Thread: Metabo 2050 vacuum

Originally Posted by jefferson

http://www.sydneytools.com.au/produc...vacuum-cleaner I didn't know how to copy the pic but it's shown in the link (I hope). I have two of these, one for sanding the wood floor edges etc in the house, the other for the shed. In the workshop, I use it on top of the saw blade on the sliding table saw and sucking up all the fine dust around the place. The paper filter bags are not cheap - say $18 for 5.

That's about normal pricing for those bags.

There is a secondary lot of filters that you need to clean, especially if the bag bursts and fills the entire shed with the finest haze of dust you could imagine. Now my question is this: the quoted .5micron filtering, is that for real?

A single number like that means very little without the filter efficiency at that particle size . I could quote 0.5 microns on my old T-shirt but it's only 0.001% efficient at that particle size.
My guess is that they will be 40 or 50% efficient at that size. so that means half the dust is getting through.

Or am I just churning dust into finer particles as Bob L has mentioned many times before? The machine is very handy for use with a Metabo ROS, it just plugs into the 600W point and away you go. The vacuum stays on for a few seconds after you stop sanding to clear the line.

Vacuum cleaners like most dust collectors are pretty hopeless against fine dust inside a wood working situation. They all leak and on top of that all VCs even expensive ones eventually eventual end up making a lot of fine dust they cannot capture. Whether its a DC or VC the only safe way is to put them outside and duct inside.

If you need to use a VC inside like inside the house look for a blower vac that can have a long hose attached to the vent and hang that hose outside.

Thanks for that Bob, it was unfortunately what I was expecting. Just another chore to add to the dust-collection fix-list which now includes building separate rooms for my lathes, the installation and ducting for 2 cyclones and now this. Right in the middle of a few hiccups, including house renos. A mate has a Festool vax with a cloth bag worth (don't quote me) $400. I imagine it is spewing fine dust around the shed the same as my Metabos?

Originally Posted by jefferson

Thanks for that Bob, it was unfortunately what I was expecting. Just another chore to add to the dust-collection fix-list which now includes building separate rooms for my lathes, the installation and ducting for 2 cyclones and now this. Right in the middle of a few hiccups, including house renos. A mate has a Festool vax with a cloth bag worth (don't quote me) $400. I imagine it is spewing fine dust around the shed the same as my Metabos?

When they are new the Pestools are very good but unless sheds are kept super clean they get dirty very quickly and their motor cooling loop is a dust maker, eventually they all leak and I have measured older ones that are no better than $99 specials from Bunnings. We have a very expensive Nilfisk that does what I call "dust rearranging" as it takes all the fine dust that has settled during the week on the floor and pumps it into the air so that bey the end of the week it settles on the floor again ready to be redistributed by the Nilfisk age very expensive the air in the house dirty

Originally Posted by BobL

Vacuum cleaners like most dust collectors are pretty hopeless against fine dust inside a wood working situation. They all leak and on top of that all VCs even expensive ones eventually eventual end up making a lot of fine dust they cannot capture. Whether its a DC or VC the only safe way is to put them outside and duct inside.

I can assure you BobL speaks the unvarnished truth. I ran some tests and proved that my vac was coating the shed in superfine dust. So, I put it outside on the wall under a hood and ran 50 mm PVC ductwork inside. It works very well, and I got rid of that superfine dust.

Cheerio!

John

Thanks, John. The logistics are a main issue here as the Metabo goes from one end of the shed to the other. That's 25m and in terms of "what comes next" is fixing lines for the compressor throughout the shed. It gives me the $%$$% to spend so much on those paper filter bags that aren't working that well in the first place. The stuff actually in the bags is like talcum powder, so it is working to some degree, just not how I want it to. My breathing, particularly at the lathes, is suffering, so I've got to do something. I may just have to start sanding outside.