The Amps-Drawn by the Motor is directly proportional to the VOLUME of Air being moved. When the Hose is blocked, the Impeller is running in a VACUUM, reducing the Load on the Motor. No "Special" Electronic-Controls are needed or wanted. Vacuum-Cleaners have worked this way since they were invented.
Thanks for the heads up and clarification. That’s the awesome part of the internet, the correct information is available and I can learn things I didn’t realize 😃. That makes total sense, there is less load because there is no air for it to move, thus the blades have less load.
It is basically a Pump, that pumps air rather than water, and all the Pump Laws about power and flow apply. I use HEPA Bags that help keep the filter clean, and it collects all the debris in the disposable bag before it gets to your filter, so your filter last longer. Since it’s a HEPA filter bag, it helps prevent the really fine particulate from becoming air borne, so that’s much better health-wise where welding/grinding particles are concerned. It wears the mask for you, which is way more comfortable and healthy! AC power calculations are complex, but if one wants to get a basic idea of how many watts are being consumed, it can be easily done with an AC Amp Meter and a Voltage reading. Note that in order to get a reasonably accurate estimate, all readings must be taken while the circuit is under Load. Measure your current draw under stable load, whether it’s a vacuum, motor or welder. Note the Average running current, and do the same for the Voltage under load. In a standard 120v outlet, just measure the other socket on the same outlet. Apparent Power is Volts x Amps, and referred to as VA in Reality this is the long side of the Power Triangle, but for our purposes, you can just call it watts. Example: No load voltage is 122Vac Under load voltage is 116Vac And amps is 13A Take 116V x 13A= 1508 Watts (rough estimate - yes this calc ignores Power Factor and a few other things that go into the Power Triangle calculations). It’s just a simple estimate. If you used 122V in your calc, your calculation would erroneously yield 1586 Watts.
@@FrancisoDoncona A set of 4 high-quality Casters will cost more than the entire Vacuum-Cleaner-Kit. I guess You couldn't find anything else negative to say, so that must mean it's a pretty good deal all around.
Greg, I highly recomment to look for an end brush or a replacement for tube that touches the floor and do this sooner rather than later. This shop vac may be powerful enough to pull the hose towards a surface so that you won't be able to maintain a small distance between that surface and the hose end. The problem is, a hard abrasive surface like concrete floor will gradually grind off plastic from the end of hose tube and if there are any extensions to the tube it whould be hard or impossible to fit them on after some time. Maybe it's possible to put some rubber or silicone ring on the tube end to protect it from scratching surfaces with plastic. I know it's a glass reinforced plastic and it lasts long, but I've ran into a problem like this in few years of using even a smaller shop vac.
I still use my 16 gallon Craftsman my dad bought me in 1993. 30 yrs! I have changed out hoses once due to cracking, but it still works great. Nowhere as quiet as your though. Happy New Year!
I’ve got a 16 gal Craftsman shop vac. A squat grey model with black top. I bought that almost 40 years ago when we bought the house. Loud as all hell. I use it with my milling machine. It gets completely filled with metal, plastic and wood. It still works very well. Otherwise I have a small and a larger Fein. A lot more expensive, but they are very quiet and really, it’s worth it for that. Though the annoying part is that they use smaller diameter (but long!) hoses. I also recently bought a 1.1 gallon battery powered DeWalt. Pretty good, but bulky.
I owned a Fein vac years ago, it was a pretty solid unit. If I recall it used a rectangle car air filter. It has a little pull tab you could pull to knock the dust off the filter (when it wasn’t running). Not sure what happened it it lol. Definitely wish I would have went with a metal barrel one this time, the sharp metal chips are sticking to the inside of the plastic drum pretty good lol.
11:46 In HVAC class I learned this. Different designs of fans will behave differently. We did experiments. Some styles the amperage would increase and others would decrease to near nothing. With blocking either the intake or the exit. Also very true about the HP rating. Gave me a good laugh lol.
