhappy with the performance of my dust collector. Going to a couple of Google search sites, as you suggested, only continued to add to my confusion.

Can you tell me : Is a Thien Baffle a collector, separate and in addition to a dust collector, or is it an insert that goes into my dust collector to help manage air flow ?

Also, have you got a good site in mind that can clearly explain what one is and what it does ?

Re: Thien Baffle has me baffled *LINK*

Bruce, a MN Galoot

They work very well. I built one for my planer.


Phil Thien’s Baffle

Man I'm lazy...

Virgil Johnson

I read the article and chuckled at the part where he spent two years and fifty variations on his collector. Plug and play is for me.

Re: Man I'm lazy...

Bruce, a MN Galoot

yabut, he's the guy who developed it, so a bit of research is indicated in the development process. I followed the directions and it works well.

Re: Man I'm lazy...

Virgil Johnson

Upon further reading after posting I saw he developed a product. I still stand by my lazy statement.

Re: Thien Baffle has me baffled

rum

There are a couple tradeoffs in the baffle design might not be immediately apparent.

First is that the thinner the baffle the more effective it is at separation. This comes at some expense of stability. I compromised by using 1/2" plywood and then carefully beveling the edges of the slot part down which worked quite well (although it is probably overbuilt).

Second the separation efficiency is roughly inversely proportional to the width of the slot. I built mine and had it tuned really well for sanding and tablesaw dust... then I hooked up the new planer and all my careful sizing went straight out the window as the longer shavings from the planer hung up badly on the narrow slot. When I widened the slot enough for the planer shavings to get by the sander and saw efficiency dropped somewhat. It still works pretty well, but the separation efficiency difference was pretty notable.

Finally like most separators (including cyclones) the effectiveness is very correlated with how tightly you can seal the collection container. I built mine as a pre-separator (as opposed to the jet which is in the filter stack) for theoretical ease of dumping the 30gallon drum under it. In retrospect I'm unsure about that theory as getting the drum to seal to the separator assembly has been a pain in the pitui.

Overall though for the price of it's been a pretty darn good investment.

Re: Thien Baffle has me baffled

Dick Coers

There was a baffle design, and a separator design. To fix the Jet, you just need a baffle. To me, this baffle controls the height of the vortex. It prevents the vortex from extending up inside the filter cartridge. It’s been years since I read the articles, so high probability I have the theory wrong.

Re: Thien Baffle has me baffled

Yonak

Thanks, Dick. You say it's just a baffle and another says it's two parts. I guess that's where my confusion lies. Can you point me to just this "disk of plywood", the baffle ?

Re: Thien Baffle has me baffled *LINK*

Dick Coers

The difference between one disc or two is if you are modifying a dust collector that already has a partial cyclone action in it. That needs one disc. You already have the inlet at a tangent to the cylinder, and you just need a baffle to control the vortex. If you are trying to baffle a garbage can, you need two discs and a directional inlet to build a vortex and also limit it. Edit; I also notice some of the pictures on these posts about the baffle are really confusing because they don't label which direction you are looking at. Some guys randomly turn the ring over to show some detail, then flip it over to show another detail. Sure doesn't help understanding what is what!


http://www.jpthien.com/smf/index.php?topic=145.0

Re: Thien Baffle has me baffled

Yonak

Thank you, Dick. That's very clear. I'm going to give it a try.

Re: Man I'm Even Lazier...

William Duffield

When Jet came out with their dust collector that included a baffle orvortex cone or turbo separator, or whatever they called it, I already had a better dust collector from JDS. To add an equivalent baffle to mine, I bought a $5 wok from Ikea, removed the handles and suspended it from a steel strap upside down in the top of the collector. Now, a lot more of the fine dust ends up in the bottom bag, and a lot less in the top filter.

Ditto