I'm trying to build a thien top hat for my shop vac. I posted on Phil's forum but wanted to xpost here for additional suggestions / help
My post:
Phil responded that the sidewalls need to be flush with the drop slot for it to work. I'm at a loss how to do that exactly. I can route out a rabbet into the top of the drop slot and continue that around the rest of the arc, but I'm worried about retaining the polycarbonate sidewalls when the suction is applied. The polycarbonate will of course be trapped in the 90 degree or so section of the arc that the supports the baffle itself, but for the remaining 240 degrees it'll just be resting in the rabbet on one side. Am I overthinking this?I'm a novice when it comes to woodworking so please excuse any mistakes in terminology or technique.
I've been eyeballing the various builds for a while, but never came across any plans for making a top hat separator, so I'm winging it based off the drawings for the baffle insert linked in the stickied thread in this forum.
From what I've gathered, the 32 gallon Brute garbage can seems to be strong enough that a shopvac won't collapse it, so I'm using that for my build, along with 3/4" mdf and 1/8" polycarbonate for the sides.
In this picture, you can see the MDF sitting on the garbage can. I've routed a .25" deep groove into the bottom of the piece, .75" wide, and it fits snugly on the lip of the can
Visible in the picture is the 1/8" groove that the polycarbonate will be fitted to.
Here's a picture with a piece of scrap polycarbonate, test fitting in the groove. I pushed it back .25" away from the drop slot.
My question is, did I put too much of a gap there between the walls and the drop slot? Or will the separator still work?
Here's where I'm at right now:
Dry test fitting of the two pieces together before I create the intake funnel