Carbatec Garden & Power Tools

Excellent Hobbyist/Advanced Woodworking Jointer – Excellent machine, perfectly dimensions my timber to 90 degrees. Easy setup and the best part is that it is a parallelogram style so it’s easy to… Read more

adjust and align the tables. The staff were super helpful after some issues with the original delivery. I bought a helical head from Carbatec after the original purchase because I got sick of fiddling with the straight knives! Found an easy YouTube video online to install myself. Helical head is a must in my opinion! Highly recommend if you want to improve your woodworking go with this tool.

A compact dust extractor fit for small workshops. Minor modifications needed – After my debacle with buying the woeful DeWalt DWV-900L dust extractor (see my other review) with pipes made to a 32mm diameter, I decided to upgrade… Read more

my machine to a 4" air intake for the larger dust producing tools in my workshop.

At first glance, there is little to say about this unit. It is effectively a 1HP (750W) motor attached to a fan and dust collection bag. Honestly, I would have bought a 2HP model like this if Carbatec offered one. However, the advantage of the 1HP motor is that it's reasonably quiet, and low-pitched enough to be more comfortable than the higher pitched screams of most shop vacs. In any case, I'd always recommend hearing protection anyway, because the tools being used are likely to be more noisy.

I find the wheels on the base plate useful for moving it around, but this drags BOTH the pipes and dust bag on the ground. However, things get a lot better when you mount this to the wall (or in my case a home made trolley).

Don't expect this 30 Micron fabric dust bag to be full HEPA grade. Finer dust can make it through. I'll probably make something a little smaller (and better at holding larger dust particles in) and attach a cyclone separator to deal with the majority of the shavings and dust.

I initially attached this dust extractor directly to my router table, and found that it blocked up. You see the plastic adaptor used to attach the dust bag actually featured a grate of plastic, vastly reducing airflow, and guaranteeing blockages if creating wood shavings. So I cut it out. Similarly, there is a metal circular grate on the air intake, which has been known to cause problems as well. So again, I cut it out with a pair of aviation snips and all of a sudden the dust extractor worked more quietly, as well as more efficiently. If these two design flaws weren't the default, I'd probably have given this unit a solid 4 stars, given the price.

The 4" dust port is a huge step up from most shop vacs. With two-to-three times the airflow of a typical shop vac, blockages are vastly reduced. However, tools like thickness planers, jointers, and routers that make a LOT of wood chips/dust probably need a 2HP motor at least if directly attached. By including a cyclonic separator between tool and extractor, with short runs of pipe, I think you can get away with it on a 1HP system. However, that still might not suit everyone.

Personally, I'm not a big fan of the on/off switch. You have to slide the switch cover sideways to expose the start button. I honestly think the "emergency off" is a bit redundant. I have plans to change the switch once 1 year warranty expires.

This unit is exactly as advertised, and at $239, this isn't going to compete with the $3000+ dual cyclonic separator models. It is as basic as they get. However, compared to the DeWalt debacle that starts at roughly twice the price of this unit, the 1HP extractor performs significantly better, and the attachments are much more affordable.

Overall, if you're just getting beyond your shop vacuum's ability to handle your dust creation, give this a go!

Quantitative Analysis:

Cost: 80% (Not going to be amazing, but good value for what it is).

Design: 60% (Without pointless grates, 80% but wheels, while allowing movement, drag everything on the ground. I do like the option to mount to a wall. The switch could easily be improved, and the bag could use a finer weave... I can't seem to find a replacement bag for it anywhere).

Performance: 80% (With only 500 cubic feet per minute, or "CFM", it's not going to reach the 1000-1300 of more powerful 2 and 3HP motors. Enough for many small workshops and relatively quiet).

Ease of use: 75% (The buttons can get in the way, and confuse new users. Assembling the unit is easy. However, the ease of use is greatly improved by removing pointless blockage-inducing grates on the air intake and outtake.

Warranty: 50% (12 months of warranty is the legal minimum in Australia, and I really don't believe that Carbatec has excelled in this regard.

Overall: 71%

Conclusion:

I think this is best suited for smaller workshops which may have one or two larger machines featuring a 4" dust port. There are definitely some weird design flaws "out of the box" but these are easily fixed. There are improvements to be made in the filter bag quality, and cable/bag dragging if wheeling the unit around. But that's not exactly surprising at this price point.

I hope this helps you in your workshop/dust extraction endeavors.

Harmo

Sold as a heavy duty bandsaw but on having used it for a number of projects over the last week, approx 8hrs of mixed uses these are my findings, I… Read more

can assure you in my opinion this is a light duty machine at best I couldn't even rate it as medium duty, It is a Chinese machine with all of the usual problems that cheap Chinese equipment suffer from including poor tolerances of machined parts causing inaccurate cuts, because of slackness and movement of bearing guides and general movement in the overall structure of the unit, the top adjusting knob to tension the blade by lifting the top pulley wheel is a plastic knob with no steel or brass insert and is fixed to the square steel shaft on the top of the thread, of course it stripped after a few uses, there is also a captive rivnut that the top pully angle adjusting thread and knob pass through that was lose and rotating in the housing making it impossible to track the blade, I had to remove the part and weld the rivnut in place, I am not sure what type or poor quality metal this is but I was unable to tig weld it with mild steel filler rod and had to use stainless which was just able to get some penetration. I dropped the plastic knob and it literally shattered as the top of the knob is only 2mm thick. I was trying to cut through a brand new piece of kiln dried dressed hardwood that was 50mm by 50mm I had a brand new blade and had adjusted the guide bearings and belt tension perfectly and the saw was maxed out in power to cut a 19mm slice. I would definately avoid this model for $1600 I know Carbatec sell a number of other bandsaws that I have not tried but this model is definately poor quality. Also worth noting is the fact that the blades for these units can only be purchased online from Ebay or sent from Carbatec from Brisbane, Melbourne or Sydney so if you are halfway through a project and need a part you will have to wait for it to be sent.