Shopsmith Forums

Just wanted to give my initial thoughts on working with both of these, so not a full review by any means...The Domino (DF500) is exactly as advertised and while I can't say worth every penny, it is definitely a worthwhile tool if you can stomach the cost. I just did a small 6/4 panel glue-up using it and it was so easy to use and fast. What amazed me was that all of the mortises were whistle clean afterwards. Not a spec of sawdust in there. No dust on workbench either. In the past for dowel, biscuit or M&T joinery, I always had to clean out the mortises. Not a big deal, but it is an extra step. After using the Domino, you can go straight to glue-up...the mortises are that clean inside. When I removed the vacuum hose from the Domino it looked completely new inside like I had never used it. Only a small layer of sawdust on the tip of the dust port, but nothing inside. Festool really did a fantastic job with dust collection design at the tool end with this product.

On the CT26 vacuum, I am still working with it and trying to figure it out. I have to say that I was disappointed that while using the Domino that my dust particle count spiked in my shop. Given how clean the dust extraction was at the tool end, I have to assume this is dust escaping either through the Festool HEPA filter and/or leaking out of a seal somewhere. It took a little work on my ShopVac™ to get it to seal perfectly, but by comparison when I do Shopsmith jointing, planing functions, I have NO rise in ambient dust particle counts in my shop which means I have little to no dust escaping from my ShopVac™ HEPA or its exhaust. Of course, these functions produce more large chips than sawdust, but it also means that already captured sawdust in my ShopVac™ doesn't escape through the filters out the exhaust. The Shopsmith tablesaw spews more sawdust into the air, even with a ZCI, but probably equivalent to what I just experienced with the CT26 exhaust using the Domino. I will have to investigate more with the CT26 and see if I can determine where the dust is escaping from the exhaust, but it may force me to get the Oneida Ultimate Dust Deputy to cut down on some of the fine dust particulate that enters the shop. As an alternative, I might have to use my ShopVac™ instead for dust collection from the Domino.

If I am reading this right you are saying the very expensive CT 26 vac from Festool is doing a less than stellar job. Is that correct?
Wow! Everybody else raves about the machine.

Ed in Tampa wrote:If I am reading this right you are saying the very expensive CT 26 vac from Festool is doing a less than stellar job. Is that correct?
Wow! Everybody else raves about the machine.

Thanks Ed. Well, I don't rule out user error on my part just yet, so I would say I am still investigating. However, having said that I am a little disappointed for sure. Out of the box, the Festool CT26 performance is not the panacea that I was hoping for. After having heard of several prominent woodworkers that had to abandon the craft due to health issues related to sawdust, I try to be more careful now. In fact my father-in-law had issues as well that forced him to buy a ClearVue cyclone kit many years ago so he could continue. For sure I have abused my health the past 3 decades doing poly finish without a respirator, sanding without protection, etc., etc. So, I am trying to be more careful these days so that hopefully I can continue this for a long, long time.

On my ShopVac™, I purchased the HEPA round cartridge filter AND the HEPA bags from ShopVac. In addition to this, I had to install foam tape on the lid where the top mates to the can. The combination of these 3 things with the mini-cyclone (ClearVue CV06) in front of it has resulted in negligible dust particulate count increases in my shop for certain woodworking tasks using it for dust collection. Things that naturally spew sawdust up in the air, like table saw mode or hand sanding, still raise my particulate counts on my Dylos DC1100 Pro. Originally I was using my DC3300 and I noticed when I switched to the ShopVac™ setup that it was like night and day difference for me, i.e. lower dust counts (no surprise since the 42" filter hood only filters down to 1um). In comparison, the Festool CT26 seems to be worse than my ShopVac™ setup so far. I keep the Dylos running all the time in my shop when I am out there and if I am doing something like sanding that raises it, I just increase the speed on my ceiling air cleaner. Typically I can keep the 0.5um particle counts on the Dylos below 200 so I don't need to wear a face mask while working.

I will have to do some A-B testing comparing my ShopVac™ to the Festool CT26 using a Festool tool and see. Also, I will inspect the CT26 and see if I can determine where, if any, places I can find a possible leak. The only thing that makes sense, I think, is a leak from the housing because this size particulate should NOT be escaping through the Festool HEPA filter. So, my assumptions are either a) sawdust is escaping at the workpiece or b) leaking before getting to the HEPA filter. Since I didn't see ANY visible signs of dust near the moritse or even inside the Domino afterwards, I am leaning towards the latter. Still, my assumptions here may be faulty so I need to investigate more...sorry for the lengthy response, but I am nothing if not thorough.

