Setting up a Rutlands Dust Separator Kit

[Blake]

Morning All - having been appalled at the level of dust covering everything in my shed and terrified from reading reports of lung damage from wood dust I've taken the plunge and am upgrading my dust collection from the current household vacuum & small cyclone filter setup & have purchased a Rutlands dust collector (which seems to be a rebranded version of Record Powers) and wanting to have 2 stage filtration have also purchased one of their Dust Separation kits (https://www.rutlands.com/pp+dust-collection-dust-separators-dust-separator-kits+d01121) which appears to be the same as the Rockler system which having watched numerous trials on YouTube seem to give a good results and at a fration of the price compared to buying a Cylcone with 4" ports - let alone the space for that beast!

My question is to anybody who's tried this system - the instructions state the inlet / outlet pipes must be 2" in from the circumference on the container lid however do not give any guidance as to the minimum diameter of the lid - as it happens I have a handy drum which is 14" in diameter so the pipes would be spaced 2"-4"-2"-4"-2" - does anyone know if the central 2" spacing is sufficient for this system to work? - I don't want to start cutting a perfectly good sealed drum if it won't work.

[Twisted Trees]

This is effectively 2 x 90° bends, I experimented with this briefly on a 60litre barrel and it sort of worked until the barrel was about half full then it failed completely as there was not enough room for the particles to "fall out" of the resulting cyclone. I have gone big! I use a 6" to 5" cyclone on top of a 400litre dust container which is powered by a high flow low pressure system which  works well.

I know other turners have managed very well with high pressure low flow systems using smaller cyclones on a 56mm hose system such as this one https://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/274596541057?hash=item3fef3ab281:g:1twAAOSw~MFfxftL

There is always a trade off in these things, you are trading the loss of suction caused by the cyclone in the circuit against the gain in suction by keeping the filters clear of dust. Going big in ducting / hose size requires more HP on the suction end = more noise  or more money on noise suppression.

A few years ago I made significant investment in upgrading from a 74mm extraction setup to a 120mm system, which I am fairly happy with, but it is not foolproof, I am pretty sure there is a solution to this problem, but not one that falls into my budget or space.
 

[davidbrac]

My vicmarc 100 had a faulty inverter, found it cheaper to buy new and install than getting it repaired.

[Lazurus]

I have a similar set up, I purchased a ready made separator lid many years ago from The Tool post - it is basically a dustbin sized lid which I put on a large plastic barrel, works really well and catches all the stuff bar a very fine dust which takes months to build up in the extractor bag to the point it requires emptying.