[rctestflight] recently purchased a big CNC router, and that indicated it was time to set up for some dust extraction in the workshop. Naturally, he set about building this himself!
Using a shop vac is fine at smaller scales, but they can swiftly be filled up on bigger jobs. To stop it getting filled up as swiftly and wasting vacuum bags, [rctestflight] wanted to build a 3D-printed cyclonic separator to catch and dump the heavier-than-air particles from the routing process into an attached bucket.
[rctestflight] trialed a variety of designs, from a quad cyclone, to a large single cyclone and even a triple-series design. A diffuser design was also built, that aims to slow the air flow to the point where particles drop out of the air stream. At the end of the day, the large mono-cyclone design verified to be the most effective at removing particles from the airstream.
Fundamentally, if you’re making lots of dust, a cyclonic separator is a terrific way to go about taking care of the problem. We’ve seen similar builds scaled up to deal with the needs of a whole workshop, too. video after the break.
