Does Oneida have something to fear from Grizzly?

[Jerry Olexa]

He doth protest too much... and.. Where's there's smoke, there's fire..These come to mind as I read. There must be some substance to one of these positions, Time will tell which one and it well be interesting following it....Thanx for posting...

[mike lucas]

Hey Wood magazine, please test these things and show us where they fit relative to the others.

Jay

I sure wouldn't trust anything Wood magazine ever reports! It's not like they are a trusted company when it comes to showing the real winner. They show a huge bias just as you or I would. On top of that, they take dollars from these companies, making any test, an opinion. I will never trust any of these magazines to pick where my monies go!

I don't understand why you want Wood to do a test too compare the two.

[Steven Wilson]

Well Grizzly is blowing some stinky smoke out of there A$$ with their ad. As Oneida correctly points out, Grizzly fails to publish fan curves or any relevant information on their filters - typical Grizzly nonsense. It will be interesting to see some production units tested. As for cleaning filters, Oneida's method is typical industry practice and works fine on their filter material - Grizzly's inference is plain BS.

[Greg Mann]

The easiest way to enhance your status is to claim you have surpassed the industry benchmark, and at a lower cost to boot. To me, this claim rings hollow without documentation of the particulars. Oneida has been in the forefront of desseminating specific performance parameters and stating their philosophical justifications for design decisions. It is my perception, for example, that many of the critical characteristics that Bill Pentz has championed have been points of focus in Oneida's designs. I do not mean to speak for Bill, and he might like to comment, but that is my perception from filtering through observations presented in various venues.

When a company becomes known as the benchmark in an industry it winds up with a bullseye on its back. It seems perfectly logical to me that said company would become weary of being in someone's crosshairs and sensitive to what it considers as inaccurate ambushing. Once claims are made, they tend to take on a life of their own, and establish a certain level of credibility only by virtue of having been stated, especially to the casual observer. I have a gnawing feeling that this may lie at the heart of Grizzly's marketing strategy.

Greg

[Paul B. Cresti]

Guys,
I think this goes a little deeper than this add war. I believe Bill Pentz mentions on his website that he ahd some suggestions at one time to improve the designs of cyclones and Grizzly kind of snubbed him off. I also believe he then stated they came back to him to talk and thus a "new design" is coming out that he knows nothing about. I am sure Bill could clarify this if he cares/can comment on this.

Set asside the adds for a moment. I do feel that Oneida is scared in some ways and they do have a right to but not because of just performance......it has a lot to do with price and what, we the American public, are willing to buy. I just kind of went through this on "another forum" that I rarely ever visit. What bothers me is these companies that are dealing with the Asian market. Asia is buying our, USA made products and Eureopean made products, copying them, making inferior products (most of the time) and then selling their version back to us while deeply undercutting our costs. How, by paying next to nothing...... Our solid wood furniture industry has been severely hurt by China's "dumping" into our country. Thus all of the anti-dumping laws trying to be implimented in this country. What happend to companies like PM and Delta?? They no longer make their products here in the US (hardly any of them are at least). I would say it has mostly to do with companies like Grizzly and for that matter all companies that import from Asia. Why are they doing so well? because we as consumers are shopping on price most of the time. I am not trying to chastise anyone here just trying to make an observation. While at a recent WW'g show where I manned a both for a company I support (at least as a good paying happy customer) I heard from the guy from the sawmill company that he had one of his machines bought from some "Asian" individual/company and when it returned it came back with dots all over it! This means they had a laser/computer copying the machine inch for inch, I guess so they can duplicate it. Has anyone seen the new Grizzly adds in Wood & Wood Products and CSB? They are showing some new sliding table saws. Guess what they ressemble? MiniMax, Felder and Altendorf!!!!!

If we as a country do not watch ourselves and promote our own companies and the European market they will eventually kill all of our industries.