Good morning Greg. Happy New Year. I bought basically the same Craftsman shop vac as yours. I used it a lot when we were building our cabin here in the mountains. It worked great but about 10 minutes after the 3 year limited warrenty was up the motor burnt up. But up until that point it worked great. I personally didn't buy another Craftsman. God bless and have a wonderful day. 👍👍🙂
Another great episode of shit I shouldn't buy.😅 I'd say leave it in one piece until it breaks. I check reviews and Harbor Freight equivalent or closest ON SALE. I have walked several broken tools back into the HF store and left with new in the last year, hard to beat. Love your stuff Greg, glad you're still getting better.
I was going to buy a harbor freight but the craftsman was actually cheaper at the moment I bought one. So far it’s been decent. On the next episode of shit I shouldn’t buy, is a big welder I don’t need, video out next week lol.
My husky vac has the same feet/mount system as your craftsman. They seem good as long as you screw them on. I didn't and I'm still looking for one that slid off.
I think Mastercrap up here in Canada has the dib on the crap name lol. For those who don't know they are house brand of Canadian tire, a hardware/department store. It wasn't bad before and used to be lifetime warranty on majority of the stuff, but just getting worse and worse both quality and service wise. Not long ago I bought a stack of depressed center cutoff discs and later found out the depression is off center and disc would get crushed by grinder's lock washer. Brought it back to the store, manager basically said no receipt, tough luck, piss off and literally walked away. Can't think of any other store that would treat a dangerous defect in their house brand product this way.
Yeah that’s crazy. I have heard a lot about that store, but I have never been in one. Discs like that are definitely not worth screwing around with, I am surprised they didn’t take them back. Wonder how many of them are defective.
@@peteryeung111 Both used to have lifetime warranty, but maximum was better quality. Warranty used to be over the counter exchange, nothing else required, or even asked. Who knows what BS they are gonna pull now.
@@greentjmtl I don’t go there anymore when I realized they over priced everything, then mark it down to 70% off 🤣 now that’s bs. When it comes to exchange/refund…princess auto beats them.
I know its counter intuitive, but almost every fluid transfer pump will drop current when you plug it up....Seriously try it. I was surprised when I first discovered this but it makes sense. It isn't doing any work. Most pumps are of the impeller type design where the fluid can bypass around the impeller. The reason the motors all get hot is because they almost all use the flow as cooling and that's not there anymore. This doesn't apply to compressor style pumps because they are designed to draw in fresh and compress The only work being done is spinning the fluid in a circle. I know some people will say its because its a vacuum, but that's not exactly right. Vacuums are just lower pressure than ambient and its not a very significant vacuum, so there's still almost the same particles in there getting spun around, just a little less of them....so it still comes back to the pump is doing less work You can try it with box fans, for a clearer example of this. No one is going to say a box fan will generate a vacuum even though it will generate a slightly lower pressure zone. I'm sure there's some industrial gear out there where this isn't true but that this is because the set up dictates that the pump ends up doing more work when its plugged up (like an air compressor). Edit for added link. You can search the terms "why does current drop when a pump is blocked" if you don't believe me. You can also search for "affinity laws" if you want to see the math behind it.
Hey Greg. I love the videos, especially the product comparison ones. I'd really love to see a comparison between some fixed shade and auto darkening welding lenses. I don't think there's a single video out there comparing the clarity & color of lenses.
Excellent suggestion. Truth be told, I actually shot a video exactly like you described. However I can’t seem to get the differences in arc clarity to come out clearly on video. I tried my iPhone, my 1500$ mirror less camera, I tried different lenses on the camera, literally everything. The actual clarity of both a 300$ hood and a 45$ harbor freight on footage look very similar. Yet in person that’s clearly not the reality lol. I am going to try to get a more accurate representation of the two soon and put the video out.
Your instructional welding videos are really great and have helped me understand the welding processes. Could you make some videos on oxy ac welding. I've been trying to get proficient at it but, I'm struggling. Keep up the great videos
I do have a couple oxy fuel torches and a bunch of tanks. I will have to break them out for a video soon. Since it will be getting pretty cold soon it will help keep my hands warm lol. I will be honest, I can oxy fuel weld 1/16th to 3/16th steel decently, but I am not a pro. To me it functions just like a very slow tig process. Since I am good with tig, I can oxyfuel weld, but it’s definitely not the best at it. I will definitely tackle it though 😀.
I got about 10 years out of mine, but replaced it with a shop vac Brand one because I can't bring myself to buy another craftsman product. Like you said their quality is in the gutter anymore.
