Voiceover:The Wood Whisperer is sponsored by
Powermatic, the gold standard since 1921, and by
Rockler Woodworking and Hardware. Create with Confidence.
Marc:I need to apologize ahead of time
because today's show is really going to suck.
(groovy jazz music)
Today we're going to have ourself an old-fashioned
shootout taking a look at some of the popular
cyclone separators on the market.
Separators have been around for a while.
I remember when I first started woodworking
seeing plans for them to make your own,
just using basic materials from the home store.
These days it seems like a lot of the dust
collection companies are getting in the game,
and even Rockler has a unit that's fairly inexpensive.
Sometimes you just have to weigh the cost versus
the amount of time you would spend building it.
All of these units I'll tell you straight
off are certainly capable and they do the job,
but there is one clear winner and
we'll find out which one it is.
The review that I'm going to do on these,
you know how I am with reviews.
I'm not a professional reviewer.
I'm just some dude in a garage that likes to
play with tools and give his opinion on them.
I'm going to give you a very empirical results.
We're not really going to measure anything,
we're not really going to weigh anything.
I don't have a dust meter that's going to detect
how much dust makes it into the environment.
I just don't have those capabilities,
but I can give you my opinion and show you some things
so that you can make a judgement call for yourself.
Before we get started let's talk a
little bit about what these units are,
what they do and why you would want one in the first place.
Even though all of these systems may look different
they all operate on the same principal.
Essentially they're the middle man.
They go between the dust extractor and the tool.
This way as you're pulling the dust in,
the wood chips are coming in, this is another layer of
filtration that's separating out the dust,
fine and the coarse dust as well,
before it even gets to the dust extractor, so that what
actually gets to the dust extractor is very minimal.
Why would you want to do that?
It seems like this should be doing everything we need it to do.
In most cases it does,
but there's a couple things to think about.
Number one is safety. The more we can separate out before
it even gets to the dust extractor,
the less chance there is that that stuff is going to
build up and wind up exhausting out into the shop.
It also extends the life of the tool because
that fine dust tends to get everywhere.
Especially if you let it build up
on the pleated filters and things,
sometimes it just winds up burning out the motor.
I've lost more than one shop-vac that way before I learned
my lesson and started buying the actual filter bags,
which is the second point.
Filter bags are expensive and it's something
that as long as you're a woodworker you're
going to have to continue buying those things.
This is one way to avoid that because all this stuff
is being separated out first it's going to take a really
long time before you fill a bag in one of these.
You're going to continuously empty this container
and never really have to worry about it.
I don't want to say never, but you won't have to
worry about it nearly as often and you won't go
through nearly as many of those disposable bags.
Interestingly enough, specifically Festool
offers a solution to this, and it's something
that I bought into a while ago.
That's a lifetime bag.
Basically this is reusable so I can empty it out
and it saves me from having to buy the disposables.
Here's the problem: This costs 200 dollars. None of these
systems we're looking at today cost that much money.
If you're looking at it purely from a financial perspective
it makes a lot more sense to do something like one of
these cyclones than it does to go with a lifetime bag.
Just a few things to think about.
(swinging electric guitar)
The Oneida Dust Deputy retails for 79 dollars,
and that's for what they call their deluxe kit.
It contains the bucket,
of course you've got the cyclone here,
pretty much everything you need to get started.
You can buy the cyclone independently if you
wanted to make your own custom solution,
and you can also buy some of their higher-end units
for more industrial applications and also one that
specifically attaches to a Festool dust extractor.
For 10 dollars more at 89 dollars,
you can get the Rockler Dust Right Vortex.
This is something that you actually
can get on sale quite often,
so you could save 15 or 20 bucks on it,
but the regular retail price is 89.99.
Now the most expensive unit in our shootout
is the Clear Vue Mini CV 06. Retails for 149 dollars.
We'll have to see if it's worth that price tag.
(swinging electric guitar)
Now let's talk about connectivity.
It's really important because you want to know that when
you get this thing home you're going to be able just to
put it together and go to work and you don't necessarily
want to worry about cobbling together ports
and making all of your hoses fit properly.
The good news is across the board every one of the units
has no problem connecting using the hose that it comes with.
That basically connects to the cyclone unit
and into your dust extractor or shop-vac.
All of those connections were absolutely perfect.
Where things are a little bit more variable is
with the hose that connects to your tools.
First let's look at the RIDGID shop-vac. No problem at all,
slides right on, and it catches because there's a
little bit of a taper at the back of this
port and you get a nice friction fit there.
No problem with the shop-vac.
My Festool stuff, now I have two hoses that I'm concerned about.
This may not be the same for everyone's situation,
even if you have the Festool gear because
they do make different sized hoses.
