Blast cabinet dust seperator made from junk, long

OccupantRJ · Oct 21, 2011

About 15 years ago, I got sick of hearing a shop vac run to evacuate dust from my glass bead cabinet, so I set out to see what I could do about it. Looking around in my contingent materials pile,

I saw a possible solution in an old well water tank, which was begging to be used for SOMETHING.

For the uninitiated, a cyclone dust separator pulls dust particles from the blasting cabinet during operation, to allow one to see what you are blasting, and also to filter out the nuisance dust from the actual grit. Light years ahead of a shop vac.

There is an inflatable 12 inch diameter vertical dust collector bag with a side inlet on the output of the blower housing that filters the nuisance dust from entering the room, and a 5 gallon bucket at it's lower end to collect this waste. The airflow leaves the blast cabinet through the bottom via a 3" flex hose, and enters the connection in the suction side of the lower compartment on the separator.

After entering, the flow is forced in a swirling fashion to the outer walls of the containment vessel, where the solid particles, being heavier, slide down into the funnel section. The glass beads are stored in this funnel and suctioned into the cabinet via a hose attached to the 90 degree flow regulator. This hose leads to the blast gun. After use, the beads drop to the bottom of the cabinet where they are vacuumed through the flex hose to the reclaimer.

The 6 inch piece of pipe protruding downward through the partition wall of the reclaimer sets up a small tornado in the reclaimer, and the nuisance dust, being lighter, is pulled upwards through the center of this tornado into the blower impeller, then out into the filter bag. The flow regulator has an atmospheric hole in it to allow atmo air to enter the grit stream. This sets the air/grit ratio supplied to the gun.

The suction hose can be slid back and forth to partially expose the hole in the regulator, then held in place with a thumbscrew through the wall of the regulator. The glass beads are simply poured into the reclaimer through the access door on it's side, up to the break point in the cone. More is added as it depletes.

This unit was flooded 12 years ago, so since I am now in the process of refurbishing it, I decided to take a few pics to maybe help others build one if they wish. Please excuse the poor photo quality and lighting. I was tired and ready to quit for the day when I snapped these.

OccupantRJ · Oct 21, 2011

More separator pics.

bigbluerigak · Oct 23, 2011

Thats great. More pics when you get it cleaned up.

OccupantRJ · Feb 27, 2012

Here's a thread of the restoration of my blast cabinet that shows the separator mounted to the cabinet and painted, with it's dust filter bag attached. The filter bag is made of a fabric called "duck", for those interested.
http://www.garagejournal.com/forum/showthread.php?t=124933

Kelly Craig · Nov 7, 2018

First, I know this is a hundred year old thread, but the information is still relevant.

I like the cyclonish beast. I have three commercial cyclones I use in my woodworking shop and I want to add one for the wannabe blast cabinet I just assembled.

My experience has been, with full on cyclones, even most the fines get dropped out, so, if this cyclone were efficient for removing them, you would get a big build up of dust from the blasted item (e.g., rust and paint) plus the dust of the blast media breaking down.

I notice a lot of posts back around this time, regarding dust collection, but only a few mention the dangers of cheap filters.

In my little hobby shop, where I and the occasional friend do a lot of woodwork, as well as a bit of granite and acrylic work, I have: (1) Two three horse collectors (actual three horse, 240VAC volt, four bag beasts); (2) One "2" horse (likely about 1-1/2 on 120VAC) collector for the miter and law cleanup; (3) An in-line, variable speed fan, which exhausts directly outside for my plating station (since its for gases emitted from the little two gallon tank(s); A five gallon Ridged for hand sanders; and (4) A floor model Handler buffer system.

For all of the filtered beasts, I won't run less than a 1 micron bag or cartridge, and they all use true cyclones (e.g., Dust Deputy for the hand sanders, Super Dust Deputy for one of the big collectors and Oneida's Dust Gorilla.

I will not run less than a 1 micron filter on the big boys. The air Handler uses 11 merv filters. Keep in mind, this is just for wood and plastic cutting, let alone something that tosses silica into the air.