My craftsman I bought in 2020 had only about 4-5 hours of run time and only filled half a bag. Used it to clean a basement with dust webs on ceiling and detail my car. It died and smoked and there were many similar complaints on that specific model. The best part is Shop-Vac (the brand) actually produced this model for Craftsman. Essentially I paid a premium at the time for the Craftsman brand when the brand directly next to it at Lowes actually made the product. With age and bs I have wised up, still just a shame. The way I look at it if any Craftsman product has the Sears logo on it from when they partnered with Sears it is a great tool if not it's garbage.
Best thing I ever got for my shop vac was these disposable wrap around bags that you stuff inside the drum. It holds a decent amount of crud and saves me from replacing or cleaning the internal filter. Of course it didn't fit properly but with enough force and creative cutting --you can make anything work. Lol The shop vac still sucks good and that's what I was most concerned about... YMMV P.S. Don't ask me what vac I got 'cause I don't know unless I go and look and I don't feel like getting off my ass to look 🙂. I remember it being on sale and was a wet or dry unit which is what I needed at the time.
I have seen those before. I actually used to have a 33 gallon drum with a dust separator on the top, that I hooked a shop vac to. Basically a form of a cyclone separator. It worked really well but was limited on the size of debris it would handle. It kept a ton of dust off the filter though. I can’t stand cleaning plugged up filters lol.
Normally that’s what I would do, the problem I have been running into is I never get rid of the dust in my tin shed, just blow it around. I have so much crap that it’s tough to want to move everything around to clean. If I can vacuum it up right where it’s at it won’t find its way in the nooks/crannies of everything lol.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg My son does a lot of woodworking in ours and the dust is everywhere. I keep the welders covered and just hope for the best. No insulation either. Guessing it's warmer here though. Maybe it'll be a mild winter.
Greg, I have a two year old Crapsman vac and you will find that the hose is a lot junkier than they used to be. I guarantee you will kink it pretty easily.
I am noticing that for sure. Luckily I found a old rigid shop vac hose in a bin that must be 2x as thick. I will use that as soon as that included hose collapses (probably won’t be long lol.
You should see what those caster wheels do... when you back over it with a Bobcat 😳🤬. Boy I know what you mean about the quality of the old tools, I still use my old craftsman 4" angle grinder I bought in the early 80's, it's just a backup now that I got a Porter Cable 7.5amp But the build quality on the PC sucks compared to the "Craftsman professional" line they used to sell back then, I figure the PC will last a couple of year's tops. I blame a lot of the sub standard tools we get to buy because of the out sourcing to china. and I have noticed it's getting much worse lately.
Definitely something I didn’t factor in. It may be easier for the motor to turn the air within the pump when there is no air movement than when there is. That could easily explain why the draw dropped. I am used to electric motors with conventional loads.
Haha. I could see them using that defense in court. Either that or they would bring in a miniature horse and claim that was the standard they used to determine horse power.
Best shop vac I've ever had was a Stihl brand. That thing is powerful and quiet. Really nice. I lucked out and bought it on clearance from a place that lost their Stihl franchise. I only paid a third of the price. I regret not buying every one they had left. There's absolutely no way I would pay full price for another one. It might be good but not for that much money.
I didn’t even know they made shop vacs, I had to look into it and they certainly do lol. Every tool I have used by them has been excellent, so it makes sense that a shop vac would be good too.
The Amps-Drawn by the Motor is directly proportional to the VOLUME of Air being moved.
When the Hose is blocked, the Impeller is running in a VACUUM, reducing the Load on the Motor.
No "Special" Electronic-Controls are needed or wanted.
Vacuum-Cleaners have worked this way since they were invented.
Thanks for the heads up and clarification. That’s the awesome part of the internet, the correct information is available and I can learn things I didn’t realize 😃. That makes total sense, there is less load because there is no air for it to move, thus the blades have less load.
It is basically a Pump, that pumps air rather than water, and all the Pump Laws about power and flow apply.
I use HEPA Bags that help keep the filter clean, and it collects all the debris in the disposable bag before it gets to your filter, so your filter last longer.
