3D Printed Cyclone for Fein Shop Vac
Introduction: 3D Printed Cyclone for Fein Shop Vac
I like to do woodworking and I recently bought a Fein shop vac to replace a Craftsman that I had had for 20 years. The Craftsman was still working, but it was deafening, at about 98 dB. The Fein is about as about as loud as the vacuum that we use in the house, closer to 70 dB. The Fein has more suction that the Craftsman, but it can’t hold as much waste, and it uses $7 bags. After my last woodworking project, I decided that I should get a cyclone separator for it, to save money on the bags. I looked at several options, and I came across the separator that Festool offers for their shop vac. It is integrated with their vac, fitting neatly on top of it. I decided that, that was the way to go.
There are basically two types of ‘cyclones’ used for separators: Cone and Spool. Most commercial offerings are Cone designs, so I started there. Below is an early model that I made, which uses a Cone design.
This design would have probably worked fine as a separator, but I had a number of issues with it:
· It was tall! And the return hose back to the vac, coming out the top, would make it even taller.
· The bottom of the cone limited the tray space available on the top for tools.
· It raised the point where the hose would attach very high, making it more likely to tip over the vac over if I pulled on the hose very hard.
· And it was sort of ugly.
I settled on the Spool based design above, which isn’t quite as efficient a separator, but it’s a lot more compact and addressed all of the issues above. I couldn’t find any good separation efficiency comparisons between Cone and Spool based designs, but I suspect that that efficiency difference is not enough to worry about. The more important part is holding a good vacuum. You want to eliminate, or at least minimize any vacuum leaks. 668
The spool design works very well. If you watch the video, I was almost able to fill the box in 30 seconds.
This design uses big parts, which take a lot of time and filament to print. My overall print was about 250 hours. I quartered the main parts of the body to fit on my print bed, and each quarter of the Top took about 40 hours. And it took most of 3 2kg spools of filament to print, but that did include some reprints.
The STL files and complete documentation are available at https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4206700
And a video of it working is available here:
Supplies
Below are the parts that I used for the Separator. If I bought them on the web for this project, I included the link I used, but some of the parts I found in my garage, left over from other projects.
· (10) M3x30mm 0.5mm Pitch Bolts Socket Cap Head Hex Key Screws
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00XP4W5EM/ref=p...
· (10) uxcell M3x5.5mmx2mm Zinc Plated Square Nuts
https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B018503K94/ref=p...
· 2-1/2 in. x 7 ft. Dual-Flex Tug-A-Long Locking Vacuum Hose for RIDGID Wet/Dry Shop Vacuums (part number LA2520)
https://www.homedepot.com/p/RIDGID-2-1-2-in-x-7-ft...
There are several other vendors (e.g. Craftsman and Workshop on Amazon) that offer the a compatible 2-1/2-Inch Locking Wet Dry Vac Hose for Wet Dry Shop Vacuums, but in longer lengths, which makes it more expensive.
· Clear acrylic plastic sheet.
4 pieces are needed to make a box with 268mm wide x228mm deep outside dimensions. I cut all the pieces about 300mm long, which sets the height of the box. You can make it as tall as you want. Just remember that the taller it is, the easier it is to pull it over if you yank on the hose. The acrylic that I used was 5.8 mm thick, so I used the following dimensions for the acrylic sheets. Depending on the thickness of the acrylic sheets that you use, you will have to adjust the width of the sides. 858