That demo at the woodworking show in Vegas changed my setup

I was at the AWFS fair back in 2017 and watched a guy do a dust collection demo that made me realize how much fine dust I was breathing in. He held up a filter after 10 minutes of sanding and it was caked. Has anyone else completely reworked their dust system after seeing something like that?

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hall.charles4mo ago

Man, that's wild. I had a buddy who was a cabinet maker and he never even thought about dust until his doctor told him his lungs looked like a smoker's after like 15 years of doing it. He showed up at my place one weekend with a whole new dust collector setup and was like "I'm not dying over shelving." He said he watched a video of someone doing a fog test with a shop vac vs a cyclone system and it completely changed his mind. Now he won't even let me near his shop without a mask on. It's crazy how much that fine stuff just hangs in the air and you don't even see it.

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chen.james4mo ago

Wait, was that demo actually at AWFS 2017? I thought AWFS was in even years. I was at the one in 2018 and saw a similar thing with a Festool rep showing how much a HEPA vac catches vs a regular shop vac. But yeah, that visual of the caked filter is brutal. I swapped out my whole single stage for a 2-bag system after seeing that and still wear a respirator whenever I'm sanding. That fine stuff really does just float around for hours.

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