The Oneida Dust Deputy is a small molded plastic cyclone-style dust separator for use with a shop vac. They claim it removes 99% of the dust from the vacuum flow before it reaches the shop vac filter. I don’t know about 99% but it does a pretty damned good job.
Removing the dust before it gets to the shop vac keeps the filter cleaner and thus the vacuum is more efficient. You also don’t need to clean or replace the filter nearly as often.
I finally took the plunge and bought one the other day. They cost less than $50 and Menards had a sale going on, so I clicked the buy button.
The Dust Deputy kit comes with just the cyclone. You need to add a bucket of some sort for the dust to drop into. Most people use 5 gallon pails. I didn’t want to deal with having to snap the lid on and off, so I bought a lid that unscrews.
The first issue is the fact that the lid is not flat in the center, so I can’t bore a hole in it and just mount the Dust Deputy.
So I decided to make a 1/4″ plywood disk and just cut out the center of the lid.
I setup my circle cutting jig on my bandsaw and cut out the cover.
Next I got out my scroll saw and cut out the hole for the dust deputy and the center of the lid.
After using a utility knife to trim off the bumps left behind by the ribs, I chucked up a 5/16″ bit and drilled two bolt holes 180 degrees apart through the lid and the plywood. I then bolted the lid to the plywood and drilled six more holes evenly spaced around the rim. I also drilled the six mounting holes for the dust deputy.
I unbolted the cover from the lid, ran a bead of latex caulk around the rim and bolted them back together with washers on the top and lock washers underneath.
Then I put another bead of caulk down where the Dust Deputy mounts and bolted it on.
All finished.
And here it is all ready to use.
To test it out I vacuumed up about a cubic foot of sawdust and as far as I could tell by looking in the bucket and in the vacuum the majority of the sawdust ended up in the bucket.
Should be a good addition to the shop and will work well with the ShapeOko.
