Cheap Cyclone-based Vacuum Cleaner Made From Scratch

by nunopcardoso

18K36917

Intro: Cheap Cyclone-based Vacuum Cleaner Made From Scratch

This is my build of a cyclone-based vacuum cleaner.

I made this project spending only 21€, as most of the materials can be gathered without spending any money. Just for reference, here is the bill of materials:

Stuff I had to buy:
- Wheels: 3.5€
- 1200W motor: 7.5€ (bought a vacuum cleaner and salvaged the motor)
- 40mm PVC pipe and elbows: 10€
Stuff that I had/got for free:
- Fiberboard
- Wood scraps
- Wood glue
- Hot glue
- Rivets
- Washers
- Drywall screws
- Buckets
- Air filter
- Hose
- Window insulation foam

Furthermore, even though I used a bunch of power tools (table saw, router, drill, etc..), this project can be built using only a screwdriver and a jigsaw.

Unfortunately, I haven't taken any pictures during the build process. The main reason for not having such pictures was that I mostly improvised during the whole process. Given this fact, I'll only show pictures of the finished parts.

STEP 1: Components and Assembly/Disassembly

This vacuum cleaner is composed by 3 independent components:

The base, which serves the purpose of making the unit movable.
The dust separator, responsible for filtering dust and large particles.
The motor, responsible for creating suction and filtering small particles.

The pictures show how the components are connected together.

STEP 2: Base

The base was made from a wooden board (actually, it previously was a shelf from an IKEA closet :P ).

The base was reinforced by screwing in two wooden beams. The beams were placed at 90 degrees with respect the board's grain, preventing it from bending.

STEP 3: Cyclone/Trash Container

The cyclone was heavily inspired on this great tutorial: https://www.instructables.com/id/Mini-Cyclone-Bucke...

The cyclone separates the dust by forcing the air to spin inside the top bucket. Due to the centrifugal force, heavier particles are pushed onto the bucket walls and, by gravitational force, they spiral towards the bottom, eventually reaching the trash container.

As the cyclone's exhaust is placed in the center of the bucket, almost no dust is sucked into the motor.

A variation I introduced was to add a disk to separate the trash container from the cyclone. This separation consists of a disk with a 240 degree by 2cm groove around the edge. (I saw that on a video by Jay Bates: www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Q2WTynVYV8).

The cyclone bucket is attached to the trash container's lid using rivets (and washers on the plastic side). The joint was sealed using hot glue.

My trash bucket features a quick release system, which is very convenient but not strictly necessary (a second paint bucket could be used instead).

STEP 4: Motor Casing

The motor casing design is pretty straightforward: it is just a box made out of fiberboard with a set of stop blocks in the middle to hold the motor.

As I bought the cheapest motor I could find, I expect it to fail and/or replace it by a more powerful one. Given this fact I wanted the casing to be mostly independent of the motor shape. To achieve this I cut a circle onto a square piece of MDF and pressed the motor onto that circle. If for some reason I need to replace the motor, I just need to redo the MDF piece.

The motor + MDF fit perfectly inside the casing and are held in place by 4 wood blocks. To improve suction, the joint between the MDF square and the casing was sealed using window insulation foam.

Since the cyclone is not 100% efficient, some dust is sucked onto the motor casing. To prevent dust from getting sucked onto the motor, a dust filter was added to the suction chamber (i.e., the top part).

15 Comments

Yonatan24 8 years ago

If you bought a vacuum cleaner, Why didn't you uses it just as-is?
And how is that vacuum cleaner so cheap?

nunopcardoso 8 years ago

The vacuum cleaner was cheap because I bought it from an website equivalent to craigslist.

I created the new vacuum cleaner because, originally, it was very small and didn't have all the needed components (tube, bags, etc..).

CliveF 8 years ago

I have a workshop vac can that be used to power and become a chip separator... I am nolonger mobile so because I wood carver more than, lathe and other woodworking ares of "Our" trade. So most of the rubbish is/ are made up. Mainly of chips and dust.. Also because one neighbour is a " moaning Minnie " complains about anything and everything will, this be a bit quieter system? Can a shop vac go in a sound proof-ish box take, over heating and fire risks in to consider ration..? Great article, Project thank you for sharing.. Clive

nunopcardoso 8 years ago

Your workshop vac should work just fine. As I stated, the motor I used is super crappy and, nonetheless, it does the job.

Regarding the noise levels, I am not sure if the enclosure as-is makes a noticeable difference. Maybe if you build a bigger box with fireproof foam a larger attenuation may be achieved.

If you are really worried about overheating, you can buy a temperature switch to turn off the motor when the temperature is above a certain threshold. You can get those off ebay for about $3.

Cheers

LordAnubis 8 years ago

i'm using one for 1year now and it works. but need more power so new one is with 3 vacume motors :)

nunopcardoso 8 years ago

A friend of mine suggested using an additional motor but we ended up not doing that. Does that work well? Cheers ;)

LordAnubis 8 years ago

have to get back to you on that :) *so new one Will be with 3 motors :)

nunopcardoso 8 years ago

Let me know how it turns out! ;)

russelly 8 years ago

I have a vacuum motor mounted in a box, but needed to figure out the filter part. Thanks for sharing.

nunopcardoso 8 years ago