Are the"154" alloys the best vanadium-free stainless?

I think you are overthinking this.
There is far more danger in breathing the sharp particles in the steel dust in general than the minute percentage of vanadium carbide you will get in the dust. The vanadium in the steel is bound to carbon, and isn't metallic vanadium.

Look at it this way,too. If you breath in 100 milligrams of dust ( that is a lot of dust) in a grinding session on 3V steel, and the steel has 3% vanadium, that means you breathed in 3mg of vanadium carbide.
The exposure limits from OSHA are .5mg per m(3)...which is 500 micrograms. You breath in about 11 cubic meters of air a day, so in an 8 hour workday the exposure is about milligrams of inhaled vanadium. That is 6 times the amount probably inhaled in a grinding session.


If you wear your P100 respirator, you should get no exposure anyway amyway.

Factoid - the average person breaths in about .5 to .75 grams of dust every day in normal air.....45-50 pounds durring your lifetime.
 
You're kidding yourself. You need a good respirator no matter what kind of steel you're grinding.
 
james terrio said:
You're kidding yourself. You need a good respirator no matter what kind of steel you're grinding.
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What Terrio said only more so: Even without the steel dust, the abrasives are terrible for you. Get a respirator, it's not that big a deal and you'll never regret it once you just choke up and do it!
Andy
 
Fully agreed with everyone above - try grinding without one for an hoour, then blow your nose... Most of the black stuff coming out isn't just steel, but the actual abrasive dust. Either way, a P100 respirator solves everything. No compromise there. The vanadium in the steel will not be an issue then (or ever, really).
 
If the dust scares you, you can always just use a mask. A Russian surplus gas mask may work, and it only costs about $15, but it will scare your family/ neighbors and hurts like hell to put on if you have long hair.
 
It's not the dust while grinding I'm worried about, its the dust that gets everywhere because my current dust collector stinks. My shop area is used for other purposes when I'm not using it, and people(including children) are through it without respirators often enough for me to want to be careful.
 
Gomi, then nothing changes. If you cannot control the abrasive and metallic dust you are still putting yourself and others at risk - lack of certain alloying components really doesn't change anything. Silicosis and other lung issues are very real and sometimes do not manifest themselves for a long time.
 
A shop-vac can be ducted so it picks up a great deal of the grit and dust coming right off the belt, and then used normally when the grinder isn't in use. A regular box fan mounted behind the grinder, facing away from it, with a furnace filter taped over the "intake" side will also help. It needs to be vacuumed off after each grinding session, as will the area directly around it. Neither of these is probably as good as a pro-level dust system, but they definitely help a lot.

Naturally, you still need a respirator (keep it on until clean-up is done). Kids, pets and family members simply shouldn't be in the shop when power tools are being used, period.

EDIT: Slightly off-topic... one of the overhead lights in my new shop is wired to a switch outside the shop door. When someone wants to come in and tell me supper is ready or to take out the garbage, they can simply flip that switch a couple times to alert me, so I stop whatever I'm running and pay attention. That way I don't get spooked by someone coming up behind me when I can't hear them.
 
The new shop's forging area will have a blue rotary light that will activate for 30 seconds when someone opens the entry door.
 
bladsmth said:
The new shop's forging area will have a blue rotary light that will activate for 30 seconds when someone opens the entry door.
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Nice! :thumbup:

It may seem like much ado about nothing, but if you ever jam your thumb into a moving belt when someone you didn't know was there yells "HEY!!" because you didn't hear 'em come in... it will seem pretty important. Guess how I know that.
 
Not to thread jack, but are these issues a concern when working outdoors? I use a respirator but I just let the dust do its own thing and occasionally sweep it out into the grass.
 
Can anyone post some pictures of their dust collection set-up? Also, what about wet grinding with a KMG? I'd like to see pictures of that too.

oic0 said:
Not to thread jack, but are these issues a concern when working outdoors? I use a respirator but I just let the dust do its own thing and occasionally sweep it out into the grass.
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Silica dust is used to kill slugs in gardens, so you might have fewer slugs outside your shop. Other than that, I'd only worry about the accumulation of heavy metals, and the effects of an iron surplus on the plants in the immediate area.
 
Thnx. No worries then. To heck with the plants I hate mowing, and I only use simple steels so the only worry would be the occasional brass bolster.
 
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