Originally Posted by
Aaron Inami
Sorry you are getting discourage from all this. A couple comments for thought. I have had two different shop vac units and I always HATED using them -- to the point that I never used them -- because they were always so loud and annoying and difficult to manage. However, I love using my Festool extractor. It's a night and day difference in usability. I would not discount that CT15 unit because it has a smaller filter. The specs indicate a 5% difference in CFM. The smaller filter could give you lower CFM when the bag is full. However, the suction power doesn't change even when the bag is full (which is a benefit for the Festool units). It may still be a better option than a shopvac or Fein. If you have read that Festool does not like supporting warranty if you use a 3rd party cyclone like "Dust Deputy", you can still get the Festool CT CT-VA-20 separator if you are concerned. I'm not sure what was up with that Festool warranty decline. A cyclone is a cyclone - it's just another air channel.
The Supercell is a good bridge product. It has enough suction power to equal a shop vac and also enough CFM to equal a low end volume dust collector. It does this with being just one unit that covers both scenarios, but it does cost you. Space is a premium.
If the noise and usability of a shop vac does not bother you, It's up to you if you just buy another one. I don't think the CFM differences between shopvac and Festool/Fein will be anything enough to justify one over the other for your large 4" dust port tools.
Oh, one more thing to think about. The normal Shop Vac units are a pain to clean out, even if you use an internal bag. The filter itself will get dirty and clogged. Cleaning the shop vac filter is a messy and dusty process. With the Festool, it operates like a normal vacuum. The fleece bag catches 99.9% of any particules and the filter is just there as an additional HEPA stage. To clean the Festool, you just lift off the top of the unit, pull out the fleece bag and throw it in the garbage. On my Festool, the main HEPA filter has always stayed clean and I've gone through 4-5 fleece bags already.
On Festool, the HEPA filter is primarily required if you do drywall sanding. In this case, you cannot use a fleece bag and the drywall dust just gets vacuumed into the main chamber and does clog up the main HEPA filter of the unit. These units have the auto-cleaning feature which just causes an impact to the HEPA filter to "shake loose" all that plaster dust.