Just waiting on a phone call back from Ridgid mjmike! Thanks! I’ll update here when I find out. Those links were super helpful that you provided.
On a side note- my flex vac arrived yesterday from Acme. Thing looks and sounds awesome. Very quiet, Self cleaning filters, HEPA rated, 158 CFM, Looks very similar to the festool. For $299 & free shipping seems like a solid competitor. Had to run an adapter to fit it on my dust deputy. Haven’t run a project with it though. Only problem is there’s not much info online about it, think I’ll put a video together and post it here incase it might help anyone else.
“My respiratory doctor already knew air cleaners are worthless for protection while you work because they take hours to get the air clean enough to breathe so you still need to work wearing a good NIOSH approved dual cartridge filtered respirator mask. He unfortunately gave me some bad advice when he recommended installing a good quality ceiling mount air cleaner. I asked which one and he said his research found the magazines rated Jet, Delta, JDS, and Penn State all pretty close, but he bought a Jet for himself because he likes Jet tools. Many woodworker forum posts and some magazine reviews agree his Jet is one of the best. Sadly, when we started testing with our meters, we found all the major name ceiling mounted air cleaners came with filters that do a great job getting rid of the visible dust that ruins our finishes, but most freely pass the unhealthiest fine invisible dust. As a result ceiling mounted air cleaners do a poor job of cleaning our air and actually contribute to a build up of the unhealthiest fine invisible fugitive dust that keeps escaping collection.”
if you read my full reply I did say you also need a good dust respirator also plus they do make filters for the air filters that are better than the ones that come standard in those units, that being said yes a respirator is by far best
I have the Fein Turbo II and really like it. Yes it is pricey but compared to Festool it’s a deal. I really don’t understand why anyone would buy Festool at those ridiculous prices unless you really need green colored tools. I highly recommend Fein, great suction (I have a suckit dust boot on my Shapeoko XL with the (embarrassed to say) Festool adapter and it works great. Runs really quiet and I’m guessing that with the HEPA filters it’s putting out cleaner air than it’s taking in. I also have a dust deputy sitting on top of the Fein and held in place with bungee cords, that way I never have to buy bags.
Awesome!! Glad to hear. They have Awesome Customer service. I’ve never had any issues with their tools but the warranty is what brought me over to Rigid from a lifetime of Makita tools a few years ago.
I bought a HF 2HP dust collector. Stock bags are only rated to 5 micron particles at the time I bought it. Upgraded the bags to 0.3 micron bags from Grizzly. Put a garbage can separator in front of it to keep from having to empty the bags too often.
Guess the moral to the story is you want to try to trap as much of the fine dust as you can.
