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Best vacuum filter for fine dust?

9K views 85 replies 19 participants last post by  jlyons 
#1 ·
I usually keep the dust bag on my chop saw but when doing large amounts of MDF trim it gets pretty nasty, so I hook up my craftsman vac. It does a good job of keeping the dust minimal but after about 10mins of cutting the fine dust starts shooting out of all the non sealed areas of the vac causing even more of a mess.

I went and got a new filter that a worker at sears recommended which helped a bit but in the end made the same mess.

Any ideas?
 
#2 ·
Why does your vac have unsealed areas? Time to get a decent vac. You really should have an RRP compliant vac with a good amount of power. My suggestion is to get a new vac not filter.
 
#11 ·
just because a vacuum is fitted with a HEPA filter it don't mean its gonna pass all the air through the HEPA filter. Cheap vacuums are prone to letting air bypass the filter. What normally happens is the filter gets clogged and deforms under vacuum and the seals on the filter fail.

The only way your gonna guarantee that all the Air is going through the filter is to get a certified vac. If your not doing RRP then any good quality vac like a festool, fein, nilfisk, Makita, dewalt etc etc should give you a vac that has hardly any air bypass the filter.

The above vacs filter better with a non HEPA filter than a cheap vac with a HEPA filter.

Also always run a bag unless your vac has autoclean system on the filter.
 
#12 ·
Buy a shop vac fine dust filter bag and also a cartridge style filter. You will have suction until the bag fills up. We run our cheap shop vac this way and it works great.

TNT does have a point about a decent vac. If nothing else its nice to clean up the customers house at the end of the day without spewimg fine dust all over.
 
#13 ·
Your problem isn't the filter. It's the vac. They don't filter all of the air, allowing some to bypass. Not by design, but rather lack thereof. I would recommend a better vac. Fein, Alto, Felstool, Nilfisk to name a few. I'm sure there are others.

MDF creates a very fine dust, that dust also has the resins and other nasty stuff in it. I personally think a HEPA filter is a very good idea.
 
#17 ·
millworker, look at Clean Stream Gortex filters. As others said , if there is a by-pass of the filter you have other issues with the vac.

I'd rather throw away a 7 dollar bag when it is full than clog my HEPA filters.

Not sure if it qualifies as a "ton of wood work" (the 200 sheets of mahogany plywood did weigh 15,400 pounds) like TNT does, but I collected over 1200 liters of woodworking dust in my 4 CT's over the last 7 weeks. Filled many bags, the HEPA filters are just fine.

Tom
 
#21 ·
I love the fact that you felt the need to push someone else down to make your point. Too bad it just couldn't have stood on it's own.

Your CT's use a self cleaning filter bag. This feature ensures that you maintain full suction until the bag is full. So unless you have a self cleaning system ditch the bag and just shake out and blast your filter with air and git'er done.
 
#41 ·
I don't. Masks are even cheaper than bags and they don't reduce the capacity of your vac.

But then again if you are using Festools self cleaning bags, you don't have to worry about the bag clogging.
 
#43 ·
No argument, just explaining what I do. When a "draw back" to my method arises, I simply address it. I am not going to just let it hang out there as if it's not something I deal with on a daily basis and have experience with the ups and downs.

In fact I have bags in my van right now and occasionally use them. We do drywall, woodworking, carpentry and tile work. I use the vac for all those items and not having the bag isn't a big deal for clean up and while it may be a bit more dusty, I love having the power that a bag free vac offers. My carpenter and I run both our vacs the same way.

It was actually him who turned me on to it. I had to replace my bag a few times a day because they were half or a third full but I was losing a ton if suction. He would shake his filter out a few times a week and get back to it. Now that I ditched the bag I empty it a few times a week and won't go back to them fulltime.

But like I said, when I buy the CT, I will go with the self cleaning bags and go back to bags. But since we are talking about a cheap shop vac, no need for bags, IMO.
 
#44 ·
To each his own. I like the dustless disposal of rubbish that a bag offers. Same with the home vacuum cleaner, I ditched the bagless and went back to a bagged vacuum cleaner. I found dumping the canister stirred up more dust than just disposing a full bag.
 
#45 ·
What gets me with bags is being oh so careful taking them out, walking then over to the can or dumpster and at the last minute you squeeze or bump the bag just right and poof, a big plume of dust gets stirred up in the air.
 
