I do agree ith you there Greg and I don't want to breath that crap in really. I do wear a 3M respirator when blasting in garage. I can not afford both so need to start some where and guess reclaimer would be good start I think. Please correct me if I am wrong. Working 2 jobs right now,baby due in July and house payment etc I have to budget tightly to even play at all. Thanks for info so far and keep it coming. Brandon

I think a guy could make a reclaimer... and make it cheaply. All it is, or does, is to change air direction which causes the larger chunks to "drop out" of the air stream. In fact -- just dropping velocity for just a bit would probably do the trick... In the sense of the dust and grit get picked out of the air in the blast cabinet.... then they go into the reclaimer... my guess is that there's a "wall" between the intake and the suction side with openings at the top and bottom -- and the heavy grit hits the wall and drops into the bottom. The dust continues on into the vac. Just guessing here about how it works but it certainly seems like a simple enough contraption.

It's the fine fine dust that's killing the vacuum... they just can't handle that kind of fine dust.

waiting on your plans here Greg :D . I kinda understand what your saying but thinking how to build it is little harder to picture what I could use. I do have a couple guess 25 gal or hair small metal barrels for gear oil that are empty if that might help. Space is also a concern but open to hear your ideas anytime.

I wonder if one of the wood dust cyclone designs would work for this ? I'd think you could make one out of light gage sheet metal pretty easy. There are plans out there in several locations.

http://www.woodcraft.com/Product/202...y-Cyclone.aspx

Here's one out of PVC.


http://lumberjocks.com/SimonSKL/blog/10097


Jim

You might do a search over on GarageJournal because I've seen similar discussions get started over there. IIRC there are some fairly inexpensive cyclone style bucket setups that are popular. It sounded like they work pretty well between the cabinet and a shop vac.