Shopsmith Forums

At one tile very early in my Shopsmith days I cleaned the Dust Collector filter. When I did this I found dust collected in chunks on the inside of the filter bag. Ever since then, I occasionally turn the dust collector on an hit the filter bag with my fist three or four times at different locations around the filter.

This breaks off the chunks and them fall into the plastic disposal bag BUT is this a valid practice?

Does that caking of the dust on the inside of the filter bag aid in the filtering process???

.

I can't recall where, but I definitely have read that the internal caking of sawdust does improve filtering.

I would think that at some point excessive build-up might start to decrease CFMs.

I too have seen the notice about the benefit of some dust cake build-up ... found it in instruction sheet for the 42" hood, but I would think the advice would be true for all 3 hood sizes. And from the dust collector manual itself, this was the advice on cleaning: