[Vrobert]

I have been working on a sandblasting cabinet and a 60 gallon compressor to do some restoration blasting. The cabinet needs a vacuum attached to collect the blasted debris which keeps the media cleaner and improves visibility while blasting. A friend has a similar blasting setup and he purchased a Dust Deputy to keep his shop vac filter from clogging. The Dust deputy works great but it's about $60 and its big and top heavy when mounted on a 5 gallon bucket. I decided to buy a Chinese cast aluminum copy that mounts inside a 1 or 5 gallon bucket rather than on top. It fits the smaller 1 1/8" vacuum hose (sort of). The tubes on the cyclone are 1" OD but I had a few extra hose extension pieces that I cut up and attached to it.

Preliminary review is good. I blasted a small rusty bracket and the bucket collected a handful of fine rusty dust. These aluminum cyclones are only about 7" tall and cost around $22 on ebay. Compare my one gallon setup to the 5 gallon Dust Deputy. For woodworking the larger setup would be necessary because sawdust would fill that bucket pretty quick but sandblasting a few small items each week wont generate that much volume.