Air filtration again...

J. Rosa

J. Rosa

Joined
Mar 19, 2007
Messages
2,433
I need something to filter the floating dust particles and cycle out cleaner air, not a dust collection system but something for the stuff that stays airborne for quite a while. I looked into this http://www.grizzly.com/products/Larg...r-Filter/G0573
but when I emailed about it the rep said they don't recommend any of their filtration systems for metal dust. This has me scratching my head because I know some guys use the ceiling mounted ones. Any leads on something decent around $200-$600 that may take easy to replace and find filters? Any reason why I shouldn't use the one listed? The other thing I am thinking is to use box fans with some type of filter. I'm in a 2 car garage but on a busy main street. The side door is right next to the neighbors driveway though seprated by a large brick wall. They have a lot of young kids playing daily so I don't want to be using high powered fans to blow the dust their way....
 
How much dust do you think you produce? Are you manufacturing or are you just trying to keep from pissing off the neighbors?
 
I don't really produce a lot but even after vacuming up the larger particles everything gets a nice film of dust on it after the smaller particles settle. I am spending more and more time in there grinding recently though. I don't want to piss the neighbors off but I really don't want to kill my lungs since I am spending more and more time in there and noticing more and more fine dust settling.
 
I only ask, because the cost of efficiently filtering against very heavy dust is not very cost effective.

But I will say the trick to getting particulate laden air out, is velocity. The air in your shop or work space needs to have velocity to it, and that should be pretty consistent, and that generally requires duct work to be installed on powered ventilation. so even if you were to buy one of the a fore mentioned filtered fan units, one would likely need duct work as well. That's shooting form the hip not having seen your space.
 
Last edited:
Murdok72605 said:
Should I just use a box fan and a furnace filter?
Click to expand...

I wouldn't say should, I might say you could, it would have to be local to the dust source to be any kind of effective. Have a sheet metal transition made, that holds your filter (as big as you can supply from home depot or other source) and then ask someone like THIS to build it to fit the fan, take it home and screw it into the (preferably) metal housig of your box fan, that way when you load up your filter with dust, it doesn't bypass the filter as it would without at least the transition to the fan from the filter, since i doubt you will cost effectively find a filter that covers the fan.
 
I bought a Grizzly unit that hangs from the ceiling. It works well with a 5 micron outer filter, and a 1 micron inner filter. I mounted it in the corner as the instructions stated, a not far from my grinding station. Some sparks got sucked into the unit and both filters burned up a little. I need to replace both of them. I have since relocated my grinder, so this should not happen again.

The outer filter is a real oddball size, and it seems available only from Grizzly. If I were to do it again, I would buy a Jet brand unit. I have looked at them in stores, and are very similar to my unit, and priced about the same. But, they take filters that can be obtained easily.

Milt
 
The best way to do this, is with an device called an air washer. Properly ducted particulate lade air at the proper velocity is blown into a counter stream of water of water spray. the water impacts all particals and knocks them down out of the air stream for discharge to the atmosphere.
 
Some amount of metal dust can be caught in a water trap below the grinder. A piece of sheet metal mounted under the belt and close to the belt with magnets on the back of it will catch some of the metal dust light enough for the belt to carry around and throw off into the air. The sheet metal comes out, mangnets pulled and collected dust brushed off. The shop air filters mentioned and linked clean shop air very well if they are sized properly to the volume of the shop.

Here's another idea that works with sparks. Could put water in the bottom but would likely be just fine without. http://www.cgallery.com/jpthien/cy.htm

Mike
 
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