My current project required lots of thickness planning of vertical grain fir. It was a pain in the butt to keep dumping the dust collection bag on my Penn State dust collector. I had a trash barrel "cyclone" that didn't work at all with the fir. It did OK with cherry but collected zero fir chips. I wasn't paying close attention and even over filled the bottom bag of the collector and had a total mess when I had to dump the chips.
Finally I started looking for a different solution. I spoke to Penn State about switching to a true cyclone but had a height problem, and the cost was around $700. I contacted Jet to learn about their cartridge system and was impressed. This might be redundant to most people but Jet has a few options. The first is a complete dust collector. It has a 20" cartridge on the top and a clear plastic bag on the bottom. The plastic bag is held in place with a flexible ring. They also sell the cartridge that retrofits onto any collector that has a 20" diameter top. With this option you can try to rig a plastic bag, or use your old cloth bag. The last option is the conversion kit. It comes with the cartridge filter and a replacement middle to your collector. This allows you to use the cartridge on the top and the Jet bag system on the bottom.
I purchased the complete conversion kit for $219. It took 10 minutes to install, all holes were in perfect alignment with the supports and intake hose. The best news is that dumping the bag takes no time at all, and is much cleaner. The clear bag makes it easy to see how full it is, and I removed the trash can cyclone to gain a little space. I have dumped the bag three times and couldn't be happier.
If anyone in the Seattle area wants a trash can cyclone lid, with metal trash can, I would be happy to give it to you.
Bob McBreen - Yarrow Point, WA