Vacuum Cleaner Accessories

A vacuum with a loaded filter sounds like a new one and draws similar current, but collects a fraction of what it should. Dust settles on the cartridge from the first minute, resistance climbs and airflow falls — gradually, so nobody notices the moment the machine stopped doing its job.

That makes the filter the most important item here, not an accessory. HEPA H13 captures over 99.95% of particles at 0.3 μm — the fraction that is hardest to catch and most dangerous to the lungs. H12, used on the TWC-3/90, is less efficient and answers a different application: a wet and slurry machine does not work in carcinogenic dust.

The pre-filter in Auto Clean systems has its own role: it holds back the coarse fraction before it reaches the main cartridge, and in practice it is what determines how long the HEPA lasts.

Conical filters are model-specific: S26 fits the TAMC2000 and S36 the TAMC3000, and they are not interchangeable. Quote the machine designation when ordering, not the filtration class — two machines of the same class H can take entirely different cartridges.

Working without a bag is cheaper and, with coarse debris, more convenient — tip the container out and carry on. With class H dust that approach stops making sense, and not because of the mess.

A class H machine retains over 99.995% of the dust it draws in precisely so that it does not return to the air. Tipping the container into a bin undoes that in seconds: the entire fine fraction the machine captured goes back up, this time right next to the operator. Where the dust contains crystalline silica, the bag is not a convenience but the final part of the same protection as the filter.

So the working rule is simple: construction dust — with a bag; coarse debris and water — without. Bags come in packs of 4 and 5, depending on model.

Dust travelling through a hose at tens of metres per second rubs against its walls and picks up a static charge — both the dust and the hose. Charge builds faster the drier the material and the higher the airflow, which is exactly the working condition of an extractor on a concrete grinder.

Three consequences follow, all of them a nuisance. The hose attracts dust to itself and everything around it instead of transporting it. The operator gets a discharge at every touch — harmless in itself, but genuinely dangerous on a ladder because of the reflex. And in an environment with combustible dust a spark is an ignition source.

An antistatic hose carries a conductive layer in its wall that drains the charge to the machine housing. Ours is 7.5 m long, ⌀ 50 mm and reinforced — pick length with some margin but not excess: every metre of hose is resistance, meaning less airflow at the far end.

Filter — when cleaning stops helping

There is no hours figure, because loading rate depends on the material: quartz hardener dust kills a cartridge many times faster than plaster dust. The signal is that after shaking down, or after an Auto Clean cycle, the machine still pulls weakly. Cartridges are replaced as a set, so resistance stays even across all of them — one new filter among loaded ones takes the whole flow and loads at an accelerated rate.

Hose — at the first chafe

A hose dragged across a floor chafes on the outside of its bends and at the couplings. A leak in the hose means air drawn in from the side instead of from the tool, so suction drops along the whole length — and on a class H extractor it also means dust escaping outside the filtration.

Bag — before it is completely full

A full bag restricts airflow just as a loaded filter does, only sooner. The practical limit is about three quarters of capacity; past that the machine runs louder and collects less, and changing it becomes more likely to tear.

The machines this tooling fits are in industrial vacuum cleaners, and split by job in vacuums for grinders and scarifiers and wet and slurry vacuums. The tools that create this dust are in concrete grinders.