Dust Deputy - it works!

[T>D>C]

I’m familiar with cyclone dust collectors in an industrial environment for material handling so I bought a tiny Dust Deputy for my shop vac. I had an older 10gal shop vac with a bad motor so pulled the motor/vac off, formed a plywood adapter and mounted the Dust Deputy.
The main vacuum is a 12gal shop vac.

I have to say, this thing works great. I vacuumed a mixture of metal grinding dust and black paint over spray and it worked better than expected. You could easily see the black dust swirl around and fall into the dust collector. Only the smallest amount of very fine dust made it to the final filter. I vacuumed up saw dust and it separated easily. A small piece of plastic wrap, maybe 2” x 3” made to the final vacuum as well. I can only assume because it was so light it did not have a chance to separate from the air flow.

I bought the Dust Deputy Plus Cyclone Separator kit. Everything fit up fine except for the old vac hose fitting. I had to use some blue duct tape to ensure no leak.

I plug the original vacuum intake connector with the bottom of a small spray bottle, silicone and more blue duct tape (connector OD 1-1/4”).

 

[Voi]

I like the use of the old shop vac as your collection bin. Great re-purpose and it already rolls.

I have one as well. I wanted it up high so it would be overhead when using my track saw so it needed to be somewhat short overall. I used a clear restaurant tray as my collection bin. The Dewalt Extractor is attached to the plywood with bolts in place of the casters.



Then I rigged up a swinging boom arm so it would follow along for long rips and so I could swing it over to my miter saw.



I don't have it perfected yet but it's working decently so far.

 

[T>D>C]

good one there!

 

[T>D>C]

I will eventually tie them together for ease of movement. I have not decided to build a cart or brackets yet.

 

[lardy1]

I built a cart with my DD and my shop vav securely sitting on it. I can roll it around from machine to machine in my small shop. It isn't the best for dust extraction but it saves me tons of cleanup and puts a huge dent in the airborne dust. Well worth whatever it was I paid for it.

 

[Bears Fan]

I bought the same Dust Deputy kit to put on my sandblaster cabinet, but its still sitting in the box

 

[larry4406]

The cyclone works great.

I fail to understand why the shop vac manufacturers don’t include it as part of the vacuum design.

Simply charge me $20 more for a compact all in one unit.

 

[ScottsGT]

I bought a metal 5 gallon bucket with the metal lid and snap ring for my collector. Lid was so thin I had to sandwich it between two pieces on 1/8” Masonite I had laying around.
mounted the can on a plywood base using Jeep hood hold downs. Base has an arm going up that I drilled a 2” hole through that holds the dust hose in place.
works great, but using a planer it fills up quickly!

 

[RTM]

To run my planer, I'd want at least a 30 gallon cyclone collector. I can fill my dust bag up in under 30 mins working with a cohort. Afraid I need the $$ one.

 

[mark-NJ]

I've wanted one for a while. Kept putting it off. "Someday"...

About a year ago, my daughter wanted to refinish / sand a table. I set her up with my orbital, my shopvac, and a good dust mask (thankfully). I came back a few hours later and a.) the vac's filter clogged early in the process and b.) she & my shop were covered in white paint dust. (happily, the mask was worn & lungs were clean).

I said "That's enough".... Bought a cyclone, and while I was at it, a brand new vac (the old one being almost 30 years old). I'll post pics tonight, but I'm very very VERY happy with the results & functionality.

 

[tarbellb]

The cyclone works great.

I fail to understand why the shop vac manufacturers don’t include it as part of the vacuum design.

Simply charge me $20 more for a compact all in one unit.

You dont get to sell (expensive) replacement filters do that

 

[BukitCase]

Cobbled this together about 12 years ago for the (mostly) wood shop; I CHECK the vac's filter every couple YEARS, usually 1 or 2 quick swipes with an air nozzle is the MOST I need to do. The cannister is from an ancient Craftsman vac (long since dead) - lid under cyclone is a "scrap" of micarta from work dumpster dive, seal is foam camper tape, sits on the ledge the old lid/motor used to sit on.

