I had similar issues with suction loss on the CT Cyclone and found this thread very helpful. I wound up running some of my own tests, and thought I'd post some of the results here for anyone else trying to navigate the same/similar issue in years to come.
My setup was a CT 26 with CT Cyclone and Boom arm. I ran the 27 mm hose that came with the Cyclone to the CT 26. I ran the 50 mm hose that came with the boom arm from the Cyclone to the 27 mm hose.
The issues I had included:
a) suction loss over the system that left small debris airborne, where it had been collected prior to Cyclone/Boom Arm install,
b) heavier particles settling in the 50 mm hose and never making it to the Cyclone
c) potential suction loss cause by the dust liner in the cyclone
d) I wanted to upgrade to a 36 mm hose and was worried this would exacerbate the pressure loss across the system. (I was thinking the CT 26 would hold suction force constant, and increasing hose diameter would decrease pressure and similarly air velocity. Spoiler Alert: I clearly only remember enough of my physics class to be dangerous, because that's not how it went down!)
I grabbed a $25 anemometer off Amazon; a different one than previously linked in this thread, but I don't think the model really matters. I used the same instrument for all measurements, so I'll just post relative values.
Plugging the 26 mm hose directly into the CT 26 mm yielded an air speed of 27.7 m/s. The cyclone, 27 mm hose with 90-degree bend, dust liner bag, and 50 mm hose with boom arm extension dropped this all the way down to 9.75 m/s, or a 65% drop in air speed. Again, I think the relative drop is all that matters here, and we can simply say it's significant.
Removing the 50 mm hose from this set up increased air speed by about 10%. Removing the dust liner from the cyclone increased the air speed by another 20%. I tried using the 50 mm hose between the CT 26 and Cyclone, removing the 27 mm hose with 90-degree bend that comes with the Cyclone (still no liner in the cylcone). This set up actually dropped air speed by about 10%. I also applied two wraps of plumbers tape on cyclone parts, as previously mentioned in this thread, and got roughly the same 10-15% increase in air speed noted by the OP.
I was able to procure a 36 mm hose for the purpose of this test, and duplicated all of these setups, but with the D36x3.5 hose instead of the D27x3.5m hose. The 36 mm hose didn't seem as susceptible to loss over the different configurations. The difference between the initial configuration and going direct to the CT26 with the D36 was still a 40% drop. The other configurations only ever showed about a 5% improvement, which given that I wasn't being too scientific here, should be considered negligible. In general though, it's worth noting the 36 mm hose direct to the CT 26 was roughly 10% improvement over the 27 mm hose plugged directly into the CT 26, and produced higher air speed than the 27 mm hose in every like-for-like configuration.
My recommendations, for anyone else considering these different set up options:
a) If you're worried about large chips and how often you swap CT bags, then you can likely accept the pressure dorp and the Cyclone is a great option. But if you're in a situation where small debris collection is just as, if not more, important, you may want to consider skipping the Cyclone. The long-life bag may be a better investment to consider.
b) If you do go with the Cyclone, adding some plumbers tape to the internals is a must. It's a five minute fix that really does have a notable impact on performance
c) The Cyclone seems to operate slightly better without the dust liner installed. Though, it's probably a wash after the plumbers tape fix, particularly if you're mostly concerned about large chips.
d) The 50 mm hose from the boom arm offers additional reach, but otherwise only seems to impede system performance
e) The 36 mm hose doesn't sacrifice air speed or pressure. In fact, it only seems to upgrade performance regardless cyclone or other setup factors. (I'm sure there are other threads that dive deeper into this particular subject.)
Hope someone finds this useful down the line!