By the way, something else that has been bugging me for a while... Carl Eyman (sp?) I agree with you. Shame on Norm for showing such a cheap way to make a joint (doweling a chair) I know he was most likely forced into it by his promotion department but those chairs sure do not last!! I am only 34 and I have seen many doweled joints fail

[Andy Pedler]

Despite the truthfullness of the Grizzly claims, it is downright foolish for Oneida to respond to them. By publishing any response (especially an inflamatory one like this that takes a defensive posture) they lend validity to Grizzly's claims. That's how marketing works. If they didn't respond to Grizzly like this, chances are nobody would notice. They've simply given Grizzly a great deal of publicity, which I'm sure Grizzly appreciates.

[Jim Hinze]

I know I haven't been 'round the creek that long, but I'll chime in with my $.02 .. having owned a business in the past...

Grizzly made thier claims from already published test data available in the public domain (regarding the onieda unit) and was probably quoting either test results from the MFG or expected performance based on cyclone design with regard to their unit... This is good for marketing hype, but not in the way it was presented... as a challenge/attack on oneida. When their product hits the states and we get real numbers, then take this marketing tact.

Oneida, rather than taking the high road and remaining silent until real world test can be performed, gives the appearance of running scared and the cry-baby appearance of "You stole my design"...

Honestly, if I were in the market for a cyclone, based on the behavior of these two companies, neither would get my business... I'd build my own or seek out Penn State or Woodsucker.

[Ted Harris]

But, when I see company react to a competitor the way that Oneida has to Grizzly, it always makes me think that the competitor may, indeed, have a product that I should consider.

It was in fact Grizzly that attacked Oneida. It is obvious that Grizzly is hoping that people will just automatically believe everything they say without proof of their claims.
IMHO, Oneida was very professional in their rebuttal. Their website has results from all testing done, and others have tested as well, and links are provided. Doesn't sound like they have anything to hide. Where are Grizzly's test results?
I personally have spent countless hours researching vacuum systems, and the hands down conclusion by most all experts is that Oneida is the best. The fact is, you get what you pay for.

[Paul B. Cresti]

Guys,
This is a post by Bill Pentz on the FOG. It is a very informative post and I believe it has the info i was saying about Grizzly not wanting his initial help.
Paul

"As many of you know I have invested a little time researching dust
collection and cyclones. I am most appreciative of the help from
Oneida-Air and many commercial dust collection firms for helping with
my education. That education was necessary because after a lifetime
of woodworking I had become very sensitive to wood dust. My mad 1994
Christmas rush left me in the hospital with near terminal double
pneumonia. Like many in this group, my career and life left me able
to buy pretty much any woodworking toy I wanted and I had a full shop
of some of the finest European and American equipment available.
Unwilling to give up my life-long hobby and sometimes profession, I
bought all the "best" hobbyist dust collection equipment recommended
primarily by Rick Peters in his DC book. Four years later my 1999
Christmas rush put me back in the hospital again with near fatal
double pneumonia. I spent six months in bed on oxygen, mostly working
with the Internet to figure out what went wrong and why, then
designing my own cyclone dust collection solution.

