Seperator

[Funkymonkey1971]

Hi all new to this forum and new to festool as well.
Starting a new business on a part time basis, restoring stairs mainly just threads and risers and purchased few festool bits, ro 150, 90 ct36 and seperator.
I have briefly used festool in the past and found them excellent.
The cost of bags for the dust extractor is mad so purchased the seperator to cut down on replacing the bags.
When I set it up I was really disappointed with the performance of the vac when the seperator was attached.
I knew there would be a bit of power lost but in order to achieve necessary power I have to keep the vac at full power and even then it isn't great. This isn't great for the vac motor imo and thought before I purchased the seperator that might reduce power by 10- 20% tops.
Any ideas why performance would suffer like that.
Thanks in advance and great forum.

All the best

 

[squall_line]

What is the specific disappointment?  Lack of dust in the separator, or lack of suction at the tool end?

What hose sets are you using?  The sanders themselves rarely need anywhere near full power on the extractor or it risks sucking them to the surface and leaving swirl marks.

Are you sure all of the bits and bobs are aligned and installed correctly in the cyclone portion?  It's quite easy to get something out of whack during shipping/setup.  Any other hose leaks/rips/tears?

If you don't see the tub flex when you start up the extractor, something's leaking badly.

If you're getting good suction at the tool end but the concern is the amount of dust bypassing the cyclone, that's to be expected from sanding dust, especially at finer grits.  The separator is optimized for heavier particles and large chips.

 

[Funkymonkey1971]

Thanks for the reply.
I'm using the smaller bore hose think its 27 mm.
I haven't used it yet as I just got the gear but when I set it up to test it I found a big drop off in power when the seperator CT was attached as opposed to straight from the extractor.
Now I know there was gonna be some loss of power but it appeared that it was quite significant.
My concern was I didn't like the idea of running the vac at full tilt all the time as I figure that's not too good for the life expectancy of the vac.
I'll check it out again tomorrow and see if the tub flexes when starting up. I had a look at the bits inside the cyclone and it all looked good but I'll double check that as well.

Thanks once again for your help

 

[MikeGE]

I have a CTL 26E (same motor as the CTL 36) with an Oneida Ultimate Dust Deputy cyclone attached to it and use the 27mm hose for all of my tools.  The only time I reduce the power on the CTL is when I am sanding; otherwise, I keep it at full power for the other tools.  After over a year of nearly daily use, I haven't detected any reduction in suction and am not the least bit concerned about the extractor's life expectancy.

 

[ChipinWood]

I found if I remove the bag from the Festool separator, I get better suction. The force of the air sucks the bag into the area that things are dropping into the separator. One other person on a post cut a crate up and placed it inside to keep the bag from sucking in. Personally, I’m not going to use bags. With the separator, I’ve never had so much suction that my sander sticks to the wood.

 

[woodferret]

At the risk of sounding condescending, the last cyclone (not CTVA20) issue someone posted about, they apparently had the hoses connected backwards...  so in interest of completeness...

Hose from extractor enters left port.  Hose to tool comes from right port?

 

[Vondawg]

Many of us have used the heck out of these vacs…for years…I would never worry about running one all the way on and I have, with no problem…aside from not banging around the outer casing. The mini and midi I’ve dragged around in the field, hasn’t had an issue in 10 yrs. So I agree with MikeGE and yes the suction is a bit less but still does the job.