Fan blowing questions

Fish30114

Fish30114

Joined
Jan 5, 2014
Messages
1,495
Folks, I have a basement shop, and in it I have the Jet ceiling mounted dust remover/air filter, and shop vacs at my two worst dust making offenders--my grinder and my lathe, with that all running I still get a huge amount of dust settling on things--I'm pretty consistent about wearing respirator, so it doesn't bother me too much--I ground a handle the other day and forgot to put on a respirator, and I had a super stuffed breathing that night, and got a lot of Amboyna burl colored snot out of my nose! I am looking for intel/advice of whether or not a Fan mounted in an outside facing door, or the window of one, would be good at getting the dust out of my shop. I have the typical double doors into my shop, that both will open, but typically we just open one and move in or out through that one. They both are half glass--from the mid point to the top--so I suppose I could mount whatever in one of the windows, and figure a way to get it sealed in there.

I'd be interested in how people would approach this and definitely am open to recommendations on specific fans or whatever else.

Thanks--Don
 
I have a window directly behind my grinder. I have a box fan blowing out that window with a furnace filter attached to the room side. It did not totally eliminate dust, but greatly reduced it. I only have that and a vacuum under the platen. I am thinking of adding another fan directly above the grinder.
 
I don't believe you can be blowing it around and get good results. My way is to suck it up by a vacuum system and dump it outside. It certainly can be a very important shop item to deal with.
Frank
 
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Don if I was working in my basement I would put a torit or other hi powered dust collection system high on the list. I was thinking about this today when I was amazed at how much metal dust gets everywhere in my shop. Its 50ft long and sectioned off in the middle and my grinder is on one end and I find everything on the other end is covered in dust.

Something important to keep in mind is that metal dust can build up all over and in the case of electronics it can ruin them and even worse in outlets and such it can cause fires by shorting them out. A very well known and experienced knifemaker had his shop catch on fire due to this. Sorry not trying to come off as a scaremonger, but there were three shops that completely burnt down last year so I've been a bit paranoid about fire safety! To answer your question I think a fan creating a draft out of your basement would help but as others said it will not eliminate it.

Stay safe

-Clint
 
Well, I thought a bunch of people would jump in telling good ways to make up a good system. I know the ceiling collector thing isn't very good from experience. I use a cyclone - an Onieda - for my grinders with the largest shop vacuum made by Ridged. It works pretty well .
Frank
 
Particulate/ dust removal requires velocity of the airstream, something box fans are not good at.

Fantech makes very strong (class of fan, basically the fan blade characteristics) fans. They are inline style which you can mount directly to a duct/ conduit. Since you in a basement rather than try to lift the dust out of the basement, draw the debrit down small duct, to a larger reservoir (sealed trash can for example) and another duct which then runs up to the fan witch draws out the air with ideally less of the debrit entrained in the air. Keep in mind the air you draw out needs to be augmented with make-up air or the system performance will be impacted.
 
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Yes. The vacuum under my platen gets most of the dust. The box fan does get a lot of the floating fine stuff. It would not be a good solution by itself, but I have found it very effective as a second line of defense.
 
Folks, I have mini-cyclones on both of my vacuums getting what debris/dust they can and it's amazing what they keep out of the drums on the vacuums. My issue remains getting the airborne particulates out of the air and moved outside or to a container of some sort. IME you are going to create air born dust regardless of what you do at the devices--so I'm still figurin
 
It seems like you know what you need to do then. You have separators on your vacumn after all, what you need works the same way.
 
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