Torquata DP-100 Dust Picker — and the Amazon Alternative

Torquata is Timbecon’s house brand and sells direct in Australia only. The DP-100 is a positionable pickup hood — the kind of thing you park beside a lathe or a sanding station to catch dust that no built-in port covers.

The idea behind it is worth more than the product, because it is the thing most home shops get wrong.

Source capture beats everything

Dust that is captured at the cut never becomes airborne. Dust that escapes has to be filtered out of the whole room, which means an air cleaner running for hours after you have left — and the fine fraction stays suspended long enough that you breathe it whether the cleaner is on or not.

So the priority order is: capture at the tool, then capture near the tool with a hood, then filter the room, then wear a mask. Most people buy them in the reverse order.

What a hood needs to work

Proximity. Airflow falls off with the square of distance. A hood 100 mm from the cut catches a lot; the same hood 300 mm away catches almost nothing. This is why flexible hoods disappoint — they get nudged and nobody moves them back.

Position relative to the throw. Dust leaves a lathe or a sander in a direction. Put the hood where the dust is going, not where it looks tidy.

Enough air. A vacuum-class extractor works with a small hood close in. A large hood needs a chip collector’s volume.

The Amazon route

The Festool CT 15 E HEPA, linked below, is a compact extractor with whole-unit HEPA and a tool-triggered outlet, and it will pull a small hood effectively. A shop-made hood from plywood and a length of hose, magnetically mounted, costs almost nothing and outperforms most bought ones because you can make it fit the machine exactly.