This larger hose that's part of my boom arm setup,
this actually connects perfectly.
In fact you push it just far enough and you'll feel it snap.
That's a perfect connection, very happy with that.
The one I'm a little bit concerned about is my 36 millimeter
connection. This is the hose I use for my Kapex.
This guy slides on and it bottoms out inside the hose here,
and that's not really a good connection.
Even using some of the things that Oneida includes in the
kit to help you tighten up a loosened hose,
it's not really going to do anything,
so I'm going to have to cobble together a solution for that.
Other than that everything works good
it looks like just the 36 millimeter hose is a problem.
The Clear Vue CV06. No problem with the larger Festool hose.
No problem here with the 36 millimeter hose.
Here's the RIDGID shop-vac hose, no problem there at all.
All three of them work perfectly fine.
Now the Dust Right Vortex.
It looks like the larger Festool hose, no problem.
36 millimeter hose, no problem there either.
And our RIDGID shop-vac hose, no problem.
This one is pretty much a tie between the
Dust Right Vortex and the Mini CV06.
(swinging electric guitar)
Now another really important factor here is portability.
Our dust extractors and shop-vacs are already
big enough as it is, now we have this secondary
thing that we're pulling along side of it.
Some people cobble together a custom solution
where both the vacuum and this are sitting
on a cart and you can push that around,
or you can consider some of the solutions
that the manufacturers provide for us.
Number one is casters. The Oneida unit actually does
come with casters but you have to drill through the bucket
and attach it with the nuts to make that system work.
Cool thing about the dust right vortex is there's already
holes there for the casters that it comes with.
You just pop them in and it's ready to go.
Unfortunately the Clear Vue unit does
not come with casters and you would have
to go for a completely custom solution
if you want that one to roll around
with the actual dust extractor unit.
But the Mini does have a different sort of thought process.
Instead of having it roll around they're thinking that
you're going to essentially attach it to your dust extractor.
It includes hardware and a connection kit
to allow you to connect it permanently.
Then this way you're moving your dust extractor or your
shop-vac with this cyclone connector as one unit.
The Oneida system also comes with
the hardware for connectivity.
Really when it comes down to it,
if you want rolling options built in you're going to be
looking at either the Oneida or the Dust Right Vortex,
and if you want attachment options you're going to be
looking at either the Oneida or the CV06 from Clear Vue.
Really because it has both options I think the
Oneida is going to be the winner in this category.
(swinging electric guitar)
Now let's take a look at the
overall build quality of these units.
We'll start with the Dust Right Vortex.
It's all plastic construction,
there's really nothing to complain about,
it's fairly durable plastic.
I think this thing would take a beating pretty well.
The casters on it, they're kind of cheap but
really I wouldn't expect them to be super high quality
casters and I don't really think that they need to be.
This thing isn't going to have a whole lot of weight to it
so that's really not too much of an issue.
Overall, a really well-built unit.
The only complaint I have about this one is the hose.
The hose is that permanent flex crap,
and it's a fairly rigid plastic.
This is something that if this hose
were stepped on you would kink it,
and you could possibly split it and break it.
It's not the most durable hose in the world,
it certainly gets the job done,
and if you have a setup where this is somehow
immobilized with reference to your actual
dust collector it may not be an issue
because nothing will ever move.
But if you are rolling this thing around
you're going to have this moving constantly,
so this is just not my favorite hose material.
Otherwise a pretty well-built unit.
Now the Clear Vue CV06 at first glance I thought was
the best of all three in terms of durability. It's got nice,
thick plastic for the cyclone unit at the top.
It's not real high so there's not much of a tip risk,
it's a fairly low profile cyclone.
The lid is great. It's a twist on lid
that has a nice little locking mechanism,
and it kind of makes that ratcheting noise.
(clicking)
That lets you know that you're tightening it up and it's
very clear and obvious when the lid is fully seated,
so there's no question there at all.
Some thing some people might be concerned about is the fact
that the hardware that holds the cyclone to the lid is nylon
hardware instead of actual metal bolts and nuts there.
For something like this I don't know how much of a
concern that is but I figured I would bring it up.
The one thing that just really, really disappointed me with
this was as I was using this unit it wound up buckling in.
The actual bucket itself sucked in
because the pressure was too great.
I'm not 100 percent sure exactly why it happened,
could just be a defect in this particular bucket,
but that was a bad thing.
We'll see it later when we do the performance tests,
you'll actually see what it looks like,
but I was really disappointed because everything else
about this unit is really top notch quality.
It is what it is.
The Dust Deputy, honestly there's really nothing
overly remarkable about it to say that its
quality is any better than the other two.
