DUST COMMANDER - Cyclone filter element/Dust collector

I bought the dust commander as a last ditch before looking at a larger and significantly more expensive dust extraction option for my workshop. It is the size of a small single garage so I do not have the space to have a large system. I was using a hoover on it’s own which would get clogged quickly with fine dust and clippings.The dust commander has exceeded the performance I would have expected. It came with 4 adapters that fit the existing vacuum I have in the workshop and the hoses I have. I have installed it on the top of a 30 litre air-tight plastic drum, bolting it to the lid of the drum. Very easy to install; although I may add a thin veneer of silicon sealant to the rubber gasket that comes with it to enhance the fit. I didn’t line the drum to start with which was a mistake, but a simple bin bag in there works well.I’m using a vax power 4 to drive it which I was concerned would not be powerful enough to really get it working, but it is running exceptionally well. I’m currently working with a lot of MDF and MR MDF which has horrible fibres so I have super impressed that the Vax has got barely anything in it. If you are considering using it in a similar manner to myself then it is worth replacing the filters in the vacuum whilst you’re at it.It has of course not negated the requirement for a proper breathing mask to protect me but everything that is near the inlets is getting sucked up. Because the whole setup is small it is very easy to manoeuvre around the workshop. I have tested the system cleaning the entire workshop which has removed the layer of dust over everything.In short, if you have a small workshop and don’t want to spend large amounts of money on a specialist system then this is the way forward. Great performance; great value for money.

Fitted the cyclone to a metal bucket for the shop vac. Seems too be well made and works well, collected the dust with no problems. Easy to install.

Definitely the answer if you're fed up dealing with disposable bags for your wet/dry vac. I use this in my workshop with sawdust and wood chips, and very, very little actually gets past it to the vacuum. Just be sure to empty whatever barrel you have this mounted to before it gets too full, as the cyclone action is better with a bit of "space" beneath it in the barrel.No reduction in the suction power and it captures just about everything.

