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 http://www.rutlands.co.uk/cgi-bin/psProdDet.cgi/GV2861 but am
concerned that I'll be able to get spares for it in the future.

Comments welcome.

On 2007-05-10 20:01:30 +0100, NickNoxx said:

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 http://www.rutlands.co.uk/cgi-bin/psProdDet.cgi/GV2861 but am
concerned that I'll be able to get spares for it in the future.

Comments welcome.

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.

Andy Hall wrote:
On 2007-05-10 20:01:30 +0100, NickNoxx said:

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 http://www.rutlands.co.uk/cgi-bin/psProdDet.cgi/GV2861 but
am concerned that I'll be able to get spares for it in the future.

Comments welcome.

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.


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.

On 2007-05-10 21:05:51 +0100, NickNoxx said:



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?

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


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.

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.


If at all possible, I use these tools outside but the recent rain has
made that impossible.

Mmm I know....

On Thu, 10 May 2007 20:01:30 +0100, NickNoxx
wrote:

I need a portable dust extractor.

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).
http://codesmiths.com/shed/workshop/...ques/cyclones/

For 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.