The shopvac could be sucking too hard. The Festool vacuum has adjustable suck. I think they accomplish that with a bleed hole somewhere in the system where you vary the amount of the hole covered. You can do the same on your shop vac by drilling holes on one of the hose ends that you cover with a rubber band when you want full suction. I looked at the Festool vacuum but was put off by the 130 cfm volume. The Ridgid that I bought does 220. That’s too much for sanding but it sure is nice cleaning shavings off the floor.

Put your setup back together and try sanding scrap wood with and without the vacuum and see if there’s a difference.

You can buy one of these at Home Depot:

https://www.homedepot.com/p/RIDGID-2-1- ... /204220709

I have one, and it works fine for adjusting the suck.

Gosh, I hope no one quotes these posts out of context . . .

The shopvac could be sucking too hard. The Festool vacuum has adjustable suck. I think they accomplish that with a bleed hole somewhere in the system where you vary the amount of the hole covered. You can do the same on your shop vac by drilling holes on one of the hose ends that you cover with a rubber band when you want full suction. I looked at the Festool vacuum but was put off by the 130 cfm volume. The Ridgid that I bought does 220. That’s too much for sanding but it sure is nice cleaning shavings off the floor.

Put your setup back together and try sanding scrap wood with and without the vacuum and see if there’s a difference.

No that's not how Festool's dust extractors work. They are variable speed not using a bleed hole. So when I turn mine down the vac motors slows down to where I have it set. They also use a smaller hose with less capacity as well when using the ROS.

Great system mine's been a complete joy. I even redid my deck with mine.

As for the bags they work fine but the real beauty of the Festool system is HEPA filtration and the health benefits of near total dust collection at the source of the work/sanding when using a matching Festool dust extractor.

There is a post on the OLF somewhere from 2005 when I placed black construction paper on horizontal surfaces in my shop and then sanded an entire body and neck prior to finishing. I then wiped down the box and neck and took pics of the black construction paper.

No visible dust on any of my shop horizontal surfaces.

So with a Festool ROS and dust extractor you can control vac speed/CFM without a bleed hole(s) and the speed of the ROS. If I plug into the AC outlet on the Festool dust extractor both the ROS and the dust extractor are turned on and off with the ROS. When I turn the ROS off the dust extractor automatically runs 5 additional seconds to clear the dust hose.

My Festool dust extractor is in my home shop and 20 years old next year and looks and runs like new, zero issues. In the same time I have been through 4 shop Vac vacs at our commercial Lutherie shop making the Festool system not only perform better it was more economical too.

Same deal with my Festool drill that I do use at our commercial shop to wind strings on every guitar that I have ever worked on which is over 15,000 now. It's been flawless and in the same time Dave has had four drills of the usual suspect brands. This makes my Festool drill more economical too.

Great stuff and as someone who appreciates good tools I'm more than satisfied with my Festool purchases AND they have not only provided me with a joy to use tooling with superb results that again people noticed and commented on they have been more economical to own too.

I would imagine that a couple of 1/2” holes would be more effective than 1/4” holes. Hesh, thank you for the explanation of the Festool operation. I like that. As I remember, the Festool is also a bit quieter. That would be nice. I have the biggest Ridgid vacuum with a HEPA filter. I like it a lot. It has a lifetime warranty.

It's true that sometimes expensive quality made things are actually cheaper. I still have a shop vac that I bought in the 90's that works, but is loud as hell, the one I have now is only 3 years old and the motor sounds like it's about to die.

I use a Clear Vue Mini dust funnel thing in front of the Shop vac and it does a killer job. Can you plug the Festool collector right into a drum sander or a band saw?