A week ago, I spent the day in the garage doing some woodworking. I was using the table saw, miter saw and router table, creating a lot of dust. For my health, I hooked up the shop vac to the tools to collect the saw dust.
Unfortunately, I wasn’t satisfied with the results. The brand new filter in my shop vac quickly filled with fine sawdust. As soon as that happens, the suction drops off dramatically.
After a little bit of research online, I built a cyclone dust separator:
This contraption sits inline with the shop vac removes most of the sawdust and wood chips before they reach the vacuum’s tub or filter. It cost about $25 to build and despite my careless engineering and construction it works perfectly!
Visit the project page for more details.