How a dust collection cyclone works

[Jim Andrew]

It would be interesting to feed some smoke into the clearvue to see how the air flows.

[James Gunning]

Jim,

Please forgive the crude sketch. It's my interpretation of your description, drawn on a 3x5 card. What I understand is this: the center tube on your cyclone is 8" in diameter and 18" long. The baffle (air straightener) is overall 36" long. It sticks out of the bottom of the center tube about 18" and tapers from about the 25" point from the top to a width of 1.5". I'm assuming it is in the form of a X inside the tube. How did I do? Way off or in the ballpark?

Inner-cyclone-baffle.jpg

[Jim Andrew]

You got it. Now draw the cyclone body. 18" diameter, 23" tall cone, 43" total height.

[Steve Peterson]

I installed a 5hp ClearVue in my shop and I can tell you it is entertaining to watch! For testing I had someone feed a variety of materials, dust, chunks, bark, plastic shavings, etc. Mine is mounted in a noise containment closet so I can't watch it from the shop.

JKJ

They are cool to watch, but the sound gets to you after a while. A sound closet is almost a requirement. I have thought about adding a video camera to be able to watch it all the time.

Steve