downdraft table versus fein vacs?

[hillel posner]

I am a highschool woodshop teacher with a lot of fine dust from sanding. I am wondering if it would be better to get a good downdraft table, like a denray (I have some cheap ones hooked up to my dust collection and they don't do anything) or just make sure that all sanders are hooked up to shop vacs. I've had pretty good luck with feins, but festool will give me wholesale prices.

I do have air cleaners but the fine dust seems to get everywhere.

What do you think.


Hillel

[george wilson]

I have a Fein vac,and a 20,000 rpm Fein half sheet sander. There is no better sander out there that cuts nearly as fast,or is smoother to hold when running. The combination of my 7 gallon Fein vac,and the sander lets no dust escape. The vac turns on and off with any power tool you hook it up too. Works perfect with a Bosch electric plane,too.

I did have to machine out an adapter to mate up the fein sander with the Fein vac hose,strangely enough! The sander apparently was designed to only use its dust bag.

[John Coloccia]

If you have a budget, and it sounds like you do, and excellent investment is the Dylos particle counter. Then you will know for sure what works and what doesn't.

[Jamie Buxton]

The sanding table works only for parts small enough to move to the table. If you're sanding larger stuff, say a piece of furniture, the table can't help you. However, a vacuum attached to your sander has no such limitations.

[Michael Schwartz]

In a commercial/large shop a downdraft table is something to consider.

Strictly for sanding with a ROS if you had a fesstool sander and CT vacuum you wouldn't need one but your probably going to do more than just create dust with that in a shop.

It would probably be wise to have a downdraft table to collect dust from hand sanding, portable belt sanders, handheld disc sanders, etc..., in addition to your random orbit sanders.

Just make sure whatever system you buy the filter medium is independently certified to collect dust that is harmful to health, which is the stuff you can't really see.

[Kevin Stricker]

Festool sanders hooked up to a good vac are an amazing thing to witness. Not only do they remove almost all the dust, they also make the sanding pads last much longer. Where I used to go through several pads per project, I now do several jobs per pad.

As an example, in the last couple weeks I have sanded the stain and varnish from a 70 feet of maple handrail, sanded the milling marks from 50 feet of baseboard, and a door with the same pad that still looks as good as new. Not to mention doing all this in customers homes with only a light vac to clean up some minute bits of dust.