I have become a believer in the utility of a good DC system. I am still deciding about the importance of sub 2 micron filtering. Here is the conflicting information I am receiving.
Bill Pentz's site, which I hold in high regard, indicates that 4" pipe is never going to generate enough suction to keep a planer clean under reasonable power.
The local woodworking shop has the 1200 cfm Jet canister DC. They are doing everything wrong. They have a really short run coming out of the DC, then a 90* up to the ceiling then another 90*. There is some flex hose to get to the ceiling. After the ceiling runs, there are more 90*'s and lots of flex hose. Every piece of pipe and flex hose is 4". They have a PowerMatic planer, it looks to be in the 15" or 16" range. I asked several very direct questions about their setup, and they say that when running the planer it is absolutely clean, every piece of dust gets sucked up.
So what is going on? I'm sure Bill wouldn't make his claims without reason. I am also confident in the local shop, they are very reliable.
The reason for this post, I'm trying to decide between a 1200 cfm delta bag DC, the Jet 1200 cfm canister and the Oneida Dust Gorilla. Will there be any functional difference between these three other than filtering capabilities?