I do wish I had a meter to see what dust is floating about and had seen one that seemed to fit the bill and wasn't that expensive. This is it:

https://www.amazon.com/dp/B078ZS8RVL/?c ... _lig_dp_it

It was a recommendation from someone that owns one and I have never really studied what is available. I know this can be an importation subject to people so perhaps we will see more recommendations. I do think I will make sure I get something this year.

For me I like to work outside as that seems the safest and I still wear a dust mask, a better one in warm weather and more comfortable one in cold weather. Thinking back to the adage of something is better then nothing.

While I did not participate directly in some studies on dust control I did read and hear more then a few discussions on the subject directly from the group that was studying the issue. I can't say that much of the "common" thoughts on the subject correlate very well to actual research that was done.

One thing that is more then likely the most important is collecting the dust as close as you can to the source. Festool is very good at that. But like anything else the dust collector that exhausts into the same work space will leak some dust and the exhaust stirs the air so any latent dust can get airborne again.

Dust measurement equipment will only measure what is local to it. A foot away can and often is a total different story. If you have the meter attached to you then it most likely would reflect the dust you are experiencing, setting off somewhere else well that is what it experiences there.

Ceiling cleaners can either help or make things worse. They have to be located at the correct locations. put in the wrong spot they do little good and can in fact just distribute the dust. Location location location.

One very interesting study was on intake, something has to get to within the capture range of the intake, the event horizon so to speak. Dust that is some distance away just doesn't get sucked in. The exhaust on the other side of the coin can move dust many many many times farther away then the intake horizon. You can test this with punk sticks, burn one and see how close you have to get to see the smoke start flowing in, then see how far away you can get and still see the smoke trail still going away.

Anyway this is getting off into never never land so I'll stop here.

As far as the CT26 which model do you have?

Of course I expect you to have checked that the bag to make sure it is mounted correctly and that there are no holes like wise the filter. And it is also likely that you would need to test against the shopvac with new filter and new bag if you are using one. The accumulation of dust provided additional filtering so you need to have both systems with new bags/filters to compare.

Air flow in the Festool is a bit different then most systems and while on some of my shop vacs I can tell when the bag is getting full by waning air flow and suction levels I don't see much of that happening with mine.

As far as noise levels, my shopvac brand is an older 16 gal 6.5 hp model with stainless tank. It uses distributed exhaust which does lower the noise level and it is not depending on how you are located to the machine. On the other shop vac the noise level changes depending on where you are in relation to the machine. The down side of the shopvac is no blower output, but at the cost of less noise I guess that is a good trade off.

In almost all cases the tool is the prime noise maker. With either the auto start or with bluetooth the vac is need to be on only slightly more then the tool so total noise is lowered when using those features.

Ed

Thanks Ed. Yeah, unfortunately dust particulate gauges are expensive. The one you posted from EG Air only has a 2.5um scale and a 10um scale. The Dylos DC1100 Pro ($260) goes down to 0.5um and also has a 2.5um scale. So, the scale measures everything that size and larger, so the Dylos has sensitivity down to 0.5um particle size and the EG Air can only measure down to 2.5um particle size. I keep the Dylos on my electronics workbench; far wall away from woodworking equipment so hopefully the air is getting scrubbed sufficiently before it gets to it. You make good points about air cleaning equipment. I can only measure down to 0.5um, but I am confident that in my particular shop setup that I can easily scrub nearly all dust particulates out of the air in a short time with my air cleaner (based on observations of my Dylos during woodworking). Of course, anything smaller than 0.5um I am not capable of measuring so it is an unknown. Good suggestion on using punk sticks to evaluate my air cleaning equipment and its placement.

Yeah, I do want to stress that in my limited Festool experience thus far, I am very impressed with how the dust extraction inside the tool is done. This is important and I believe they have done an excellent job engineering this aspect of the tool design. I just need to figure out what is going on with my CT 26. I had some things come up here today, so I haven't gotten back to debugging it yet.

I have the Festool CT26 E model dust extractor. I double-checked that the HEPA filter was properly seated and didn't see any issues. Also checked the bag. I am using disposable bags from Festool, so I don't know if there is a difference there.

Did you buy an exhaust or make one for your ShopVac™ ? From what I had read before, those exhaust mufflers only shift the frequencies of vacuum noise sometimes making them less annoying, but they can still be quite noisy. I was going to play around with building one and experimenting, but I figured enclosing it with soundproofing would be better.

