Sometimes Being Powerful is Not Good: A ClearVue Tale

[Paul Wunder]

Well, I do not know if little children and pets are in danger if they are too close to the sucking end of a ClearVue, but I do know that remotes are not safe!

Before using my drill press today I opened the nearby blast gate and began to use the flex duct as a vacuum to tidy up the table. It was too late and I wasn't fast enough to grab my cyclone's remote as it was sucked up. I don't think it got all the way to the cyclone because I didn't find it in the dust bin. Probably because I immediately cut the cyclone power by pulling the plug on the relay. The DP table is nice and clean.

The drill press is at the end of a 50 +' run with more turns and elbows than I thought wise.

From now on I will always keep my remote in my pocket. Fortunately, I originally bought two remotes.

[Bryan Rocker]

As a retired USAF jet engine mechanic I can tell you that high suction levels are a danger to anything they can pick up. I hope you are able to find it....good thing you shut it off quick.

[Robert Payne]

The remote control is small and really easy for the ClearVue to inhale -- one of the factors that convinced me to buy my CV1800 was a demonstration by CV founder Ed Morgano at their facility in Pickens, SC back on October 2007. I was touring the production shop with Ed and a fellow woodworking colleague and was impressed with the clean surface left behind after their CNC machine was finished routing out some parts from MDF (see first picture). The router head was surrounded by a short brush-equipped hood with 6" flexible duct going up about 8-9 feet to a wye into an overhead 8" main duct and from there to the closet containing their CV-MAX, a run of about 30-40 feet. With the router truned off and the hood raised off the cutting surface, Ed placed a 25' tape measure in the palm of his hand and moved it in the path of the duct under the hood. In an instant, the tape measure disappeared and in less than 5 seconds, we heard the rattling sound stop after it noisily ascended the vertical segment and raced down the main with a thump into the cyclone bin. Ed shut the unit down and we opened the galvanized bin to find the tape measure sitting proudly in the midst of other debris. The tape measure still worked fine and I was convinced that their cyclones were quite powerful! We each bought one...

[Darcy Forman]

Fire it up and bring the remote into the dust bin. My onida has sucked up more than a few things so far that I have simply removed from the dust bin. I was working on my router table last winter and turned around to find my five year old boy and three year old girl having a blast feeding the open end of one of my dust collector hoses a couple pastic push pads and a small childs rubber boot. They all were recovered in the dust bin. One time I accidentaly sucked up my sanding block.

[Matt Meiser]

Did that with my Grizzly too.

[Leo Graywacz]

Ya. A cyclone won't destroy it. If it was a standard through the impeller vacuum you could kiss it goodbye and pick up the shredded pcs.

[Michael W. Clark]

Friend of mine at work lost his hard hat in a DC system.

[Jim Matthews]

I'm alarmed to see cigarette buts in all that MDF dust.

Am I alone in seeing that as an explosion hazard?

[Dan Hintz]

I'm alarmed to see cigarette buts in all that MDF dust.

Am I alone in seeing that as an explosion hazard?

No more so than them sitting in the middle of a dry grass field. They need to have a burning ember before I start to worry.

[Robert Payne]

I'm alarmed to see cigarette buts in all that MDF dust.

Am I alone in seeing that as an explosion hazard?

I asked about that back then and was told that a few guys did smoke just outside the shop and they would include emptying their butt can at the end of the shop workday when cleaning up -- and they were sure there were no live ones that got sucked into the floor sweep. You can aslo see PETG cuttings from their bandsaw cutting area in the can, too.