Rokamat

I dont do drywall and hope I never have to. BUT if i did the Planex would be the first tool on the list.

Those Gecko sander look crazy strong by the way.

Alas, as a remodeler I frequently find myself working on projects that are too small for my drywall contractor, so I frequently find myself performing the work myself. I'm less concerned about raw speed, and more interested in working relatively "dust-free". My RO-150 has worked remarkably well to date, but it's a bear to use it on ceilings. 

Thanks to Jonathan for the link to the Flex product, I'll check it out as well! :-)

I can relate to being a small time drywaller by default. I have a guy that is willing to take the small jobs "to keep me happy" but I still feel bad about it knowing they are more of a nuisance. I also find that most drywall guys don't use any dust collection which makes me look bad. Also I can actually make a little bit on a few patches because I can coat it then do other tasks during dry time instead of leaving & coming back etc.  I use my mirka 5" with the abranet paper and it gets all the dust & is lighter than even the RO90.  A wet spounge takes a little longer but is another decent method for sanding drywall mud with no dust in really small areas like patches. Sounds like you might be doing entire rooms though. 

I am a big fan of the Mirka Ceros. They sell it in a 6" version for the same price as the 5".

I mentioned above but might not have been completely clear since there are sanding spounges too... another decent method is using a regular yellow sponge soaked in water (used fairly wet). It will smooth (sand) the regular drywall mud smooth with absolutely no dust. I really only use that method for small patches, like 5" squares, where you are running wiring. If the patch is very big then it's worth it to bring in the vac & sander because it is so much faster.

Tom- My festool vacs seem to do alright with the drywall dust in the limited quantities that I sand. Is there a big improvement with your new metabo vac?

Great question!! For starters, there are three bags options available to me: Fleece, paper, and open topped plastic. Based on reading the Starmix manual and my e-mail correspondence with the Rokamat representative, I've gathered the following: Fleece filters are well suited to general cleaning, including wet clean up. Starmix recommends the Paper bags for "extremely fine dust, such as flour", while it sounds like the open topped plastic bags are well suited to drywall and concrete extraction. 

My experience with the Festool vacs is similar to yours, in that they are generally well suited to limited drywall pick up. I've been using the Festool CT-26 Fleece bags in my Metabo vac and they seem to work great. Something interesting though is I definitely notice a film on the inside surfaces of the vacuum, pointing to the amount of fine dust that gets through the fleece bag. My experience is that, after a certain threshold of sanding drywall or grinding/cutting concrete/plaster/stucco is that the performance of the fleece bags drops off significantly, even though the bag is only ~1/4 full. My theory is that the dust is actually saturating the pores of the bag, and no amount of "self cleaning" can remedy the situation. I believe this is why most vacs designed for this fine dust simply skip the filter bag, and rely on mechanical agitation of the primary filter to maintain suction. 

Something interesting I've noticed with the self-cleaning vacs is that they can shed cementitious dust reasonably well, they struggle to release very light, "airy" particles like insulation. 

I've only tried one paper bag, it seemed to work well other than blowing a hole in the back. Not sure what caused it, but suspect the bottom of the vac what still somewhat wet from a previous project, and that the moisture compromised the strength of the paper. 

Long term, my plan is to use fleece bags for general clean up and extraction duties, and switch over to the open top plastic bags when I plan on performing prolonged extraction of drywall/concrete/plaster/stucco dust. 

I'll post up a separate thread on my experience with the ASR 35 in a month or two, after I've had a little more time to fully familiarize myself with it.

Hand applied plasters are certainly my favorite. Its amazing how much more alive and inviting a space becomes when skilled hand work is done. Modern Drywall with sprayed textures leave a lot to be desired. I'm so tired of it that my new house won't have any drywall.