A buddy was bitching about his vac losing suction about twice a day, I set him up with a Dust Deputy and some mounting stuff; he gifted me a 2 drawer "mil-spec" file cab, so other than a couple "always use" nozzles that lay on the micarta, other attachments live in the upper drawer and a handful of "custom" attachments/small hoses for various sanders, saws, etc, live in the lower drawer. I got fancy and actually fastened the "upgrade" to the cart. 'Way better than the 30 gallon "riser" I had under the vac before... Steve

Oh, that cannister usually gets dumped about once a YEAR on average. Couple of caveats - cyclones do NOT like air leaks - Also, my comment about checking the filter every couple YEARS, does NOT apply if you try to **** up styrofoam packing peanuts - that tends to SHORTEN things by about 729 DAYS

 

[dogdog]

I have to say, this thing works great. I vacuumed a mixture of metal grinding dust and black paint over spray and it worked better than expected. You could easily see the black dust swirl around and fall into the dust collector.

you might not want to vac paint over sprays. It will smear all over the inside and caked on that corners on the top. I got lucky that the unit I have was so old the plastic top cap fell apart from the base. so I was able to scrub it clean and super glue it back...

But otherwise these little cyclones are great, I used it to vacuum the outside drains. save the time between the filter change.

 

[dogdog]

I fail to understand why the shop vac manufacturers don’t include it as part of the vacuum design.

some one might have a pattern over it and prevent it from being make as a all in one product.

like "Dust Gorilla" series of Oneida products or Dyson have the mini vortex funnel for the floor vacs... oddly you can buy individual mini vortex off ali-express, just not the whole assembled things...

 

[dogdog]

I like the use of the old shop vac as your collection bin. Great re-purpose and it already rolls.

I have one as well. I wanted it up high so it would be overhead when using my track saw so it needed to be somewhat short overall. I used a clear restaurant tray as my collection bin. The Dewalt Extractor is attached to the plywood with bolts in place of the casters.



Then I rigged up a swinging boom arm so it would follow along for long rips and so I could swing it over to my miter saw.



I don't have it perfected yet but it's working decently so far.

where do you source those blue hoses ?

 

[lilredex]

Before spending any $$$, I'm going to try this one.......

 

[Jim_No_Garage]

Before spending any $$$, I'm going to try this one.......

If you are going to DIY something lookup a Thien Baffle - I built one for a garbage can and a 1HP dust collector with a 4" hose and it works great. I don't use it that much right now as I'm not doing a ton of WW right now. It saved the bag on the dust collector from 99% of the dust.

I bought a Clearview Mini-Cyclone for my shopvac several years ago at a WW show and it's great! I bought the Clearview in support of the underdog. CV had a mini-cyclone for years and Oneida created one and then lawyered CV into submission.

Jim

 

[BukitCase]

Watched 2 of his vids, looks like it works better than any others I've seen - I guess it'd depend on what your time's worth to you - looks like he's got about as much in parts and buckets as just buying the DIY deputy

https://www.oneida-air.com/anti-static-dust-deputy-diy-cyclone-separator

In my case, I'm already about 2001 projects behind, 4 different work areas (all of which are kinda makeshift) so after seeing how well the first deputy worked I bought the super (4") for my Jet DC and modded the jet for the cyclone, then bought 3 MORE of the little deputies for other vacs in other locations. One is the steel version, now gathering parts/pieces to do one for metal work (as little "meltables" as possible... Steve

 

[BukitCase]

Jim, I wasn't aware of Oneida's lawyer tricks, thanks - that's the main reason (besides cost) that I will NEVER own a Sawstop. Fk'n lawyers, shakespeare was right... Steve

 

[Voi]

where do you source those blue hoses ?

Pretty sure I bought this kit from Rockler.

Dust Right FlexiPort Power Tool Hose Kit, 1-1/2'' x 12' Fixed-Length

Four flexible rubber ports connect the fixed-length dust hose to a wide variety of handheld tools, even those with odd port shapes!

www.rockler.com

It's okay. None of the fittings work great with my track saw, miter saw or sander.

I switch around a lot so I really don't want to duct tape the connectors on, especially since my miter saw and track saw both use the same one. I might just order another and thread the hose on when switching tools.

 

[vwpieces]

Horrible Freight has a Newish Bauer branded cyclone on the cheep. In stores only and it still hasn't been in stock for me locally since it was released.

 

[BukitCase]

Yeah, closest HF store to me that has the Bauer cyclone is about 45 miles down I-5... Steve

 

[dogdog]

those are generic without the red or branding... they sell at ebay / amazon / ali for about $20 without the bucket lid or that hose..... if you are just looking for replacement, they were possible because of the pattern on the original dust deputy expired I think. Just search dust cyclone or something on the market places.

