I have been using a garage shop vac for all of my dust collection for many years. For a long time, I had one of those Rigid wet/dry vacs that rolled around on wheels on the floor. It was OK at best. After many years, I finally graduated to a wall mounted vac about 13 years ago. It has a 50 foot hose which is great for getting around the garage and vacuuming the cars in the driveway.

But as far collecting dust goes... well take a look at this picture of the mess I made when I was cutting MDF and you will understand the limits of its capabilities.

You Tube Video

For this upgrade, I bought the Wen 7.4 Amp Dust Collector off of Amazon. It was the most reasonably priced one I could find that met my going in requirements.

First, I'm currently stuck with my 15 amp breaker in the garage so I need to be able to kick on a table saw while this is running.

Second, this set up is eventually going to have to fit beneath a rolling workbench, so the compact size was also important.

There was a 5.6 Amp version, but for the price and based on reviews, this one seemed like the better deal.

The Purchase

Assembly Required

Assembly of the dust collector itself was fairly easy. It came well packaged with lots of protection of the components. I needed to put on the wheels, handle and the connector to attach the 5 micron bag. Tools required are a Phillips head screw driver and a socket wrench. After that, it was ready to go.

The dust collector doesn't provide great protection for the impeller so some sort of filter is needed to catch large scraps from hitting and damaging it thus reducing the life of the product. I decided to go with a DIY project (of course) since I could not find any existing products that came with a 4 inch intake/outtake. Everything I saw was only 2-1/2 inch, presumably to be compatible with a shop vac. I also had the requirement that it will need to fit beneath a rolling workbench so that was another limitation.

Creating the Cyclone

I also wanted to ensure that the suction was not lost due to air escaping from a loose top. That required a pail with a top that could be locked down. It also meant that the top needed to be flat enough to accept the 4 inch cyclone connectors I found. This 20 gallon bucket was the only one I could find online. Its a little bigger than I wanted but it met the need. The cyclone connector kit came with a nice template and I used my drill and jigsaw to make the necessary cuts. Fitting the attachments and hose was easy and just like that I have a new dust collector.

Product Links

These are all of the parts that I purchased and can be seen in the video so that you can put this together yourself.

Check out the video on how I built the DIY Cyclone Dust Collector and check out its first test run.