I learned that much of the common knowledge I was raised with from my
professional woodworking father was dead wrong. Air at the volumes
and speeds we use in dust collection is more like water in that it
will barely compress at all. Any restriction, length of small pipe,
small machine port, etc. will kill airflow. I had to revise my mental
model of dust collection from my experience with vacuum cleaners that
run at roughly eighteen times higher pressures, to one of a flowing
stream. We live in that stream of air and what our dust collectors do
is tap that flow getting pretty much only the amount of water (air)
that can be carried by the size pipe we are using. The idea of air
squeezing around small obstructions and speeding up in smaller pipes
is a fiction. This mean that all our hobbyist systems designed with
all different sized pipes were dead wrong because with just one gate
open, we lacked the air to keep from getting piles and plugging in
our larger mains. The other major paradigm shift required was for me
to start thinking about dust collection in terms of sucking. Try to
move an balloon with a straw by blowing and it is easy, but trying to
move one by sucking is tough. Air being sucked pulls roughly equally
in all directions. This expanding sphere has the airspeed fall off at
pi times the cube of the distance. An optimal system designed to move
4000 FPM keeps both vertical and horizontal runs from plugging, but
that 4000 FPM turns into far less than 50 FPM just a few inches from
our tools. The 50 FPM is the absolute minimum to ensure that normal
room air currents do not disperse our air all over. Because FPM
equals CFM/duct area we can compute backward and it turns out that
nothing less than 800 CFM is ample to provide 50 FPM around our dusty
operations whether hand sanding or using a power tool ample to keep
the fine dust from spreading all over. We need all 6" ducting to
carry that 800 CFM unless we step up to a huge oversized blower and
impeller. That means I had to change out my expensive commercial
mostly 4" ducting plus make new machine hoods sand dust collection
ports.

I then tested the dust collectors made by Jet, PowerMatic, Grizzly,
PSI, Reliant, Laguna Tools, ShopSmith, Cincinnati Fans, New York
Blower, CFI, and others. ShopSmith and Jet made the only hobbyist
dust collectors that actually performed both in airflow and filtering
as advertised. All other hobbyist dust collectors came with
inaccurate ratings on maximum airflow, filtering, or both. I could
not even force many to achieve their advertised maximums leaving me
certain these numbers were created in the advertising back rooms
instead of any engineering shop. Our real workshops add between
4" to 10" of real resistance. Nothing less than a 1.5 hp motor turning
an 11" diameter impeller will move the needed 800 CFM. For that to
work you need a clean filter and no more than 10' of smooth walled
flex hose all 6" in diameter. To that we need to add more impeller
and motor to overcome the resistance of our shops added by ducting
and a separator. Almost all need at least a 2 hp motor turning a 12"
impeller do capture the fine dust by getting a real 800 CFM to our
machines with no separator. Adding a separator pushes that to a 3 hp
motor turning a 14" diameter impeller to move than much air.

The 3 hp dust collectors were expensive and still would not work
because of impeller and filtering problems. The PSI 3 hp used too
small an impeller as did the Grizzly and most other Chinese made
imports. Again Jet was the only hobbyist vendor who provided a unit
that actually worked at the claimed maximum airflow ratings. Even
with it, by the time I added my ducting actual performance was about
half that rated. In fact, figure about half the maximum performance
as a reasonable estimate of actual working performance for any dust
collection blower. I also tested at UCD the filter bags from Grizzly,
PSI, Highland Hardware, Jet, PowerMatic, Delta, Woodtec, and Rockler.
Two of my professor friends conducted similar independent tests at
their universities. We all got identical results. The reputable
makers accurately advertised 30-micron filter bags and the rest
claimed filtering levels that could not be reached until their
filters were so plugged they would hardly pass air. Any could and did
claim any level of filtering desired by simply clogging their filters
until they got the desired performance. Worse, all of these bags
including my custom tall bags, had less than on tenth the surface
area recommended by ASHRAE, the independent society of heating and
air conditioning engineers. As a result, all of these bag type
filters plugged quickly killing the airflow needed for good dust
collection. Going with their recommended roughly one foot of filter
area for each 1 CFM of airflow was going to leave me with no shop
unless I moved to cartridge filters. Moreover, I needed to get into
the expensive cartridges that provided full airflow while filtering
down to 0.5-micron particle sizes. I decided to live with more
cleaning and shorter filter life and bought a pair of expensive 0.2-
micron Donaldson/Torit filters and mounted them on my dust collector,
wrote up the results, and not long after saw Jet sort of copied me
with their canister unit.