Anyway, I got here because, gaskets and a tube of silicone later, I just got done assembling a HF blast cabinet and I plan of buying or building a filter for it, and exhausting the output toward the neighbors, I mean, outside. As such, I'm looking forward to seeing the approaches others took to get the air as clean as possible.

OccupantRJ said:
About 15 years ago, I got sick of hearing a shop vac run to evacuate dust from my glass bead cabinet, so I set out to see what I could do about it. Looking around in my contingent materials pile, I saw a possible solution in an old well water tank, which was begging to be used for SOMETHING.

For the uninitiated, a cyclone dust separator pulls dust particles from the blasting cabinet during operation, to allow one to see what you are blasting, and also to filter out the nuisance dust from the actual grit. Light years ahead of a shop vac.

There is an inflatable 12 inch diameter vertical dust collector bag with a side inlet on the output of the blower housing that filters the nuisance dust from entering the room, and a 5 gallon bucket at it's lower end to collect this waste. The airflow leaves the blast cabinet through the bottom via a 3" flex hose, and enters the connection in the suction side of the lower compartment on the separator.

After entering, the flow is forced in a swirling fashion to the outer walls of the containment vessel, where the solid particles, being heavier, slide down into the funnel section. The glass beads are stored in this funnel and suctioned into the cabinet via a hose attached to the 90 degree flow regulator. This hose leads to the blast gun. After use, the beads drop to the bottom of the cabinet where they are vacuumed through the flex hose to the reclaimer.

The 6 inch piece of pipe protruding downward through the partition wall of the reclaimer sets up a small tornado in the reclaimer, and the nuisance dust, being lighter, is pulled upwards through the center of this tornado into the blower impeller, then out into the filter bag. The flow regulator has an atmospheric hole in it to allow atmo air to enter the grit stream. This sets the air/grit ratio supplied to the gun.

The suction hose can be slid back and forth to partially expose the hole in the regulator, then held in place with a thumbscrew through the wall of the regulator. The glass beads are simply poured into the reclaimer through the access door on it's side, up to the break point in the cone. More is added as it depletes.

This unit was flooded 12 years ago, so since I am now in the process of refurbishing it, I decided to take a few pics to maybe help others build one if they wish. Please excuse the poor photo quality and lighting. I was tired and ready to quit for the day when I snapped these.

OccupantRJ · Nov 8, 2018

Good input Kelly, and welcome to the site. I use glass beads in the cabinet this collector is on, but on my large blasting cabinet it has a bag house filter system with I think 15 filters in it. I cut a 4” diameter hole in the shop wall and have it dumping the exhaust outside after it has passed through the filter system.

dkmc · Nov 8, 2018

The "eastcaroga" metal cyclones found on EBAY seem to be reasonably priced.
His website doesn't seem to be working, but ads on EBAY are constant.

cesarbee440 · Oct 17, 2020

I have a Peterson sandblast cabinet and I'm planning on rebuilding the dust collector that came with it. It sat outside and had gotten quite rusty and been badly neglected as none of the users bother to empty the dust pan and it had two gallons of dust overflowing above the collector pan and at one time, the door had fallen on the ground! Piano hinge, latches and pan got all rusty and the bags were falling apart. I don't even know if these are the right filters(10 total) as this dust collector is discontinued.

There is a piece that has fabric sandwiched in between and I don't know the purpose of it! Anybody have a clue?

Just going to machine sand the parts, patch a couple pin holes, machine sand open areas and, re-caulk, sandblast minimal areas I can't get to because the box cannot go in my sandblast cabinet.
I'd like to powder coat the pieces, re-assemble and see if it works again!

VoodooCLD · May 9, 2023

Nice build, I'm looking to build something similar, but with just a tube connection out the top so I can connect it to my central dust collection piping. What diameter is the outside of the reclaimer housing? How tall is it?

Blast cabinet dust seperator made from junk, long

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