The paper presents an experimental investigation of the characteristics of cakes formed when a suspension of talc is filtered in the dead-end and crossflow modes. By determining the specific cake resistance and compressibility factors, it is found that, in general, cakes formed in the crossflow mode are more permeable and more compressible than cakes formed in the dead-end mode. In addition, the action of the crossflow velocity is shown to affect the particle size distribution of the particles captured, leading to cakes containing finer particles than in the suspension being filtered.