MY DIY Dust Separator

[tonyfoale]

That's how the "Rainbow" vacuums work.The air column (propelled by motor driven fan) goes straight down towards a bin holding about 1" of water. There is a blunt, rounded goilet in the bin, centered in the airstream. The inertia causes even fine dust to drop out of the airstream,trapped by the water, as it reverses upward to exit.

Some time in the years since my previous post I did make a water trap. Even though I had baffles in the water, designed to break up the large bubbles into small bubbles, the water would bubble up out of the container. I solved this by making the trap quite tall with only a low level of water in the bottom. I tried putting some detergent in the water, once, to reduce surface tension but that had the place submerged in foam, very quickly.

I designed the outlet from my blaster to capture the large stuff and only allow out the fine dust, this worked really well and the water trap captures the fine dust.

Click for full size.
The tower on the blaster works so well to keep the relatively large blast media inside the blaster that there is nothing for a cyclone to capture so I only use the water trap for the dust.

Any large particles that escape the tower, and there are very few, get caught in the white end cap. After a blasting session I remove the end cap and return the media to the cabinet. There is never more than a small cup full.




Baffles in the water trap, the trap had to be tall to keep the water in, otherwise it would just bubble up and pass through to the vac.