I started this after it was received and examined but not installed on anything. I've now got it up and running very successfully. Read on if you dare:Part 1 - package arrived.I know a bloke who has a dust deputy AND a dust mite. This looks like exactly the same moulding so I'll go and compare later. I know these things work, and work really well so now I need to finish my drop box.Great price on this listing, btw.The moulding seam grinding is a bit rough on the outside but the inside feels perfectly smooth as far as I can tell.Part 2I've now finished the drop box.I've heard a lot of warnings about inadequately strong containers and in fact one YouTube demo of the unit proudly mounted atop a paint bucket showed the bucket collapsing when the vac was switched. The author saying he's have to look into improving it seemed a good enough reason to avoid that route...SO:I overengineered my drop box, just for fun and produced an octagonal "drum" from 19mm pine, using birdsmouth construction (like a hollow ship's mast) with a snap-catch flat lid in 19mm pine and a plinth base made from a bit of mdf.I think it looks kinda cute, like something of a 19th century farm or some such... anyway, a black plastic Ikea wastepaper bin fits inside it and is an exact (really) fit top to bottom, making an airtight seal when the lid is snapped on.Because of the thickness of the lid, there is no need for a gasket or retaining ring on the inside of the lid.The biggest, totally unforeseen problem has been attaching hoses.The infeed is a Bosch 35 mm hoseBosch VAC005 5-Meter Vacuum Hose 35mm which I had to get from Amazon dot COM and cost about 36 quid delivered. The Festool equivalent, here,FESTOOL 452884 Suction hose D36 antistatic D 36x5m-ASPrice: £132.95The difference? The festool is antistatic and is a different colour.going off to my tools, and the bosch machine fitting _just_ goes onto the Dust Commander spigot but it's unfeasibly tight and doesn't go on far enough to be really secure. I'm also not confident about the fitting not splitting, it really is _that_ tight.I therefore sat down with several cups of coffee and an excuse to listen to some Arvo Part on Radio 3 and tediously filed the input (side) spigot into a taper. This was easier than it sounds. I just used light strokes and wandered around the entire circumference a dozen strokes at a time, repeating the process over and over again and pausing now and again to try the hose fitting again.How long did it take?Two complete Arvo Part symphonies, Vaughan Williams Fantasia on Greensleeves, the whole of Scheherezade (Rimsky Korsakov - bloody marvellous!) and most of Let it Bleed which I'm sure everybody knows as it's the Stones' finest album, ever.At the end of that the hose fitting was still a very tight push fit but felt hundreds of percent better, progressively tightening as pushed on with a bit of a twist.There's no chance of it coming adrift accidentally and it no longer feels like it's stressing the coupling to fracture-point.The Dust Deputy, of course, already has a manufacturer's moulded-in taper. The Dust Commander and the identical-seeming Dust Mite do not.The Deputy is an expensive PITA to get hold of in the U.K. The Dust Commander's lack of taper can be overcome with very few special tools ( a file and a load of music) but it would have been nice to have had it ready to go out of the box.If you're going to slip a hose INSIDE the spigots, then _this_ is not a problem.Lungs of the outfit are provided by an AquaVac which a mate of mine found in a skip and left on my doorstep, saying he thought the bottom part might be useful as a drop box.I fired it up. It didn't work. I put a new fuse in it. The motor worked but there was no suction, so I dynarodded the hose out with an inch square batten and removed the filter which was blocked so thoroughly that air would literally not flow at all. Some oik seems to have used it to clean up plaster without a dust bag, wrecked it and chucked it in the skip.Patience and a little Mozart is all it took, though I found some Norwegian Death metal necessary for cleaning the worst of the hose out. Thank you Tristania.The Aquavac has oodles of suck.but the hose is a bit feeble. It's around 30 mm. I think and after loads of reading I'm convinced a fatter vac to cyclone hose would give me better performance.I managed to get it to go into the top port of the Cyclone by cutting the thin tapered tool end off and ramming the bare hose up a piece of plastic I found that was a tight push into the spigot's I.D. I secured the hose itself with duct tape wrapped around some abrasive paper to make it fit inside this "adapter". The whole thing was then held together with more duct tape carefully lapped around the hose ribbings. Tedious, but managed with the help of some Debussy and a little Jefferson Airplane.Now I have a push-fit top connector that can be coupled and uncoupled as necessary.In the long term I'd like to replace the cyclone-to-vac hose with something like 65mm instead of the 30 or so it has now, but then there's going to be all the problems of adapters again and I'm NOT going to pay 150 quid for the Festool made to measure part. I might also buy a new filter for the Aquavac as the one in it has been brushed out and whacked to clean it and it's a bit past its best and it really is the bit that keeps the invisible dust out of the operator's pipes.Anyway, it works and it looks... unusual.I made the family come out and watch the entertaining cyclone as punishment for the constant "What is THAT you're making?" interrogation I'd suffered over the weeks I'd half-heartedly done bits and pieces on the project. Now they know, and are careful not to ask any more.Oh - the vac is plugged into a cheap adapter sold for powering up computer peripherals when the main unit is booted. Instead of a computer, it now has a track saw or sander going into the "main" socket and the Aquavac going into one of the two auxiliary sockets. There's a 5 second delay on starting and a 5 second run-on when the tool stops, which is plenty of time to clear the hoses.I suppose I ought to put some photographs up on the page to make sense of the rambling explanation. Watch this space.I've knocked one star off purely because of the taper issue. The unit performs flawlessly otherwise.

Bought for home workshop dust collection. Fitted to a steel bin and included a pressure relief valve. It all works well

Had an old blocked up ash vacuum I gave it a good clean out and then connected it to this cyclone (the silver barrel) and there's not a bit of dust in the vacuum (the black barrel). So no loss of power and no need to clean or eventually replace the filter in the ash vacuum. Great having a permanent solution connected to the table saw to help keep the place clean. But I would also suggest that having one of these would mean you could borrow the house vacuum cleaner and it would suffer very little wear and tear. And a metal drum is best as a plastic one can collapse if it's not sturdy enough.