Since it’s a HEPA filter bag, it helps prevent the really fine particulate from becoming air borne, so that’s much better health-wise where welding/grinding particles are concerned. It wears the mask for you, which is way more comfortable and healthy!
AC power calculations are complex, but if one wants to get a basic idea of how many watts are being consumed, it can be easily done with an AC Amp Meter and a Voltage reading.
Note that in order to get a reasonably accurate estimate, all readings must be taken while the circuit is under Load.
Measure your current draw under stable load, whether it’s a vacuum, motor or welder. Note the Average running current, and do the same for the Voltage under load. In a standard 120v outlet, just measure the other socket on the same outlet.
Apparent Power is Volts x Amps, and referred to as VA in Reality this is the long side of the Power Triangle, but for our purposes, you can just call it watts.
Example:
No load voltage is 122Vac
Under load voltage is 116Vac
And amps is 13A
Take 116V x 13A= 1508 Watts (rough estimate - yes this calc ignores Power Factor and a few other things that go into the Power Triangle calculations). It’s just a simple estimate.
If you used 122V in your calc, your calculation would erroneously yield 1586 Watts.
The wheels will drag almost immediately then tip over.
@@FrancisoDoncona
A set of 4 high-quality Casters will cost more than the entire Vacuum-Cleaner-Kit.
I guess You couldn't find anything else negative to say,
so that must mean it's a pretty good deal all around.
Greg, I highly recomment to look for an end brush or a replacement for tube that touches the floor and do this sooner rather than later. This shop vac may be powerful enough to pull the hose towards a surface so that you won't be able to maintain a small distance between that surface and the hose end. The problem is, a hard abrasive surface like concrete floor will gradually grind off plastic from the end of hose tube and if there are any extensions to the tube it whould be hard or impossible to fit them on after some time. Maybe it's possible to put some rubber or silicone ring on the tube end to protect it from scratching surfaces with plastic. I know it's a glass reinforced plastic and it lasts long, but I've ran into a problem like this in few years of using even a smaller shop vac.
I still use my 16 gallon Craftsman my dad bought me in 1993. 30 yrs! I have changed out hoses once due to cracking, but it still works great. Nowhere as quiet as your though. Happy New Year!
Happy new year to you too. 30 years is a long run, the only thing I have that old is typically old transformer welders 😀
I remember a friend back in the early 70 s got a craftsman with two motors on it to increase suction
I’ve got a 16 gal Craftsman shop vac. A squat grey model with black top. I bought that almost 40 years ago when we bought the house. Loud as all hell. I use it with my milling machine. It gets completely filled with metal, plastic and wood. It still works very well. Otherwise I have a small and a larger Fein. A lot more expensive, but they are very quiet and really, it’s worth it for that. Though the annoying part is that they use smaller diameter (but long!) hoses. I also recently bought a 1.1 gallon battery powered DeWalt. Pretty good, but bulky.
I owned a Fein vac years ago, it was a pretty solid unit. If I recall it used a rectangle car air filter. It has a little pull tab you could pull to knock the dust off the filter (when it wasn’t running). Not sure what happened it it lol. Definitely wish I would have went with a metal barrel one this time, the sharp metal chips are sticking to the inside of the plastic drum pretty good lol.
11:46 In HVAC class I learned this. Different designs of fans will behave differently. We did experiments. Some styles the amperage would increase and others would decrease to near nothing. With blocking either the intake or the exit.
Also very true about the HP rating. Gave me a good laugh lol.
Those Amazon horse powers are some pretty weak if it takes 6.5 of them to do what 1-2 should be able to do lol.
Good morning Greg. Happy New Year. I bought basically the same Craftsman shop vac as yours. I used it a lot when we were building our cabin here in the mountains. It worked great but about 10 minutes after the 3 year limited warrenty was up the motor burnt up. But up until that point it worked great. I personally didn't buy another Craftsman. God bless and have a wonderful day. 👍👍🙂
Cabin in the mountains is where I hope to be in a few years 😀. Glad it made it that long, sounds about right lol.
Another great episode of shit I shouldn't buy.😅 I'd say leave it in one piece until it breaks. I check reviews and Harbor Freight equivalent or closest ON SALE. I have walked several broken tools back into the HF store and left with new in the last year, hard to beat. Love your stuff Greg, glad you're still getting better.
