Visited a custom shop in Portland, their dust collection setup blew my mind

Ngl, I stopped by a small custom cabinet shop off SE 12th last week and the owner showed me their downdraft tables and a $4,000 cyclone unit that kept the whole place spotless. I have been running a single 2HP collector with a cheap bag filter for 5 years now and always thought that was fine. Seeing how much cleaner their finishes were made me realize I have been sanding dust right back into my pre-finish coats this whole time. Has anyone else switched to a downdraft setup and noticed a big jump in finish quality?

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hannahcraig21d ago

That sanding dust landing right in your pre-finish coats is a real thing, I fought it for years with a single bag filter too. Once I built a simple downdraft table with a few cheap vents and hooked it to my old collector, the difference in my clear coats was night and day, no more tiny specks ruining that final pass. You don't need a $4k cyclone to see the jump, just getting the airflow moving down instead of around made my finishes look a whole lot cleaner.