Hello,

I've been building a series of skis, and part of the process involves dry cutting of composite layers (carbon fiber and fiberglass). I'd love to cleanly pull this dust away from the cutting blade.

I've been looking at HEPA certified Festool dust extractors as a way of doing this, but there are a few complications.

So there seem to be different classifications between North America and elsewhere as to what a HEPA designation defines. Here (in NA) is it is defined as filtering 99.97% of particles 0.3 micron and greater. Elsewhere it's difficult to pin down.

So my question is: are American HEPA designated vacuums safe to use for composite dust removal? fiberglass, carbon fiber, etc. If someone with composites expertise could clarify on this subject that would be great! I'd really prefer not to just be aerosoling composite dust into my shop.


Here is a European counterpart that is specifically composites dust compatible:
https://www.darkmattercomposites.com/composites-portable-dust-fume-extraction.html

These have H-class filters which look like they trap 1 micron and greater (this is tremendously confusing as many research articles show composite dust at much smaller sizes, as low as 0.3 microns)

Yeh I sort of agree with Lester, I've tried all sorts of dust extraction methods (not specifically any of the ones mentioned in this thread though, so potentially these are better) and just found that at best you capture/extract maybe 50% of the dust. Obviously that is better than none at all, but not a whole heap in practise. You still end up with dust everywhere in the workshop and covered in it yourself. I wouldn't say it isn't worth trying, but my comment would be that my efforts have been pretty much in vain as of yet.