Anyway, thanks for all the suggestions. Much appreciated.

http://www.dylosproducts.com/ornodcproair.html

Just a quick update. Went into the shop this morning and turned on the Dylos. Readings were stable and low in my shop first thing. I did one mortise using the Domino with the CT26. I waited before plunging, so CT26 and Domino were on but not cutting yet (just to make sure it wasn't CT26 exhaust kicking up dust from shop - it wasn't). The Dylos has both an averaged particle count number but also an instantaneous bar graph readout. On cutting one mortise using the CT26, the bar graph spiked and the number readout elevated significantly. Turned on my air cleaner for a while to get the shop back to baseline, i.e. low particle count readings. I switched to ShopVac™ + ClearVue CV06 cyclone and cut a couple of mortises. Ambient dust particle count didn't rise. I added the ClearVue CV06 to the CT26 and low and behold the ambient dust particle count didn't spike this time but it did elevate some. Decided to try just the ShopVac™ by itself and the dust particle count didn't rise. I know this is all observational, but it appears to me that the CT26, by itself, is not good enough ( ). A cyclone in front of it is most definitely needed to capture as much of the fine particulate dust as possible. I opened the CT26 up again. Remember this thing was virgin when I started. After a few minutes more use, I found this below in the pics. The second pic shows that I have the bag seated and locked in. What was interesting is before removing the bag, I could see dust blowout on the CT26 housing outside of the bag area (look at grey housing area in bottom of pic 1). I removed the bag to get a better pic. I am surprised how flimsy the elastic material is on the inlet to the bag. It appears to flex very easily whereas it should wrap tight (like a condom) around the 2.25" duct inlet. Clearly I am getting dust blowing out where the bag mates to the inlet port. It shouldn't be, but even so, why is it getting past the HEPA cartridge filter?

It looks like I will need to run a cyclone in front of the CT26; disappointing for a $730 vacuum with HEPA filter and a manufacturer HEPA filter bag that is supposed to also be suitable for drywall dust collection (it is not). I will either have to hack the bag to seal it somehow or use alternative bags in the CT26.

Do you have the bag that came with the CT26 and if so have you tried that?

I have to thing there is something wrong with your unit/bag/filter. Perhaps come Monday a call to Festool is in order. Perhaps they will have ideas and or will ask to get the unit back to check it out at the repair facility??

Ed

Just checked to see what the claim is and it appears to be 99.99% and down to .3 microns, that being the case it clear yours is not working right.

Ed

Thanks Ed. Yeah, I used the bag that came with the CT26. I also ordered a set of 5 bags from Festool which I have here. I examined them pretty close and they all look identical. They are the disposable, self cleaning bags labeled HEPA from Festool. The only other bag they sell, I believe, is the reusable "long life" bag, but my understanding is it doesn't have as good of dust filtering compared to the disposable filter bag. I haven't tried swapping it yet, but I can do that. I think I am going to contact Festool first. Something just isn't right here...

Yeah, my understanding is this vacuum should trap 99.99% of sawdust down to 0.3um. My Dylos has sensitivity down to 0.5um. Any decent vacuum/dust collector with exhaust side filtering down to 0.3um HEPA (99.9xxxx%) should NOT raise ambient dust levels in my shop. I know I am not measuring an absolute here, but it is more of the rise in dust particulates that bothers me. I know my shop will never be perfectly dust free, but with good HEPA filtration, I shouldn't measure a large increase in dust with the CT26 and DF500 in operation.....at least that is how I see it. Below 0.5um, I can't measure it so who knows.

To bad we live so far apart or I would run my CT26 over to your shop and see what the results might be.

I have the Oneida Air System sitting on top of my CT26 so right away things would be different. I did take it apart today and shot a few pictures which I will post here. I wanted to check the level of dust in the bag since I know very little actually goes in there with the cyclone box for sure getting all the large particles. As expect there is almost nothing collecting in the bag.

This is what the inlet of the bag looks like:
The inside of the machine where the bag attaches, looks really clean I think:
You can see discoloration on the top of the bag where the air flows into the filter:
Likewise the filter is showing some discoloration, but that is how it should be:
The other side of the filter:
I also checked the gasket all the way round and there was no indication of dust on the seal so I'm pretty sure my unit is sealed up pretty well.

So while doing this it occurred to me that the area above the filter should be really clean looking and you shouldn't see any dust in that area. If there were a leak in the system then there should be dust in that area, that is after all the only place a leak can provide dust to the shop. So really look that area over for dust.

Ed