voiceover:the woodwhisperer is sponsored by powermatic, the goldstandard since 1921, and by rockler woodworking andhardware. create with confidence. marc:i need to apologize ahead of time because today's show isreally going to suck. (groovy jazz music) today we're going to haveourself an old-fashioned shootout taking a lookat some of the popular cyclone separators on the market.
separators have been around for a while. i remember when i firststarted woodworking seeing plans for them to make your own, just using basic materialsfrom the home store. these days it seems like a lot of the dust collection companiesare getting in the game, and even rockler has a unitthat's fairly inexpensive. sometimes you just haveto weigh the cost versus the amount of time youwould spend building it.
all of these units i'll tell you straight off are certainly capableand 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 ina garage that likes to play with tools and givehis opinion on them.
i'm going to give you avery empirical results. we're not really goingto measure anything, we're not really going to weigh anything. i don't have a dust meterthat's going to detect how much dust makes itinto the environment. i just don't have those capabilities, but i can give you my opinionand show you some things so that you can make ajudgement call for yourself. before we get started let's talk a
little bit about what these units are, what they do and why you wouldwant one in the first place. even though all of thesesystems may look different they all operate on the same principal. essentially they're the middle man. they go between the dustextractor and the tool. this way as you're pulling the dust in, the wood chips are comingin, this is another layer of filtration that's separating out the dust,
fine and the coarse dust as well, before it even gets to thedust extractor, so that what actually gets to the dustextractor is very minimal. why would you want to do that? it seems like this should bedoing everything we need it to do. in most cases it does, but there's a couplethings to think about. number one is safety. the morewe can separate out before it even gets to the dust extractor,
the less chance there isthat that stuff is going to build up and wind upexhausting out into the shop. it also extends thelife 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 windsup burning out the motor. i've lost more than one shop-vacthat way before i learned my lesson and started buyingthe actual filter bags,
which is the second point. filter bags are expensiveand it's something that as long as you're a woodworker you're going to have to continuebuying those things. this is one way to avoidthat because all this stuff is being separated out firstit's going to take a really long time before you filla bag in one of these. you're going to continuouslyempty 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 asoften and you won't go through nearly as manyof those disposable bags. interestingly enough, specifically festool offers a solution tothis, and it's something that i bought into a while ago. that's a lifetime bag. basically this is reusableso i can empty it out and it saves me from havingto buy the disposables.
here's the problem: this costs200 dollars. none of these systems we're looking attoday cost that much money. if you're looking at it purelyfrom a financial perspective it makes a lot more senseto do something like one of these cyclones than it doesto go with a lifetime bag. just a few things to think about. (swinging electric guitar) the oneida dust deputyretails for 79 dollars, and that's for what theycall their deluxe kit.
it contains the bucket, of course you've got the cyclone here, pretty much everythingyou need to get started. you can buy the cycloneindependently if you wanted to make your own custom solution, and you can also buy someof their higher-end units for more industrialapplications and also one that specifically attaches toa 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 expensiveunit in our shootout is the clear vue mini cv06. retails for 149 dollars. we'll have to see if it'sworth that price tag. now let's talk about connectivity.
it's really important becauseyou want to know that when you get this thing home you'regoing to be able just to put it together and go towork and you don't necessarily want to worry aboutcobbling together ports and making all of your hoses fit properly. the good news is across theboard every one of the units has no problem connecting usingthe hose that it comes with. that basically connectsto the cyclone unit and into your dust extractor or shop-vac.
all of those connectionswere absolutely perfect. where things are a littlebit more variable is with the hose that connects to your tools. first let's look at the ridgidshop-vac. no problem at all, slides right on, and itcatches because there's a little bit of a taper at the back of this port and you get a nicefriction fit there. no problem with the shop-vac. my festool stuff, now i have twohoses that i'm concerned about.
this may not be the samefor everyone's situation, even if you have the festool gear because they do make different sized hoses. this larger hose that'spart of my boom arm setup, this actually connects perfectly. in fact you push it just farenough and you'll feel it snap. that's a perfect connection,very happy with that. the one i'm a little bit concernedabout is my 36 millimeter connection. this is thehose i use for my kapex.
this guy slides on and itbottoms out inside the hose here, and that's not really a good connection. even using some of the thingsthat oneida includes in the kit to help you tightenup a loosened hose, it's not really going to do anything, so i'm going to have to cobbletogether a solution for that. other than that everything works good it looks like just the 36millimeter hose is a problem. the clear vue cv06. no problemwith the larger festool hose.
no problem here withthe 36 millimeter hose. here's the ridgid shop-vachose, no problem there at all. all three of them work perfectly fine. now the dust right vortex. it looks like the largerfestool hose, no problem. 36 millimeter hose, noproblem 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.
now another really importantfactor here is portability. our dust extractors andshop-vacs are already big enough as it is, nowwe have this secondary thing that we're pulling along side of it. some people cobbletogether 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. theoneida unit actually does come with casters but you haveto drill through the bucket and attach it with the nutsto make that system work. cool thing about the dustright vortex is there's already holes there for thecasters 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 adifferent sort of thought process. instead of having it rollaround they're thinking that you're going to essentiallyattach it to your dust extractor. it includes hardware and a connection kit to allow you to connect it permanently. then this way you're movingyour dust extractor or your shop-vac with this cycloneconnector as one unit.
the oneida system also comes with the hardware for connectivity. really when it comes down to it, if you want rolling optionsbuilt in you're going to be looking at either the oneidaor the dust right vortex, and if you want attachmentoptions you're going to be looking at either the oneidaor the cv06 from clear vue. really because it hasboth options i think the oneida is going to be thewinner in this category.