I was going to buy a harbor freight but the craftsman was actually cheaper at the moment I bought one. So far it’s been decent. On the next episode of shit I shouldn’t buy, is a big welder I don’t need, video out next week lol.
My husky vac has the same feet/mount system as your craftsman. They seem good as long as you screw them on. I didn't and I'm still looking for one that slid off.
I think Mastercrap up here in Canada has the dib on the crap name lol.
For those who don't know they are house brand of Canadian tire, a hardware/department store. It wasn't bad before and used to be lifetime warranty on majority of the stuff, but just getting worse and worse both quality and service wise. Not long ago I bought a stack of depressed center cutoff discs and later found out the depression is off center and disc would get crushed by grinder's lock washer. Brought it back to the store, manager basically said no receipt, tough luck, piss off and literally walked away. Can't think of any other store that would treat a dangerous defect in their house brand product this way.
Yeah that’s crazy. I have heard a lot about that store, but I have never been in one. Discs like that are definitely not worth screwing around with, I am surprised they didn’t take them back. Wonder how many of them are defective.
I think only the mastercraft MAXIMUM lines are lifetime warranty…but yeah, their branded tools are quite crappy.
@@peteryeung111 Both used to have lifetime warranty, but maximum was better quality. Warranty used to be over the counter exchange, nothing else required, or even asked. Who knows what BS they are gonna pull now.
@@greentjmtl
I don’t go there anymore when I realized they over priced everything, then mark it down to 70% off 🤣 now that’s bs.
When it comes to exchange/refund…princess auto beats them.
I know its counter intuitive, but almost every fluid transfer pump will drop current when you plug it up....Seriously try it. I was surprised when I first discovered this but it makes sense. It isn't doing any work. Most pumps are of the impeller type design where the fluid can bypass around the impeller. The reason the motors all get hot is because they almost all use the flow as cooling and that's not there anymore. This doesn't apply to compressor style pumps because they are designed to draw in fresh and compress
The only work being done is spinning the fluid in a circle. I know some people will say its because its a vacuum, but that's not exactly right. Vacuums are just lower pressure than ambient and its not a very significant vacuum, so there's still almost the same particles in there getting spun around, just a little less of them....so it still comes back to the pump is doing less work
You can try it with box fans, for a clearer example of this. No one is going to say a box fan will generate a vacuum even though it will generate a slightly lower pressure zone. I'm sure there's some industrial gear out there where this isn't true but that this is because the set up dictates that the pump ends up doing more work when its plugged up (like an air compressor).
Edit for added link. You can search the terms "why does current drop when a pump is blocked" if you don't believe me. You can also search for "affinity laws" if you want to see the math behind it.
That makes total sense as to why the current would drop 😀
Hey Greg. I love the videos, especially the product comparison ones.
I'd really love to see a comparison between some fixed shade and auto darkening welding lenses. I don't think there's a single video out there comparing the clarity & color of lenses.
Excellent suggestion. Truth be told, I actually shot a video exactly like you described. However I can’t seem to get the differences in arc clarity to come out clearly on video. I tried my iPhone, my 1500$ mirror less camera, I tried different lenses on the camera, literally everything. The actual clarity of both a 300$ hood and a 45$ harbor freight on footage look very similar. Yet in person that’s clearly not the reality lol. I am going to try to get a more accurate representation of the two soon and put the video out.
Your instructional welding videos are really great and have helped me understand the welding processes. Could you make some videos on oxy ac welding. I've been trying to get proficient at it but, I'm struggling. Keep up the great videos
I do have a couple oxy fuel torches and a bunch of tanks. I will have to break them out for a video soon. Since it will be getting pretty cold soon it will help keep my hands warm lol.
I will be honest, I can oxy fuel weld 1/16th to 3/16th steel decently, but I am not a pro. To me it functions just like a very slow tig process. Since I am good with tig, I can oxyfuel weld, but it’s definitely not the best at it. I will definitely tackle it though 😀.
I got about 10 years out of mine, but replaced it with a shop vac Brand one because I can't bring myself to buy another craftsman product. Like you said their quality is in the gutter anymore.
