Talk me out of a Dust Cobra...

[Wade Lippman]

I have always lusted after it, but it is so expensive. I just got an email that they are $100 off now. Still expensive but a bit less.

I now have a dyson canister vac with a Dust Deputy. Good suction, rarely have to clean the filter; use it mainly for ROS and my Kapex, but regular shop cleaning. It does a good job, but the Dust Cobra is so cool!

Tell me I am crazy...

[Paul Hingco]

Seems way overpriced to me. For a couple hundred more you can get a 2hp cyclone dust collector.

[Keith Outten]

The Oneida Dust Cobra isn't a dust collector, its a shop vac. In the picture below you can see both the newer model and the old one side by side in my shop. When I got the new model I gave my old one away in a FreeStuff Drawing here awhile back.

The new Dust Cobra has several new features that have increased the price but they have improved the machine in many ways. If you visit Oneida's web site you can look at the machine specifications and they are impressive. The price may be a bit steep but this is probably the best shop vac you can buy and you wouldn't expect it to be cheap. I use mine to clean my CNC Router table between removing material to installing the next one. My table has to be perfectly flat so chips left behind from a previous run have to be removed and it takes way to long to do it with a cheap shop vac and I don't have the time to stop often to blow out a filter or dump a canister.

I once connected 80 feet of 2.5" hose to my Dust Cobra and ran the hose up the stairs to vacumn my office, there was no noticible drop in performance :) If I live long enough I intend to setup a whole shop vac system and run pipe from end to end and upstairs as well.

In the sign shop at CNU we purchased the old model Dust Cobra with the wall mount, it worked really well and we had very little floor space. The new one in my shop has the roll around wheel kit which is very convenient.
.

[James Nugnes]

That looks like about the most impressive shop vac you could ever have. So I think I would be hard pressed to talk you out of it if you are really after a shop vac. Sort of a big thing. So maybe you want to consider if you really want to pay for something that big???? I guess the only other thing I could offer is to ask if you are after dust collection or really after a shop vac as they are of coarse not the same thing.

The nice thing about shop vac is that you don't really need customized accessories to make it go. Onieda is one of the few places that has some of the right stuff to support dust collectors but those accessories can be pretty pricy, especially with their minimums plus shipping.

[Daniel Greening]

I'm kind of torn between a Fein Turbo II HEPA vac or a Dust Cobra... On the Cobra it doesn't look like you can tone down the suction for small sanders...

[Andy Tripp]

Keith,
I was notified of this in an email today referring to their IWF specials. I went to their website and saw your review. This is exactly what I have been looking for - currently I use a Harbor Freight Dust collector for cleaning one of my CNC router tables and the other router I use a shop vac. Not real pleased with either way but they work. The compressed air vac's call for way to much CFM. I'm assuming you are still pleased with this? Are you using the 110 or the 220 version. My harbor freight has 1550 cfm but the Dust Cobra says its only 245 cfm - seems that it wouldn't do as good as the dust collector but you seem to be pretty happy with it. Any additional insights. Definitely going to their booth at the show.

[Keith Outten]

I'm still happy with my Dust Cobra, there isn't anything like it on the market that I know of these days. There is a difference in the specs between shop vacs and dust collectors, they are not the same machines and they are designed for different purposes. Generally speaking dust collectors will have higher CFM numbers and shop vacs will have higher water column specs. My Dust Cobra pulls 90" of water column, thats the number that makes it such a great machine. Mine is the 110 volt model, I don't think they offered a 220 volt machine when I got mine.

When you see the Dust Cobra at IWF you will immediately understand :)
.

[Andy Tripp]

Thank you for the feedback.

[Ben Rivel]

I have thought about getting one too but the price was tough to justify at first seeing as so many get by with shop-vacs and dust deputys. Then when I got my V-3000 system up and running I think I see now why it would be worth the extra cost for a Dust Cobra over a simple shop-vac setup. Havent bought one yet, but its definitely still rattling around in the back of my brain.

[Daniel Greening]

I was/am still really interested in a Cobra, as currently all of my larger tools are portable contractor models (out of necessity and mostly Bosch) and they take your standard 2.5 shop vac hose. On the table saw I have three dust ports (blade shroud, Sharkguard, custom bottom chute) and the shop vac/dust deputy really can't keep up. Same on the router table. It's hard to spend 1k+ for a super shop vac....

[Martin Wasner]

I've got one on my dovetailer. For that application, it works reasonably well. Another company that sells the same dovetailer with different paint sells it with a 4" port. I'm curious if the 4" port works better or worse. Right now I'm at about 75% collection. Not a fan.

I like the dust cobra, I'm planning on buying a couple more for the benches. It's about the only thing that can pull on a da sander and do a reasonable job collecting from the chop box.

[Ted Diehl]

I purchased my Oneida Dust Cobra about 4 months ago to replace a very noisy shop-vac. It seemed a little pricey but I bit the bullet and pulled the lever. I really can't compare it to other dust collectors since all I have used were shop-vacs but I can tell you I am very happy with it. It's very quiet, compared to my other shop-vacs and really does a great job extracting sawdust from my Hammer Table saw.

[Van Huskey]

Hard to beat this little sucker (for tools it is applicable to). You can plumb your whole shop just like your full sized DC and have plenty of suction for tools and you can just plug hoses in where you need them and open the valve. You can get variable suction by using a valve to bleed air. You can set it up for tool activation and have outlets wired to control it around the shop with programable overrun to clear the pipes after the tool shuts down and turn it off and on with an indepedent remote or switches as well. More CFM than even the best vacs by a large margin and more than enough ower to oevrcome any reasonable static pressure. It is a full unit HEPA certified vac. The cyclone slows filter loading to a crawl and the HEPA filters are cheap. It is quiet due to the induction motor AND can be loacted remotely like a DC even in a soundproof cabinet or another room. The only negative is price and comparing it to a Festool or other high quality dust extractor the price becomes palatable and over the lifetime of the tool will likely cost less to run, bags get expensive on the vacs. If you don;t do any site work I see this as a much better alternative to the high quality full unit HEPA vacs.

That said this is NOT a replacement for a real duct collector, it should not be used for machines (save CNC and some machines that are optimized for 200 cfm flows, of which few exist).

[John Petsche]

Keith,

I am looking at downsizing my larger cyclone dust collector to the "Dust Cobra" for a quieter and smaller machine. Can you tell me how quiet would you say the Dust Cobra is? I will be collecting dust from a bandsaw, Dewalt finish planer, Kapex miter saw, router table, and Ridgid oscillating belt sander. In your experience can this smaller vacuum handle those machines adequately? Thanks for any feedback!!!

[Andrew More]

I believe there was a vicious Dust Cobra attack in Munice, Indiana dude's wallet was taken to the hospital but it was DOA! You have been warned!

All joking aside, this seems to be comparable, if not better for half the price.
https://stockroomsupply.com/collections/record-power/products/camvac-55l-2-7hp-dust-extractor

[Keith Outten]

John,

The Dust Cobra that I have is a shop vac not a dust collector. The difference in performance between the two is significant.
The Dust Cobra produces about the same noise level as an ordinary shop vac, maybe a little less noise but I can't tell the difference. It might be possible to use the Dust Cobra for the machines you listed, it has more suction power then any shop vac I have ever seen but I doubt I it has near the CFM level of performance that your existing DC does.

The Dust Cobra does not have any bags and the filter is cleaned by simply shaking the handle at the top of the unit when its off so the dust drops down into the barrel. This is a great feature that keeps down time to a minimum.