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 wouldtake a beating pretty well. the casters on it,they're kind of cheap but really i wouldn't expectthem to be super high quality
casters and i don't reallythink that they need to be. this thing isn't going to havea 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 haveabout 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 possiblysplit it and break it. it's not the most durablehose in the world, it certainly gets the job done, and if you have a setupwhere 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 havethis moving constantly,
so this is just not myfavorite hose material. otherwise a pretty well-built unit. now the clear vue cv06 atfirst glance i thought was the best of all three in termsof durability. it's got nice, thick plastic for thecyclone unit at the top. it's not real high so there'snot 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 makesthat ratcheting noise. (clicking) that lets you know that you'retightening it up and it's very clear and obvious whenthe lid is fully seated, so there's no question there at all. some thing some people mightbe concerned about is the fact that the hardware that holdsthe cyclone to the lid is nylon hardware instead of actualmetal bolts and nuts there. for something like this idon't know how much of a
concern that is but ifigured i would bring it up. the one thing that just really,really disappointed me with this was as i was using thisunit it wound up buckling in. the actual bucket itself sucked in because the pressure was too great. i'm not 100 percent sureexactly why it happened, could just be a defect inthis particular bucket, but that was a bad thing. we'll see it later when wedo the performance tests,
you'll actually see what it looks like, but i was really disappointedbecause everything else about this unit isreally top notch quality. it is what it is. the dust deputy, honestlythere's really nothing overly remarkable about it to say that its quality is any better than the other two. it's all plastic, you'vegot a plastic bin here, plastic cyclone, and ican't really tell you
what the differencebetween this plastic versus the other two types ofplastic, 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 thinki could really consider a negative about the overallbuild quality is the lid. what i really like aboutthe other two units, both the dust right vortex, and the cv06,
is they both have a twist onlid so you really know when that sucker is on there,there's no debating it at all, and it's not going to popoff, even if you lift up from the lid and the cyclone unit itself. which of course theinstructions are going to tell you not to do that, but howmany of you are going to do it? you're going to movethis thing at one point, even if you just forget thatyou're not supposed to do it, and you're going to wind uppulling this lid right off and
you could very well get all thatdust thrown onto your floor. that's definitely something to consider. when i look at all threeof these they all have some sort of flaw that i'm notcompletely happy with, you might say it's a three way tie but the fact that the bucketon the cv06 collapsed on me, i've really got to take afew more points off for that. i'm going to say this oneis a two way tie between the dust right vortex and the dust deputy.
now the final attribute that we're going to test today is performance. really, this is the mostimportant thing. we want to know how much dust is caught bythe cyclone separator and how much makes it throughinto 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 compartmentand then we'll be able to see
how much dust makes it intothat plastic compartment. we won't necessarilybe weighing it or doing any sort of real scientific measurement, we'll just look at it andcompare between the three units to see if one hasmore dust than another. the other thing is, how ami going to make the dust? i've got a soft maple board here, just leftover scrap fromthe workbench project, and i'm going to use myfestool rotex sander.
in rotex mode this thing canchew up some serious material. i'm going to run that forfive minutes straight for each one of the units to producea decent amount of dust. then i'm going to go over and make three cuts at my slidingcompound 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 anice mix and hopefully
enough material thatwe 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 wholelot of accumulation here, just got that little bit right there. that's really pretty darn good. inside the can, that'swhere all the dust went. you can see we've got themixture of larger dust particles
and the smaller dust particlesare in there as well. let's see how much dust madeit through the mini cv06. you can see we've got quitea bit more buildup here that made it through thecyclone and into the actual dustbin of our dustcollector. quite a bit more. let's take a look inside thecan, but before we do that, one interesting thing herethat was unexpected was the can on the cv06 just collapsedunder the pressure from the vac. take that for what it is
that actually may bemaking it difficult to get this lid off until we getit back to shape here. of course, quite a bitof 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 goodaccumulation of small dust in here. let's take a look at the bin. no real surprises here, prettygood accumulation inside.
you can see that. let's start the eliminationceremony. 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 bitexpensive 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 youinitially as the underdog, but your performance speaks for itself. you're going to hollywood. in all seriousness, ifyou're in the market for a cyclone separator, anyof these will get the job done. but if you really want to get the best and the best buy for yourmoney, the choice is clear. in this case,
which is odd when you lookat shootouts like this, the cheapest one was thehighest performing one. the dust deputy withouta doubt was better at separating the fine dustand making sure that fewer dust particles gotto the dust extractor. both of these units werecomparable in terms of performance, but the clear vue unit is 150 bucks. you're looking at 89retail 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 thatthis one performance wise justifies its retail price, unfortunately. in this case, just was really surprised,
i did not think thatthe cheapest unit here would actually be thehighest performing one. the clear winner forme is the dust deputy. (plucked acoustic guitar) (quenched fire)