New member seeks advice on Domino & MFT 3

[Acrobat]

Thank you all for the helpful and informative replies. I will work through these suggestions and see how I get on.

On Thursday the Festool rep is calling to see me as I am considering either the CTL 26 or Midi dust extractors to compliment my set up. I am undecided as to which would be better. The Midi would be more portable which would be helpful for the odd occasions I do work in a customer's home, but I am concerned that the filter bag would need constant replacing. Think how much dust accumulates when you rout a 20 mm x 6 mm groove for panel doors in MDF! The CTL would I think cope with the volume of dust but not sure I would fancy carrying it up 3 flights of narrow stairs as I had to do earlier this year [unsure]

What do you guys think?

Hi Charlie
I'm glad you didn't get the midi. I have a Kapex and have no end of dust sprayed from it and have it hooked upto the Kapex via a shortened 36mm hose. Its dust collection is very poor. The midi just cannot suck up enough dust and I end up spending time after every few cuts to clean it. Frustrating and messy and my garage is getting covered in fine dust everywhere. Aargh. From what I have since read, the larger vacs have more power and as such work so glad that you got the larger model.
On the domino 500, if you get the smaller 4mm dowel bit, be advised the hole that makes is too small for the domino extension wings pins to fit, but all the other sizes the extensions pins fit in and you can readily run a long set of holes easily. I have the paddle type and use the paddles to index the first edge only. (Place the paddle on the left edge of the stock), then use the extension wings to pop its pins into the hole and index across them then, or simply follow your pencil marks and centre line up the domino to them instead.
It appears even though Festool is a top quality brand, (the marketing spiel is not justified in my experience) and I always have to figure a work-around to get try and square and accurate cuts. Take a look through these pages and you'll discover heaps of people overcoming what they fell are deficiencies or better ways of getting a top result from your festools. Some great advice available and once you have them set you can get good repeatable results.