My craftsman I bought in 2020 had only about 4-5 hours of run time and only filled half a bag. Used it to clean a basement with dust webs on ceiling and detail my car. It died and smoked and there were many similar complaints on that specific model. The best part is Shop-Vac (the brand) actually produced this model for Craftsman. Essentially I paid a premium at the time for the Craftsman brand when the brand directly next to it at Lowes actually made the product. With age and bs I have wised up, still just a shame. The way I look at it if any Craftsman product has the Sears logo on it from when they partnered with Sears it is a great tool if not it's garbage.
Best thing I ever got for my shop vac was these disposable wrap around bags that you stuff inside the drum. It holds a decent amount of crud and saves me from replacing or cleaning the internal filter. Of course it didn't fit properly but with enough force and creative cutting --you can make anything work. Lol The shop vac still sucks good and that's what I was most concerned about... YMMV
P.S. Don't ask me what vac I got 'cause I don't know unless I go and look and I don't feel like getting off my ass to look 🙂. I remember it being on sale and was a wet or dry unit which is what I needed at the time.
I have seen those before. I actually used to have a 33 gallon drum with a dust separator on the top, that I hooked a shop vac to. Basically a form of a cyclone separator. It worked really well but was limited on the size of debris it would handle. It kept a ton of dust off the filter though. I can’t stand cleaning plugged up filters lol.
I just sweep up the big stuff and use the battery leaf blower to get rid of the rest. Too much hassle to vacuum.
Normally that’s what I would do, the problem I have been running into is I never get rid of the dust in my tin shed, just blow it around. I have so much crap that it’s tough to want to move everything around to clean. If I can vacuum it up right where it’s at it won’t find its way in the nooks/crannies of everything lol.
@@makingmistakeswithgreg My son does a lot of woodworking in ours and the dust is everywhere. I keep the welders covered and just hope for the best.
No insulation either. Guessing it's warmer here though. Maybe it'll be a mild winter.
Greg, I have a two year old Crapsman vac and you will find that the hose is a lot junkier than they used to be. I guarantee you will kink it pretty easily.
I am noticing that for sure. Luckily I found a old rigid shop vac hose in a bin that must be 2x as thick. I will use that as soon as that included hose collapses (probably won’t be long lol.
You should see what those caster wheels do... when you back over it with a Bobcat 😳🤬.
Boy I know what you mean about the quality of the old tools, I still use my old craftsman 4" angle grinder I bought in the early 80's, it's just a backup now that I got a Porter Cable 7.5amp But the build quality on the PC sucks compared to the "Craftsman professional" line they used to sell back then, I figure the PC will last a couple of year's tops. I blame a lot of the sub standard tools we get to buy because of the out sourcing to china. and I have noticed it's getting much worse lately.
All of my shop vacs, the bigger ones and the small ones are all rigid ones. Havent had a craftsman.
I always used the rigid and been pretty happy minus the wheels on a few of them broke easily. I think that is shop vacs in general lol.
Volumetric flow is proprtional to power drawn in centrifugal pumps. I'd guess this is the same. Less flow, less amps and vise versa.
Definitely something I didn’t factor in. It may be easier for the motor to turn the air within the pump when there is no air movement than when there is. That could easily explain why the draw dropped. I am used to electric motors with conventional loads.
Didn't the shop vac manufacturers get class action sued back in the 90s for this exact type of marketing for motor specs?
You’re probably right, but they are right back at it lol. Part of me wants to make a “real” 6.5 hp shop vac to see what it will do 😅
Wrong units ! It's a suck/blow machine, that means the HP stands for Huff and Puff, not HorsePower.
Haha. I could see them using that defense in court. Either that or they would bring in a miniature horse and claim that was the standard they used to determine horse power.
Best shop vac I've ever had was a Stihl brand. That thing is powerful and quiet. Really nice. I lucked out and bought it on clearance from a place that lost their Stihl franchise. I only paid a third of the price. I regret not buying every one they had left. There's absolutely no way I would pay full price for another one. It might be good but not for that much money.
I didn’t even know they made shop vacs, I had to look into it and they certainly do lol. Every tool I have used by them has been excellent, so it makes sense that a shop vac would be good too.
Man, I don't know. Looks like it kinda sucks.
The hand held one it came with definitely doesn’t suck lol 😅.