I'm considering one of the Exair units. What issues do you have with them? Do you have the one with the chip filter? You must not be using their heavy duty barrel if you're tossing the barrels when they get dirty. Do they work OK with normal barrels?
The venturi unit itself works great. We have three of them with no issues.
The drum setup isn't nearly as polished as a Freddy. The parts that come with the system are off-the-shelf and cobbled together. The extension pipe is 8" short of the bottom of the drum so we ended up making our own replacement. The hose tears easily so we bought a tougher, smooth-ID flex hose from McMaster.
We don't use their chip filter. We empty the sump without a filter, clean the sump manually, then pump the fluid back into the sump through a sock filter.
We don't toss drums frequently, but we'll occasionally relegate a drum to chip bin duty. The system works fine with normal closed lid drums, as the pressure is regulated to less than 6ish psi. For open lid drums with a removable top, safer to use a heavy duty unit. McMaster has those.