 

[BukitCase]

Voi, that's one of my biggest gripes about dust collection - NOBODY seems to have a "standard" smaller fitting on their tools, I've had to customize several PVC pipe fittings to fit JUST the bosch belt sander, another for Makita ROS, Another for PC ROS, etc... Steve

 

[Deker]

I've been waffling back and forth about getting one of these. Anybody see value in using the dust deputy with a hepa dust extractor, or are they meant for a shop vac?

 

[T>D>C]

Cobbled this together about 12 years ago for the (mostly) wood shop; I CHECK the vac's filter every couple YEARS, usually 1 or 2 quick swipes with an air nozzle is the MOST I need to do. The cannister is from an ancient Craftsman vac (long since dead) - lid under cyclone is a "scrap" of micarta from work dumpster dive, seal is foam camper tape, sits on the ledge the old lid/motor used to sit on.

A buddy was bitching about his vac losing suction about twice a day, I set him up with a Dust Deputy and some mounting stuff; he gifted me a 2 drawer "mil-spec" file cab, so other than a couple "always use" nozzles that lay on the micarta, other attachments live in the upper drawer and a handful of "custom" attachments/small hoses for various sanders, saws, etc, live in the lower drawer. I got fancy and actually fastened the "upgrade" to the cart. 'Way better than the 30 gallon "riser" I had under the vac before... Steve

Oh, that cannister usually gets dumped about once a YEAR on average. Couple of caveats - cyclones do NOT like air leaks - Also, my comment about checking the filter every couple YEARS, does NOT apply if you try to **** up styrofoam packing peanuts - that tends to SHORTEN things by about 729 DAYS

I’m stuck on dumpster diving and finding a piece of micarta! Cool find!

 

[ybnormal]

Then I rigged up a swinging boom arm so it would follow along for long rips and so I could swing it over to my miter saw.

now THAT'S cool!

 

[mark-NJ]

Up above in post #10 I said I'd show some pictures of what I made, so here goes:

I watched a ton of youtube videos and learned a lot from all of them. The 2 takeaways I had were a.) I didn't want something tall & top heavy and b.) I didn't want any "pulling" on the cyclone. This was my final design:



All of the piping is sched 40 pvc; the inlet was heated and flared to accept a 2" shop-vac hose. Sure would be nice if these were standard sizes, but heating the PVC a bit allows for all sorts of creative re-sizing. Anyway, in the pic above you can see that the inlet is rigidly mounted so there's never any "pull" on the cyclone. The connections to the cyclone are Ferncos & hose clamps. And 2" shopvac hose snaps into a 2" PVC connector perfectly: the corrugation of the hose snaps on to the ring in the middle of the coupling. All of the joints are glued, except for a.) 2 places where the cyclone can break away (for removal / clean out) and b.) the inlet to the actual vac.


I cut the shop vac's cord short (I abhor plastic cords), connected it to an outlet (unseen in this pic), then ran everything up to some handy boxes with a convenient switch & a 30' SJO (rubber) cable...




Shown below you can see the simplicity of the construction: The black container spackle bucket sits in a shortened spackle bucket screwed to the dolly, the cyclone is on a custom plywood ring with a sealed gap, the "plumbing" breaks apart at 2 places.




Kinda dirty, but you get the idea. This, below, snaps on tightly to the black spackle bucket




I've *never* needed to clean out the vac. Not once.





And the whole thing rolls away and lives right next to my welder.

I've been waffling back and forth about getting one of these.

If you're contemplating making one of these, I wholeheartedly say "Go for it!" Best shop tool I've put together in 20 years!

 

[Firebrick43]

Now build a cart. It greatly lowers frustration and can store all the attachment. Mine stores a sander and sandpaper as well.

Dust deputy cart
Mine and several others carts

The generic cyclones sold on ebay/amazon/horror fright and not as effective as the are the correct length/diameter ratio(to short) even the dust deputy is not but its a lot closer than the Asian versions.

 

[mark-NJ]

^^^^

EMT sweeps & couplings? THAT'S cool!

 

[dscheidt]

And the whole thing rolls away and lives right next to my welder.





