I have had a dust collector in the shop for a few years but the intake screen keeps clogging with chips and other pieces blocking the vacuum. Plus it fills the bag kind of fast and is a mess to empty. So I decided to try making a separator from a low cost kit and scraps laying around the shop.

The cyclone kit was a twenty dollar POWERTEC package of 4-inch elbows, hose adaptors, and bits of hardware. I already had an unused round trash bin that looked like a good candidate for the project. I call the project Not-A-Cyclone because the typical cyclone system has a large expensive cyclonic cone separator section and I wanted to avoid the "expensive" part.

I show how I put it together without applying much skill or effort and how it separated chip and sawdust much better than I expected. You will also see in the background a little cart I made to carry the collector and bin so I can wheel it around the shop to any tool or place I want since it is much too small a blower to use with shop wide dust collection like the pros would use. After all, I am DIY.