#47 · (Edited)
He has yet to learn the effectiveness of bags. I also used to use vacs without bags. Not anymore. The problem is that if you don't use a bag your gonna clog your filter fast. Yeah you can take it out and blow it off with your airline which may remove 70% of the dust and make a massive mess but it is also bad for the filter as it tears the pores in the filter open which let's fine dust through. Then as soon as you put the filter back in and use it again it clogs again. Or you can save al that hassle by using a bag which is your first stage of filtration and let the filter do it job of catching the particles that are bad for you. It's also much cleaner when emptying the vac and quicker too. But you also get hardly any loss of suction. For what bags cost compared to filters its stupid not to use bags.

They also make pre filters for some brands so that you don't clog your last stage of filtration. These can be washed in a washing machine but still a lot if hassle compared to using a bag.
 
#56 ·
Your wrong. I used bags for 4 years. It wasn't until on I met someone who didn't that realized why I didn't have as much suction.

What's funny is I don't clog my filter fast. Instead of having to change a bag once or twice a day, I only clean the filter a few times a week. And I have heard all the noise about how blowing air threw the filter damages the filter, but I don't put the nozzle directly on the filter and seeing that its designed to have air pass threw it, I figure it's probably not that bad for it. A little common sense goes a long way.

I have been considering going to a Cleanstream filter, which is cleanable and traps more fine material than conventional paper. But yeah your right I just haven't learned yet.
 
#51 ·
I bought a ct26 a couple weeks ago. As I was leaving the store I couldn't believe I just bought a 650 dollar vac. After using it, I'm sold. It makes such a difference. The self cleaning bags are great too. I've been running my track saw, cms, and orbital on it, and the suction is great, even with a mostly full vac.

I bought one of those 14 gal rigid vacs for general cleanup a few weeks ago. It does a decent enough job. I run it with the bags to save the filter life. The thing throws a mean static charge though! It might actually be trying to kill me.
 
#58 ·
#66 ·
I find they work just fine. I keep a bag in mine when sanding with the Planex, see no decrease in dust extraction. If the compound was damp it may be a different issue, but below atmosphere the powder should be bone dry by the time it makes it to the canister. I don't change out the bag until it is full.

Tom
 
#70 ·
tjbnwi said:
I find they work just fine. I keep a bag in mine when sanding with the Planex, see no decrease in dust extraction. If the compound was damp it may be a different issue, but below atmosphere the powder should be bone dry by the time it makes it to the canister. I don't change out the bag until it is full. Tom
I'm using my CT36AC as a comparison though. If I turn my CT26 off so the bag can collapse and turn it back on I notice no difference after it has "self cleaned" the suction feels the exact same. But after my AC has done its self clean cycle I notice a massive difference in suction. I'm sure they work to a point but they don't gain you back 30%+ extra suction or even 5% from what I can tell.
 
#74 ·
The big problem with Chinese manufacturing is controlling the suppliers and raw materials quality control measures. The big brands outsource a lot of components.

The quality of the wiring was usually very poor, with brittle plastic that dried out and cracked. The "copper" in the wires was and unknown alloy that was too stiff and would fail. Gears would be made with inferior steel made of melted down scrap. Sometimes when cutting through the metal components, voids would be found that retained the shape of whatever was melted down, so you would see screw threads, etc.

I have a buddy that works in the offshore oil industry, and they received a batch of 1-1/4" bolts that turned out to be a pipe that had a hex shaped piece of plate welded to it. It was then filled with scrap, and molted metal poured in to fill the inside. Then the welds were machined or ground, and the threads cut. Looked fine from the outside, but one cracked at the head, so they got suspicious. Sliced it open along it's length, and it was obvious what they had. These bolts were meant to be installed on lifeboats. There are only two of them holding the boat in the air. No, they didn't use those bolts!

This was a big problem for the major tool brands when they started moving over there, but they have slowly managed to get it under control. Makita, Milwaukee, Bosch, etc make pretty good tools over there these days. Maybe not EU quality, but getting closer.

Chinese companies that are set up for selling to low end resellers, such as HF, don't worry about these things. Their only goal is to meet a price point. Plus, Chinese have a very different view on quality than we do in the West. It's a cultural difference. Years of living behind an iron curtain have shifted their expectations.

That's why I stick to name brands, unless it's something I only think I'll need once.
 
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