Although a clever solution, this worked terribly because my filters
quickly clogged. Adding a separation screen saved the filters but
left me cleaning the screen every few minutes of use. The only way to
clean my shop air without blowing my air outside was to use a cyclone
separator to get rid of most of the particles before they got to
those filters. I added a Grizzly trashcan separator sold by
Woodstock, their sister division. It worked well at pulling off the
sawdust, but killed the airflow at my machines by adding 4.5" of
resistance. Worse, it sent all the fine dust right into my filters
anyway and it went right past my screen. I surrendered bought an
early PSI cyclone then made or at least engineered by Oneida-Air, and
found it worked worse than my DC with the trashcan separator. PSI
used the same 10.5" diameter impeller on every unit from their
1.5 to their 3 hp blower getting not on lick better performance out
of their expensive 3 hp dust collectors and cyclones than they did
out of their 1.5 hp units. After a long ugly fight with them I gave
up losing my shirt financially. I then built a Wood Magazine copy of
the same unit and it worked even worse gravely under powered and
barely giving me 350 CFM at my machines. That convinced me to buy an
Oneida-Air cyclone.

Brian Lamb and others advised me they were not really happy with
their Oneida-Air cyclones either. A friend of mine had one and I
spent a lot of time with it working out its problems and recommended
he replace that internal filter with a pair of external filters
similar to mine. It still had clogging problems when making certain
types of chips and dumped virtually all the fine dust into the
filters making for a constant cleaning problem. It turns out that PSI
and Wood Magazine cyclones that copied that same design had the same
problems.

A little research showed me that all of these copied the original 7.5
hp Delta cyclone designed for a small one or two person shop. That
unit was placed outside and used a bag separator with the fine dust
just blowing away. The Oneida-Air version designed by Dr. Witter used
a larger cyclone so it could be powered with a smaller motor, but
maintained the same dimensions. Those dimensions came from early
agricultural work where cyclones were designed with horrid internal
turbulence to break loose grain from chaff and separate cotton fiber
from dirt and sand. They simply blew the lighter particles out the
top, so this design is worthless for fine dust separation. An
elongated inlet misnamed an neutral vane keeps the internal
turbulence down some creating a cyclone with only about 4" of
resistance, but still something that is terribly inefficient and
needs at least a 3 hp motor turning not less than a 14" impeller
to assure getting our needed 800 CFM at our machines. I did a lot of
research and ended up going with a far more efficient design then
added to that design my own improvements to make it even better in
terms of reduced resistance and increased separation. I added a long
inlet to stabilize the incoming air, added an angle to that inlet
with spiral air ramp to keep the air from crashing into itself and
minimize resistance, and I did the engineering calculations to
redesign the cone dimensions for optimal fine dust separation. I also
came up with the efficient airfoil blower suitable for small shops
and an appropriately sized and powered material handling impeller for
medium to large shops. The results work well giving less than
2.5" resistance with roughly a ten fold advantage in terms of fine
dust separation over the other cyclone designs. I have one firm that
CNC machines MDF all day long generating many 55-gallon barrels of
dust every week. MDF will clog other cyclone filters in minutes, but
they only had a few tablespoons full of fine dust after two months of
operation.

Currently I only recommend dust collection from Felder, the 3 hp
Oneida-Air cyclone, the WoodSucker II, and my designs either in the
form of kits or plastic Clear Vue units from Ed Morgano. Nothing else
in the hobbyist world has the ability to move enough air and provide
ample filtering without rapid filter clogging or poor fine dust
separation. Fortunately, the increased industry awareness in this
area, plus a lot of work will hopefully soon be generating big
changes. Oneida-Air has been one of my strongest supporters and I
freely helped them as I went making recommendations for efficiency,
impeller, and filter improvements that are now on all their 2 hp and
larger units. I also helped WMH (PowerMatic and Jet) with new designs
that hopefully will be coming out soon in their new commercial
product lines. PSI and I got into a fairly heated fight over my
comments about their pretty, but poor quality products. I ended up
contracting with them last fall and revised their blower and cyclone
designs. Their new units with whatever changes they choose to make
should be available soon. I similarly got into more than a little
heated battle with Grizzly over their flagrant testing of blowers
with impellers bigger than they actually shipped. We fought ourselves
into a mutual cold war with Grizzly announcing a whole new line of
hobbyist cyclones late last year. My evaluation based upon looking at
the pictures of the prototypes proved right on, these units were
garbage and worked poorly for indoor use just like the early units
they copied. Bill Crofoot with Grizzly swallowed his pride and came
to me for advice. We worked through why those new units had problems
with his taking my recommended repairs from my web pages. I
understand what they plan on shipping in the next few months will be
totally different units far closer to my design, it not my design
exactly. I'm not very bright because I got nothing from any of
these firms other than a few test products that were of no use.
Regardless, we are going to see lots of excellent offerings later
this year. Meanwhile, please protect your respiratory health so you
don't end up like me sucking on an oxygen hose and only able to stand
or walk a couple of hours a day.

