A different approach to shop vac design - multiple cyclones

**emmjay** · 2nd June 2022, 10:12 PM

I saw an interesting shop vac and some other machinery from a US company called IQ tools on display at the Sydney Build Expo trade show today.

The IQ426HEPA shop vac had a similar form factor to a Festool CT26/36/48 style machine and was a bit larger. It was targeted towards building site use and masonry/concrete cutting dust rather than woodworking, but what caught my eye was its seven inbuilt cyclones!

There was a large central cyclone and six smaller ones around it. They were made from orange translucent plastic of some sort so you could see the dust whizzing around. (One might surmise that being able to see dust whizzing around is so important that Clearvue named their business after this particular feature.)

Dyson home vacuum cleaners look like they have lots of little cyclones in them but I've not seen this multi cyclone concept in a machine intended for a workshop/industrial environment before. The large cyclone captured the bigger particles and the smaller cyclones captured the finer dust. The reps on the stand were not familiar with the design details so I can't offer any further insights, but it did look cool.

One thing that struck me about the six smaller cyclones was that they had a smooth transition from the upper cylindrical section to the lower conical section. All the woodworking cyclones I've ever seen have a sharp delineation from cylinder to cone which is presumably cheaper and easier to make. How the smooth transition design affects performance I do not know, but it did make me wonder whether the concept would scale up to a large workshop sized dust extractor.

The other machinery the company had on display was a series of jobsite table saws for cutting masonry. Now I know these aren't for woodworking, but what made them interesting was that they had dust extraction built in to the body of the machines. Not just the usual 4" dust port but an actual dust extractor complete with little cyclones.

The design philosophy of the saws was built around enabling masonry cutting without the need to use water sprays for dust suppression. Perhaps having the little cyclones so close to the source of the dust helps capture it more efficiently than the dust having to find its own way through the innards of the machine to the dust port. Anyway, it was an interesting new approach which will perhaps find its way into woodworking machines one day.

**BobL** · 2nd June 2022, 10:48 PM

Industrial stuff is getting pretty good at these days. It would be interesting to know the prices.

About 5 years ago when we had about half the floors at our place sanded and the operator had a variety of interesting mobile dust extraction gear. The one that impressed me was an large industrial Nilfisk vac with a separate cyclone connected to a 400 mm diameter ROS that generated lots of dust. He also had nifty small Nilfisk backpack they connected to a 150mm ROS. None of this stuff came cheap - the small backpack vac cost $2500.

I ran my dust detectors while he was sanding and it was consistent with the very low amounts of dust that ended up in the non-sanded floor parts of the house.
More details here Dust Concentration Measurements

One prob with extra small cyclones is they don't work so well when there are larger chips involved.

**QC Inspector** · 3rd June 2022, 12:12 AM

Bob the site emmjay linked puts it at $999 (US I think) HEPA Dust Extractor & Dust Collection Systems | iQ Power Tools. I'm curious as to how the air flows through the machine? Big cyclone first and then small ones or divides somehow and separate at the same time? Apparently there are three dealers of them here so if I remember next time I go into town I'll drop by one and take a closer look. A grand would put them in the Festool price range.

Pete

Hmm. Seams you have to click on Shop Now or Shop at the top of the page in order to get to the price info.

Is that a 3"/75mm hose? Reading of the manual on line lists the hose as 2"/50mm.

**BobL** · 3rd June 2022, 10:21 AM

RE: IQ426
Thanks for the link to the info. Its similar in performance to the Nilfisk was using on his 400 mm ROS.

However, 190 CFM is not enough for most WW machines so no matter how good those cyclones are they're simply not going to collect enough air so fine dust that escapes collection will continue to contaminate workshops.

So that restricts it to be used on power tools.
BUT
if a power tool has a fan, that fan will limit how much air can be extracted through thems. The tools I have measured that have fans extract at under 100 CFM so you might as well get a cheaper conventional shop vac that generates 120 CFM.

The remaining advantage are the built in cyclones will protect the filter so you can vac for longer without attending to the filter. I can see this being useful in a work place situation or well heeled DIYers. Budget conscious DIYers will continue to be adequately served by adding a budget end cyclone to a generic shop vac to protect vac filters.

There's no info about whether the motor air cooling loop is included in the filter loop. This is important as it prevents the motor from becoming a fine dust mincer.

Nilfisk industrial have been doing multi cyclone vacs for some time.

If you have 3P power a "just tractable" ducks nuts WW shop vac would be something like their T40W. It delivers 250L/min. Mind you it weighs 136kg, 3P 4kW with a 175L bin and a HEPA 99.995 % rating at 0.3 microns.
see Three-phase wet & dry | Nilfisk
This machine could be ducted with long ducting runs without affecting performance

If you want to see a real beast check out their 3997W https://www.nilfisk.com/en-au/produc...00016/?filter=
20kW delivering 1270 CFM and weighs 650kg

As expected they're not cheap

**QC Inspector** · 3rd June 2022, 11:02 AM

I called the local sellers and they are a special order item that they don't have in the store. The one that got back to me said they cost $2047.50 Cad plus tax. The US website says $999US so with the exchange rate at the moment, about $1,265Cad. There is either a lot going to transportation or there is some greed in there. It would have taken a special sales lady to get me to buy it at the lower price but even if she were a twin I'd never pop for it at the higher price.

Pete

**yhprum** · 3rd June 2022, 07:16 PM

I made a dust separator that is very effective at separating sanding dust. I was doing some drywall repairs.details here: MY DIY Dust Separator - HomemadeTools.net
I tried to size the individual cyclone inlet fittings to collectively match the shop vacuuum suction hose area. This was the air velocity as high as I could.
A larger cyclone could be put upstream of this one to take out the larger bits before getting to the finer dust.

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