I used a Ridgid shop vac as my dust collection for a long time and wish I had moved to a real dust collector sooner. There were three issues with the shop vac. First, it just didn’t move enough air to capture much of the dust from my table saw and some other tools. Second, it just couldn’t keep up with the shavings from my jointer planer. These two problems meant that there was a lot of mess that I had to clean up later making my post-working clean up take about an hour. The third problem was that the filters just clogged up too fast (particularly while sanding).
You can find lots of posts here from guys who have gotten the Harbor Freight 2HP dust collector for not much more than you’ll pay for a good shop vac (and less than a Fein). You might want to consider that.
-- Greg, Severn MD
