Dust Extraction - Router question Part 2

I need a portable dust extractor.

I have a mitre saw, router and circular saw with 38mm dust ports I have a hand held plane with a 2.5 inch dust port I will soon have a router table with either a 2.5" or 4" dust port

I was thinking of something like this:- a Camvac Fine Filtration Extractor

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but am concerned that I'll be able to get spares for it in the future.

Comments welcome.

Reply to
NickNoxx
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This one is closer to being a vacuum cleaner than a dust extractor.

Thay is probably OK when a 50-60mm hose is used - it may not have adequate performance for some applications if a 100mm hose is used.

Dust and chip extraction depends on air flow rate as well as the head of pressure. Generally, vacuum cleaners are intended to run with fairly narrow tubes (up to about 50mm) and develop a fair amount of pressure. Dust extractors intended to run with 100mm hoses and above tend to have quite different characteristics - mainly because this hose size is normally associated with larger machines such as planer/thicknessers and spindle moulders where there can be fairly chunky chips produced. With these, unless there is enough air velocity in the tube, the chips won't be carried.

For the equipment you have listed, the smaller type of hose is fine anyway for what I think you are intending to do - even the router table, mainly because debris from routing is relatively small.

I have seen Camvac stuff at a few woodworking exhibitions and it seems to be reasonably well made. They are a UK company and appear to actually make their products here as well. In one sense that is good (should be spares), in another it isn't (they may not be able to compete with imports and hence go bust). If I were looking at this, I would probably take a look at their accounts on the Companies House web site and form an opinion. Having said that, the information is relatively limited, especially for privately held companies. I suppose the risk overall is somewhat less than with Chinese imports where you don't really have much of a way to assess spares availability. Assuming that the machine itself is reasonably well made, the main spares aspect would be consumables like filters. I would check whether they are some standard thing available from different places or whether they are a custom thing. Then if that checks out OK, I would think about the risk on £160 over say 5 years. If you are OK with that then.....

Another approach would be to get a decent shop vacuum machine. I have a Bosch GAS50 which I have had for several years and is very good

- has different hoses up to 50mm and covers all the machine types you mention. In effect you get a wet/dry cleaner as well and another nice feature is that you can plug tools in to the cleaner and it will start when you start the tool. There is a smaller version - GAS25 as well - pricing for that is comparable to the Camvac. There's certainly no spares issue with Bosch.

On point to note relating to the mitre saw is that these are not easy devices for dust extraction. You can hook a small hose extractor onto the fitting at the back and collect some dust, but a lot still flies around. Realistically, that will be as good as you get with this type of extractor. For mine I built a hood for the back of it and have that hooked up via a 120mm hose to a large fixed cyclone extractor. That's a different thing of course, but even then there is still some dust floating around.

Reply to
Andy Hall

Thanks Andy again for such level headed advice. I like the idea of 'buying British' and my concern was exactly that Camvac would go bust and I wont be able to get filters so in that respect the Bosch seems like a better idea. 50mm won't quite be enough for the two 2.5" application though, do you think it would be ok to use an adapter?

I understand clearly the dust problems with a mitre saw and wondered if a 'proper' dust extractor would be any better than the vacuum cleaner I use at present. If at all possible, I use these tools outside but the recent rain has made that impossible.

Reply to
NickNoxx

For that kind of change, certainly. 50 --> 75 would be reasonable if you have an adaptor that tapers. 50 --> 100, not really.

Well..... As I indicated, mitre saws are among the hardest thing to properly extract. With the hood arrangement I have I can capture most of the more visible dust that normally sprays around everywhere, but it's not perfect by a long way. Really it would be better if mitre saws were designed to include better extraction, but I think there's a limit to what can be done and for the saw still to work as intended.

The thing is that to move up to a larger extractor, you are talking about a fair bit of space.

Mmm I know....

Reply to
Andy Hall

Get a cheap workshop vacuum (Earlex are good), a _lot_ of hose and make yourself a dust cyclone (dead easy, lots on the web, you can use a bucket and glue gun).

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a planer / thicknesser, you need a high volume chip collector with a

4" hose. For a sawbench you might want a nice quiet dust collector. For a screaming banshee of a router where you're wearing earmuffs anyway, then save your money and go with the noisy vacuum cleaner and home-built cyclone.
Reply to
Andy Dingley

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