wrote in
news
I noticed that when the bag (plastic) on bottom is about 1/3" full the
DC starts to suck a lot of chips, etc up into the top filter area. I
was maybe 1/3rd full and decided to pull the filter off. Whoa! It
was clogged full of chips. I knocked them off and dumped the bag.

Does anyone have any tips for keeping the chips in the lower bag? For
now, I'm going to just have to dump when it gets 1/4 full. I guess
that's OK, but with that at least it would be good to have a quicker
way to get at the chips than pulling off the plastic bag.

This seems ripe for a nifty idea.

I use these replacement bags from Penn State Industries:
http://tinyurl.com/5wel5

They have lots of area with bags on both sides. After a while the top bag
will start to clog with very fine dust but it can be knocked off and the
fine dust falls into the lower bag.

They filter down to 1 micron and are reasonably priced ($74 for the set).

I've been thinking about getting the canister style, which has more surface
area: http://tinyurl.com/68zhs

That type is supposedly cleaned by blowing over the outside of the filter
with compressed air.