I went and got that 30L round bucket, attached the cyclone to the lid, and now it works perfectly. I spread out the same dust on the floor, vacuumed it up, and pretty much all of it ended up in the bucket. The filter was still very clean.
I used two buckets. Under normal operation it does not implode. But when I close the inlet with my hand, the vacuum gets too high and the inner bucket starts to crumple up. I’ll make some reinforcements soon.
I also sealed the cyclone where the two halves are screwed together, not sure if that made a lot of difference. The two parts already fit together very tightly.
I did not change the white pipes with the 90 degree bends. It might be even better without those, but I’m very happy with the performance now. (I don’t have enough hose to leave out the white pipes.)
For science, I also made a small test to see whether the round shape is important. I placed my rectangular bucket inside the round bucket. The top of the rectangular bucket is about 3cm below the lid. (Seems more in the picture below.)
As long as your second bucket is the same as the inner bucket the inside one can’t collapse. The outer one will keep the inner one from deforming. I’ve been running mine like this for years. That’s also why the dust deputy kits come with two buckets. Try to only let your 5 gal bucket get half full. After that the vortex inside can suck up some dust into the vac. If you can swing it, get rid of the 90s, they’re slowing down your airflow, but will work for now.
It takes around 750g of PLA and takes between 2 and 3 days of continuous printing. It’s supposed to be possible to print it completely without any support, but I had to use the “support on build plate only” option to make the first few layers of the top part print well (the amount of support material is very small so it hardly impacts printing time or amount of PLA needed). The bottom part prints fine without any support.
Totally agree. Use 2 45* angles with a small piece of straight pipe between them. It’s much easier on the airflow. Also, I would attach about 6"-8" of straight pipe where your hose is attached before entering the cyclone. Having a straight flow of air just before it enters the cyclone also reduced turbulence and creates a better cyclone effect inside.
I also agree, and a tube on the inlet to straighten out the airflow is something I seriously considered.
But it works very well as is. Today I milled a wing from XPS foam (like here, with one wing half milled from 60x15x2 cm of foam). The leading edge was milled with a 0.1mm stepover, so it must have created tiny and very lightweight dust particles. And it all ended up in the bucket as far as I can tell!
Since it’s working so well I don’t feel very motivated to keep on tinkering with it. I just want to get some stuff milled with it now