It's all plastic, you've got a plastic bin here,
plastic cyclone, and I can't really tell you
what the difference between this plastic versus
the other two types of plastic, but it certainly
looks durable enough for the job.
I will say that there is metal hardware on
this instead of nylon, so there's a plus.
The only thing that I think I could really consider a
negative about the overall build quality is the lid.
What I really like about the other two units,
both the Dust Right Vortex, and the CV06,
is they both have a twist on lid so you really know when
that sucker is on there, there's no debating it at all,
and it's not going to pop off, even if you lift up
from the lid and the cyclone unit itself.
Which of course the instructions are going to tell
you not to do that, but how many of you are going to do it?
You're going to move this thing at one point,
even if you just forget that you're not supposed to do it,
and you're going to wind up pulling this lid right off and
you could very well get all that dust thrown onto your floor.
That's definitely something to consider.
When I look at all three of these they all have some
sort of flaw that I'm not completely happy with,
You might say it's a three way tie
but the fact that the bucket on the CV06 collapsed on me,
I've really got to take a few more points off for that.
I'm going to say this one is a two way tie between
the Dust Right Vortex and the Dust Deputy.
(swinging electric guitar)
Now the final attribute that we're
going to test today is performance.
Really, this is the most important thing. We want to know
how much dust is caught by the cyclone separator and how
much makes it through into our dust extractor.
Normally in my dust extractor I
use a bag to collect the fine dust.
In this case I'm going to remove the bag,
clean out the compartment and then we'll be able to see
how much dust makes it into that plastic compartment.
We won't necessarily be weighing it or doing
any sort of real scientific measurement,
we'll just look at it and compare between the three
units to see if one has more dust than another.
The other thing is, how am I going to make the dust?
I've got a soft maple board here,
just leftover scrap from the workbench project,
and I'm going to use my Festool rotex sander.
In rotex mode this thing can chew up some serious material.
I'm going to run that for five minutes straight for each
one of the units to produce a decent amount of dust.
Then I'm going to go over and make
three cuts at my sliding compound miter saw,
which also generates a lot of dust,
but it's a little bit larger in term of
the actual size of the dust particles.
This way we'll have a nice mix and hopefully
enough material that we can get a good judge
of how well these things are working.
Let's get started.
Let's see how we did with the Dust Deputy.
There really isn't a whole lot of accumulation here,
just got that little bit right there.
That's really pretty darn good.
Inside the can, that's where all the dust went.
You can see we've got the mixture of larger dust particles
and the smaller dust particles are in there as well.
Let's see how much dust made it through the Mini CV06.
You can see we've got quite a bit more buildup here
that made it through the cyclone and into the actual
dustbin of our dust collector. Quite a bit more.
Let's take a look inside the can, but before we do that,
one interesting thing here that was unexpected was the can
on the CV06 just collapsed under the pressure from the vac.
Take that for what it is
That actually may be making it difficult to get
this lid off until we get it back to shape here.
Of course, quite a bit of dust in there but
this collapsing here, that's kind of a problem.
Now we're going to look at the
results from the Dust Right Vortex.
As you can see, pretty good accumulation of small dust in here.
Let's take a look at the bin.
No real surprises here, pretty good accumulation inside.
You can see that.
Let's start the elimination ceremony. Dust Right Vortex,
you are well built, reasonably priced.
You have a high capacity but unfortunately
you're just a little pitchy, dog.
CV06, you're attractive, no doubt about it,
but you're a little bit expensive for my taste.
Going to have to let you go.
Dust Deputy, at 79 dollars you were the
cheapest unit in our entire test here.
One might think of you initially as the underdog,
but your performance speaks for itself.
You're going to Hollywood.
In all seriousness, if you're in the market
for a cyclone separator, any of these will get the job done.
But if you really want to get the best and
the best buy for your money, the choice is clear.
In this case,
which is odd when you look at shootouts like this,
the cheapest one was the highest performing one.
The Dust Deputy without a doubt was better at
separating the fine dust and making sure that
fewer dust particles got to the dust extractor.
Both of these units were comparable in terms of performance,
but the Clear Vue unit is 150 bucks.
You're looking at 89 retail for the Vortex.
Even between these two I would say the
Vortex is probably the better buy,
especially when this sucker is on
sale you can get it for like 65 bucks.
Unfortunately, I love Clear Vue,
I own one of their cyclones,
it's an absolutely awesome unit,
but I don't think that this one performance wise
justifies its retail price, unfortunately.
In this case, just was really surprised,
I did not think that the cheapest unit here
would actually be the highest performing one.
The clear winner for me is the Dust Deputy.
(plucked acoustic guitar)
(quenched fire)