Drum-Style Filter Cartridges for Dust Collectors

A discussion of pleated drum filters in dust collectors. September 29, 2009

Question
Does anyone have any experience with the new drum style filter cartridges? They are showing up from most manufacturers as a relatively expensive upgrade on their ballpark 1 hp to 3 hp dust collectors. There is a handle on the top of the filter drum that you rotate to sweep the inside surface of the drum filter clean of dust.

Forum Responses
(Dust Collection and Safety Equipment Forum)
From contributor A:
I have not had good results with the cartridges. They are very hard to clean if fine MDF dust is involved. The rotating handle and internal flapper really does not work well. You end up dismantling the collector and blowing out the cartridge, which is very labor intensive. Better to use an oversize filter made by someone like American Filter Fabric.

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From the original questioner:
Thank you. That's just the sort of feedback I was looking to get!

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From contributor B:
I have had the opposite experience with the cartridge filters. I like the internal pleat flickers so much that I am retrofitting it to my 60" Oneida filter so that I never have to manually clean it again either. MDF dust is tough though, you have to clean the filters about three times as often.

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From contributor C:
I bought one last year to run with my new planer and have to say I prefer it to the bags. There is definitely a noticeable difference in suction also, though I was going from a 2 micron bag which is more restricting than the stock 30 micron bags. One or two spins of the handle usually cleans it enough to restore airflow. I haven't tried blowing it out yet, which seems to be the standard method of cleaning. I think having a thin layer of dust cake on the filter is better than having it totally clean.

The one problem I noticed was on the planer. If the bag got over about 3/4 ful, the cartridge would fill up with shavings. To resolve this, I moved it over to my sander. It works much better with the finer dust, in my opinion.

If they weren't so expensive, I would put them on my new system. But the Beane bags are $110 apiece and supposedly filter down to 1 micron, so I can't justify the extra expense.