If you're contemplating making one of these, I wholeheartedly say "Go for it!" Best shop tool I've put together in 20 years!

Nice wrench.


A cart definitely makes the whole thing more usable. Mine are arranged vertically, because floor space is at a premium.

 

[BukitCase]

"even the dust deputy is not but its a lot closer than the Asian versions."

I hadn't noticed before, but Oneida now offers a "2-1/2" version that's taller - didn't see whether it was the "golden ratio" or not...

BTW, after seeing the last few pics I'm never gonna post one again ... Steve

 

[BukitCase]

OK, I lied - here's my vertical version ala "Redneck meets pocket hole jig + scraps ... Steve

 

[mark-NJ]

Nice wrench.

Spotted that, huh? I needed one for the regulator & one for the hose... Bought a big one, cut off the end & TIG'd it to a little one.




Sorry for the hy-jack.

 

[reader2580]

Jim, I wasn't aware of Oneida's lawyer tricks, thanks - that's the main reason (besides cost) that I will NEVER own a Sawstop. Fk'n lawyers, shakespeare was right... Steve

Oneida has a patent on the Dust Deputy. They have every right to sue others who are copying their design.

What Sawstop was doing is completely different. Sawstop was trying to get the government to require a blade stop system on table saws. Sawstop was hoping if government mandated a blade stop system that manufacturers would license the Sawstop system to meet the requirement.

 

[Firebrick43]

Oneida has a patent on the Dust Deputy. They have every right to sue others who are copying their design.

What Sawstop was doing is completely different. Sawstop was trying to get the government to require a blade stop system on table saws. Sawstop was hoping if government mandated a blade stop system that manufacturers would license the Sawstop system to meet the requirement.

No, You don't have the facts correct. The cyclone dust Seperator was patented in 1933 with patent US1897144A.

Onida was given a patent erroneously in 2004. Patent 6833016 There was no improvement what so ever.

Size is not patentable, IE you cant shrink/enlarge something and patent the new size. Patents are specifically devoid of measurement.

Further more there were people making mini cylcones with bill pentz design at least two years before Oneida patented 6833016. You are not allowed to patent public domain designs after they have been in public domain longer than a year. Clearvue was selling mini cyclones before oneida was issued the patent.

Oneida didn't list the prior art nor the public domain in their application. The patent office has made mistakes before. Just because oneida was issued a patent, doesn't mean its enforceable(clearvue would have to take them to court). Onida defended their erroneous patent, not in court but just at the threat of a lawsuit because clearvue didn't have the monetary resources being a small company. That doesn't mean oneida was "right" They were doing something even worse than sawstop was doing.

Only 25 percent of patents that have had their validity challenged are actully ruled valid by the courts. But you need to have money to pay lawyers to present your case. They only had a latently valid patent.

The clearvue mini cyclone CV06 is available now.

 

[mark-NJ]

^^^

But isn't that the #1 problem with patents? They're only as good as your financial ability to defend them.

I'm just "me". I invent a tool...I get it patented. I put all of my money into getting it make & marketed. All I get from the USPTO is a piece of paper that says it's "mine". Big company X sees it, steels it, makes it, sells it. No changes...outright theft.

What can I do? They have corporate attorneys on retainer who can financially bleed me dry before it ever gets to court. So what, exactly, is to be won? What is "winning" in the first place? I designed it to sell it and make money, but that won't happen. The cards are dealt, the deal is done.

 

[T>D>C]

I've been waffling back and forth about getting one of these. Anybody see value in using the dust deputy with a hepa dust extractor, or are they meant for a shop vac?

Their value is to remove most of the debris from the air stream before it enters the filter, thus extending the life of the filter. It doesn’t matter the vacuum source or filter medium, I don’t think.

 

[fourjeepin]

I decided to get a cyclone but didn't like the cost so I decided to try the Home Depot version. And got the idea to make a cart out of my shop vac from the images in the reviews.

Here’s mine. Only thing I would change is to glue the casters on if you move it around often or over rough ground.

 

[Firebrick43]

Their value is to remove most of the debris from the air stream before it enters the filter, thus extending the life of the filter. It doesn’t matter the vacuum source or filter medium, I don’t think.

The only thing the vacuum source matters is that its strong enough. The cyclone does add resistance so small shop vac/battery powered vacs would not be a good candidate for a cyclone.