I believe that @blacklabs has the nut milk bag mounted inside of a 3 inch hose.
@brian.3YiM as @billc mentioned I have the nut bag tied to the cooling tray/hose 3D printed adaptor and then I stick it inside a 4" semi-ridge hose. It works for me.
Perfect. Thanks @blacklabs and @billc. I currently vacuum the stock cooling tray filter after every roast. I like the idea of this hack much better.
Yea this hack will eliminate the need to do that. I vac the cooling tray when I’m all done as there is sometimes some chaff around where the fan is even though the filter is removed, but it’s very little.
Credit goes to @billc still for letting me know about this hack.
@billc Do you think your setup would work if I replace the shop vac with the air extractor that I already have ?
I would like to avoid buying too much new things as I already have the air extractor… And also isn’t the shop vac too loud ?
The reason that I went with the shop vac:
I wanted a clean installation. If I had used an inline fan, It would have required a lot of adapters to go from 4 inch down to 2.5. The Cyclone has a 2.5inch (I think) inlet and exhaust. If i had used an inline fan I would have had to make reducer adapters to go from 4 inch to 2.5.
And I wanted to stay away from the dryer vent.
If I had used the inline 4 inch fan and put it in the same location (after exiting from the cyclone), I don’t know that it would have enough airflow to accomplish my goal.
The shop vac is quiet running at half speed during the main roasting phase. When I turn the shop vac up to full speed for cooling, it does get noisy for about 2 -4 minutes until the beans cool and I turn it back down.
Love the setup! Another benefit, I imagine, is that it obviates the little fiddle of going into back-to-back mode, and allows you instead to cycle straight through to Preheat, as the shop-vac is handling cooling duty.(I only roast every 2 or 3 months and sometimes forget exactly how to implement B to B mode; very distracting when other things are going on).
Not sure if it would work as well for folks who do darker roasts. I can picture the inside of vacuum getting pretty grimy. Though with a decent bag in place (and a HEPA or other filter protecting the motor), maybe all would be copacetic!
I still put it in B2B mode after I drop, but start preheating almost immediately. The Shop Vac does not do all of the cooling for the bean bowl. It primarily extracts the smoke and sends it through the cyclone and then outside keeping the garage free of smoke.
I have run 20 kilos through it. mostly medium to medium/dark (20 seconds into second cracks) and there is no residue that makes it out of the cylcone. If you look at the photo of the interior of the shop vac in the initial description, you can see that the interior is very clean.I wasn’t expecting the cyclone to be so efficient.
I figured the price of a new Shop Vac would be cheaper than setting up a HEPA or some other type of filter and changing them out.
It is interesting that the new V2 Bullet (that they just announced) has a sensor that will compensate for a clogged air filter so that the fan will ramp up to maintain the air flow volume that you have set.
Very nice.
I now have over 30 kilos of roasting done with the new setup. I checked the cyclone to see how much chaff was in the bottom of the bucket.
There was about 3 inches. Still plenty of room left for more chaff.
I emptied the bucket as long as I had it open.
I also checked the Shop Vac chamber and found that it had a very light layer of dust, but asolutley no Chaff
I am pleased with the results. I roasted five 750g batches today, back-to-back without any chaff cleaning or modifications to the Fan to accomodate for a blocked chaff filter screen.
*Very impressive!
Great job and ideas and is all good stuff! I heard somewhere the original bullet did not have the chaff foam filter and people complained it blew chaff around so they added the filter in? I took mine out and put a manifold connected to a Stinger vacuum (not quite as .oud as my Rigid shop vac) and the suction helps cool much faster as you know. Really like that stirrer too. I think that’s next for me. Does it go fast enough and have enough torque to stir a full load?
Yes the stirrer can mix a full kilo. If it doesn’t mix well and just pushes the roasted beans in a circle, raise the wire stirrers up about 3/16 of an inch and it will mix the beans better.
Nice, I gotta get one.
Дякую за досвід !
Quick question Bill – I printed the cooling tray adapter and have been using the nut bag mod for a while now and I LOVE it. I was getting so much chaff and dust getting through the cooling tray filter and making a huge mess for me. Now, I get none so thank you.
I finally got around to printing the baffle. I went with ASA to avoid any heat issues with PLA or PETG and installed it wonderfully. In your setup did you return the cylindrical screen filter or leave that out with the baffle installed?
I am going to run a few batches through the machine this weekend. I just have everything venting out a 4" rigid stack with an inline fan through my garage roof. I’m curious to see if my backyard gets covered in chaff or if its a non issue exhausting both smoke and chaff outside.
For my setup, I removed the chaff screen mesh filter. but I have a shop vac that is sucking the chaff away from the exhaust and pushing it through the cyclone filter which traps all of the chaff.
I expect that you will get chaff all over the place near you exhaust.
It wouldn’t hurt to try it Worst case you will see a lot of chaff on the ground.
Also, you will probably have a problem getting the chaff past the fan impeller. The gap between the blades is small and causes the chaff to get trapped on the inner diameter of the blades
i removed every other blade. I couldn’t detect any reduction in air flow.
Now the chaff is expelled by the fan. Removing the blades is easy and Sweet Marias has the fans available for purchase.
The photo below is after roasting 15 kilos. Not too dirty and the chaff goes right through the blades
Alright! I’ll definitely follow suit and remove the fan blades. I’ll roast up a batch and see how messy I get
Ok well SUCCESS!
With the baffle installed the power from the Vivosun 4" inline fan was more than enough to move the chaff outside through the vent stack. No chaff in the garage at all.
The big question now is to see how the snowfall of chaff in my backyard piles up, blows away, sticks to everything or just gets me in trouble
Just tell the neighbors that it is roof dandruff.