I’m in the market for a quieter shop vac and after combing through forum threads, I have a pretty good idea of the direction to go in. Looking at some of the popular recommendations such as fein, festool etc. are there any shop vacs strong enough to extract aluminum chips during cutting? Early on i realized an air blast is a must for aluminum but since i don’t have my pro xl in a enclosure, it makes an awful mess with tons of shop clean up every time i cut aluminum. Just curious if anyone had any thoughts or recommendations here.
If you are going to primarily do metal then get a vac with a bag. A regular shop vac with a simple filter may allow the sharp shards to penetrate the filter. A bag filter will trap then in the bottom. Also the addition of a cyclone separator might be wise to trap the chips in the cyclone collection bucket and keep your vac running at peak performance for cfm.
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I’ll be curious to see others reply’s here.
Personally I never had much luck with using a vac while cutting aluminum. When I finally reached the point of making nice long, fat chips I found they often clumped up and clogged my 25’ 2 1/2 “ vac line.
Much easier to put temporary barriers in front and behind the CNC, pick up the clumps and hand vac the remainder. I use acrylic cause I like to see what’s happening.
If your doing production work there are posts in the forum about bottom collection schemes.
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