My dust collector is hardly six months old and it seemed like it was losing its suck. I've been gradually adding more to the duct network and figured I'd miscalculated the loss or something. The plastic bag was about 2/3 full and I decided it was time to bite the bullet and empty it. I also took off the big cartridge filter and cleaned out the dust cake. Wow, its amazing how much dust this cartridge will hold.
After I put everything back together and tried it out, I was amazed. Its like I added another horsepower to the capacity. I have a 4" topside collector for my tablesaw. The old gale force is back and doing what I originally designed it to do - suck up everything but the paint on the saw.
Bob