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A few years ago I bought a Laguna cyclone dust collector with the HEPA filter canister. The filter eventually clogs up with fine dust. The owner's manual suggests using an air compressor and air gun to blow through the filter from outside, letting the fine dust collect in the metal catch-can at the base of the filter. The catch-can has a 4 inch port to connect to the dust collector's inlet - so it sucks on itself - and in theory the dust should get separated by the cyclone and collect in the normal catch bag. Neither this self-vacuuming nor blowing through the filter ever worked all that well for me... I instead remove the HEPA canister and catch-can and take them outside where I could rattle the pleats and let the dust fall into a plastic bag. Takes a while... But the real issue is getting the canister re-attached to the dust collector. Like most dust collector bags, the HEPA canister is held in place by a large metal clamping belt. So the canister has to be lifted into position and held there while the belt is put into position (there are no loops or other tracks to hold it in place when it is unlatched) and then latched. Takes 4 hands. I only have 2 hands. Also, the catch can attaches to the bottom of the HEPA canister with 4 suitcase/trunk style latches. It is easy to have one of those latches unreachable if you don't get the HEPA canister oriented right.
I got sick of fighting this thing. I wanted to build some sort of lifting platform. I sketched a plywood gizmo that was basically a shelf with a hinge along the back and a handle sticking out the front. That way one hand, or a board propping the handle up, would hold the weight of the canister while I finagled the metal clamp belt into position and latched it. My initial attempts looked like they wouldn't work all that well. I kept thinking about the service jack that came with my Toyota - it works REALLY well and the handle for it works far better than what came with my other cars. Maybe a car jack would work? A search on Amazon for a basic scissor style car jack yielded a particularly interesting kit, and some jack wrenches I'd never seen before.
What I came up with: a wooden platform that stretches across the flimsy lower shelf of the Laguna; it sits on the main chassis rails. A stack of 2x4s lifts the jack a bit so it does not have to be 100% extended when doing its job; I figured this would make the contraption more stable. And a shelf attached to the top of the jack. Two long bolts, running from the foot of the jack through the 2x4s, clamp the assembly to the Laguna's thin shelf.
Results: IT WORKS! Re-installing the canister + catch can as a single unit was soooo much easier. The jack and shelf held the canister and catch-can in place, leaving two hands free to position and latch the clamping belt. This particular jack came with ratcheting wrench for raising/lowering it - that's the yellow thing in the pictures. It also came with a drive socket that fits 1/4 inch shank drill/drivers so I can spin it up/down quickly, that's next to the yellow wrench. The 1/4 inch shank sits in a hole in the black shelf.
Link to jack on Amazon
This jack kit also came with an extendable lug wrench and lug nut sockets; it is about twice as long as the excuse of a wrench that comes with most cars. I stored those pieces in my daily driver.
mpc
I got sick of fighting this thing. I wanted to build some sort of lifting platform. I sketched a plywood gizmo that was basically a shelf with a hinge along the back and a handle sticking out the front. That way one hand, or a board propping the handle up, would hold the weight of the canister while I finagled the metal clamp belt into position and latched it. My initial attempts looked like they wouldn't work all that well. I kept thinking about the service jack that came with my Toyota - it works REALLY well and the handle for it works far better than what came with my other cars. Maybe a car jack would work? A search on Amazon for a basic scissor style car jack yielded a particularly interesting kit, and some jack wrenches I'd never seen before.
What I came up with: a wooden platform that stretches across the flimsy lower shelf of the Laguna; it sits on the main chassis rails. A stack of 2x4s lifts the jack a bit so it does not have to be 100% extended when doing its job; I figured this would make the contraption more stable. And a shelf attached to the top of the jack. Two long bolts, running from the foot of the jack through the 2x4s, clamp the assembly to the Laguna's thin shelf.
Results: IT WORKS! Re-installing the canister + catch can as a single unit was soooo much easier. The jack and shelf held the canister and catch-can in place, leaving two hands free to position and latch the clamping belt. This particular jack came with ratcheting wrench for raising/lowering it - that's the yellow thing in the pictures. It also came with a drive socket that fits 1/4 inch shank drill/drivers so I can spin it up/down quickly, that's next to the yellow wrench. The 1/4 inch shank sits in a hole in the black shelf.
Link to jack on Amazon
This jack kit also came with an extendable lug wrench and lug nut sockets; it is about twice as long as the excuse of a wrench that comes with most cars. I stored those pieces in my daily driver.
mpc
Loring in Katy, TX USA
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