bill"

[John Renzetti]

Bill Pentz' post on the FOG (Felder Owners Group) recently was really informative. For those here that are FOG members I made it into a pdf file in the files section. Paul beat me to posting it here. Thanks for helping Paul.
I just took a look at the Grizzly link. I really don't like the way that Grizzly is presenting their new cyclone. To me it's a turn off when the whole campaign focuses on one particular company and their product. I don't know who started what, but this ad campaign is just overkill.
One other thing I question is what looks like a claim that their filters are the same as the European Class C rating. This rating is obtained from a standardized test done I believe by a government agency. The filter is subjected to quartz dust for a one hour period. For a class C rating the filter must capture 99.9% of the dust from .1 or .2 micron. For a Class G rating it is 99.5%. I think Oneida had tests done on their filters using the same controlled and standardized European test procedures. The Grizzly ad didn't mention the criteria for claiming the 99.9% filtration.
I'm sure the price will appeal to some but for me if I didn't already own the Felder RL160, the next choice would be the Oneida.
take care,
John

[Jeremy Bracey]

It's called marketing. I have to LOL when I read this. The fact that Oneida responded is ensuring EVERYONE knows that Griz came out with an at least mildly competitive unit. How many have you bought something that was a little cheaper than the top end because it was acceptable and much less expensive.

Grizz is trying to pre-sell units. That helps keep the cost down on thier initial purchase. Pre-sale marketing, so many companies do it. Compare it to the best, MANY companies do it.

Respond in a rant! Unheard of, just helps the other guy.

The way I look at it: 2 rounds to Grizzly 0 to Oneida.

[Michael Perata]

In a competition of price vs price, price almost always wins. Grizzly is selling price and offering their justification (true or not).

OAS should be scared. Their price is no longer an issue, OAS is over-priced by $500. Now OAS has to start justifying the $500 difference in terms of quality. Think of the problem as: Should I buy a Grizzly 1023 or a Powermatic 66.

BTW: I just bought an OAS 2hp Commerical model for $1,200. I was not aware of the Grizzly, but if I were, I would have looked at it.

[Keith Christopher]

You know Coke _vs_ Pepsi, ford _vs_ chevy. it's all the same they're all to make money. Clearly this is Walmart _vs_ <mom and pop shop> and they're scared.


Keith

[Andy London]

I was reading some of the posts on WOODNET from the fellow that's from Grizzly on this subject, apparently they had their own engineers design these neew units, it suprises me that they have not put any numbers out.

We can't buy Grizzly here in Canada, but with that kind of a price difference it would be worth a look. I have the 2 h.p. commercial unit from Onida and am very pleased with it, but getting it here was desperate expensive.

In any event, I think Oneida has had the market for some time and perhaps sees a threat around the corner.

[Greg Mann]

snipped
In any event, I think Oneida has had the market for some time and perhaps sees a threat around the corner.

Andy,

The threats are always around the corner. Would you have been tempted by the price if you found the performance to be less than what Grizzly is claiming?