- Today we're going to take a look
at Festool's new CT Cyclone.
It's basically a pre-seperator
that fits perfectly on their CT vacs.
It's got a price of $375 so it's a
big question on whether or not it's worth it.
There are really only four parts.
You've got this stand that goes
right on top of the hose garage.
You could lock that in if you want to.
This is a dust container,
and you could use it with or without a bag.
Obviously a bag keeps everything nice and contained.
On top of that we've got something that
just looks like another sustainer.
But it's basically the business end
where all the cyclonic action happens.
Snap it in place and you're pretty much good to go there,
and of course you need a hose.
On the front we have two holes.
Obviously one is going to connect directly to the CT vac.
So let's open this up and see what it's doing.
As you can see it's a pretty simple design.
One of the reasons why I purchased this
was because I wanted to see how Festool
engineered this to fit in such a compact area.
So these components just pop right off.
The lid is what really holds everything together on this.
So you can see as material comes in,
it's going to spin around.
The heavier particles will just
kind of drop to the bottom, big shavings will drop,
and lighter material, whatever happens to get through,
is going to go through this guy.
Up into this tube and into the CT vac
to be caught by the filters in the vac itself.
Now a few years ago I actually did a dust separator
shootout with a lot of these Cyclones
that were on the market.
At the time ClearVue's CV Mini was
sort of designed by restriction.
I think they had some patent issues
they had to work around and their cyclone
had a very short top on it,
and as a result the efficiency was actually not very good.
They since have come out with a design that has
this longer thing, I don't know what they did
I don't know anything about their patents.
But it seemed like they were able to get around it
to design one that works just as well as the Dust Deputy.
So it was very clear that the structure really mattered
on how well this stuff separated.
So when I look at this and I see just a small
amount of area compared to all of this and the cone,
and there's no cone here obviously.
This starts to look a little bit more like
a Fiend Baffle to me and less like a traditional cyclone.
Now we might be splitting hairs with terminology there,
but that's why I was very curious to see,
you know I've got a lot of faith in Festool engineers
they do amazing things.
So I just wanted to see what does this thing actually do.
When I did this review,
I never actually even looked at suction.
Which seems like a really really big mistake.
Something missing from that review.
But the reason was when I connected my vacs to it
I didn't really notice a big drop in suction.
So I only focused on separation efficiency.
When I first fired this up the first thing I noticed,
was a drop in suction and that started me down
the path of investigating.
Now before I jump down this pseudo-scientific
rabbit hole I do want to mention that
the separation is working just fine.
So I've used it for several days now.
Cleaning up little odd jobs here and there
and I'm getting a lot of large particles in the bag
and very little stuff in the CT vac itself.
So it's working as intended.
But let's talk about that suction.
Now I'm trying to keep things as simple
as possible here but I think it's important
to test a small hose and a larger diameter hose.
We'll do both of those hoses with both
of these cyclones and see what we get.
The measurements I'm going to take
are using this anemometer.
It's basically going to test wind speed.
Now how I'm actually getting those results
I'm just going to make sure it's
consistent with each measurement,
and I'm not really worried about the absolute number.
I'm not doing any calculations.
I just want to know how the number changes
when I swap out the cyclones.
Let's get to it.
(vacuum suction)
Now if you're primarily a user of the smaller hose,
I'm not sure that the difference between the two
types of cyclones is really significant.
You lose 18% with the CT Cyclone
and with the ClearVue model you lose 16%,
It's a 2% difference, and really the test here
is how well does it collect from the tools.
A lot of times these vacuums tend to be
a little bit over powered for the collection
that we need from the various hand-held tools.
So I did a test with my router,
taking a big chunk chamfer off all in one shot,
and the collection was just as good as it's ever been.
So that just tells me that there's enough room here
to play that even if we lose a little suction,
it's still effectively collects from those small tools.
Now if you generally use the larger hose,
you're going to see a bigger difference here.
I think it's substantial.
A 36% drop on the CT Cyclone
and only a 14% drop on the CV Mini.
So that is something to be worried about.
For me I tend to use the bigger hose two places,
I'll actually use a larger hose at the miter saw.
Which is a rough place to collect dust anyway,
and I also use it when I do shop cleanup.
So when I'm cleaning up the shop I typically
have a lot more than just small pieces of dust right.
I've got wood shavings I even have chunks of wood.
Sometimes little pieces of metal
or a screw that just fell on the floor.
So it is important that I have as much suction
as I can if I'm going to use it for that application,
for me it's a big deal.
Now if you've studied up on dust collection
you probably already know that whenever
you take a hard 90 degree turn,
airflow can suffer.
So I think a lot of people were watching this
saying you know this 90 degree,
especially 90 degree on both ends,
the one that comes with the CT Cyclone
is probably killing some of the airflow.
So when I swapped that out I really expected
to see a pretty big improvement,
and we didn't right?
The small hose we saw no change whatsoever,
and on a large hose I only saw a 2% improvement.
I was really surprised by that.
So there's really nothing wrong with this 90 degree hose.
So take a look at the numbers draw your own conclusions,
but before you plop down $375 you should
definitely know what you're getting into
and what you're going to get for your money.
If you're looking for something that
incorporates well into a Festool system,
and that's always the hook with Festool right?
You might be able to get away with a different brand
or something like that.
But things integrate so well with the Festool system
that people who buy Festool tend to always stay in
the family just because things work better together.
In this case you know this is really no exception.
You can put sustainers on top of it,
you can put them below and this
just fits nicely into the stack.
So for some people it may be
the best thing since sliced bread.
You know if you try to get the CV Mini
or the Dust Deputy on this thing, it would be weird.
It's very tall you'd have to cobble something together,
to keep it along with the vac as a single unit.
Now Oneida does actually have a sustainer
style Dust Deputy that works with this.
I don't have it, I'm not able to test it,
so I can't say anything about it.
But it might be worth looking into
if you are a large hose user and you want to get better,
let's say less of a suction loss,
That might be an option to explore.
But I can't comment on that at all.
So ultimately the choice is yours.
Hopefully you found this useful
and I can't wait for people to tell me how bad
my testing procedure was.
(laughs)
Which seems to always happen, thanks for watching.
(jazz music)