I’m looking to build a dust collector for my studio and wondering if
anyone has any suggestions or specs for something fairly simple. I
don’t need anything industrial-size, just small tabletop size. I’ve
been doing so much polishing lately - and even though I wear a mask,
I think I’m still taking in too much of this stuff and really have
not been feeling well lately.
I'm looking to build a dust collector for my studio and wondering if anyone has any suggestions or specs for something fairly simple.
You can build, just from wood if you like, a “hood”, or funnel
shaped air collector that will mount behind the buff. Fit it with a
hole to fit the large diameter (2.5 inch I think is common) type hose
on a decent shop vac. The closer the fit of the funnel to the back
of the buff, so air is drawn in from right behind the buff, rather
than the whole general area, the better. many commercial units use
a rather large hood, and then need a lot of air movement. But if
your’s is sized close to the buffs you use, and fits up close to the
back, you can get almost all the dust produced. Mount the funnel so
it can shift side to side to be centered behind the working area of
different buffs, which may not all mount on the motor in exactly the
same position. if the collector can be shifted, you make it more
versatile without needing to make it too much wider. I’d guess you’d
want something about eight inches high at the front, with the front
edge cut to a semicircle matching a six inch buff when mounted on the
motor, and perhaps two to three inches wide at the front end. With a
good shop vac you should get pretty good suction from that sort of
collector. Mount a piece of coarse screening (perhaps 1/4 inch
openings) in the back so that any jewelry caught by the buff will get
stopped at the screen, not pulled into the shop vac. Then, with the
shop vac itself, use a HEPA filter capable of collecting the very
fine particles.
Peter
Hi Catherine,
I came up with something similar to Peter for my polisher. I polish
titanium rings and have a large polishing unit with 8" wheels. I
made a box around the polishing wheel with wood sides and a
removeable lexan top and front with 6" arm holes through the sides.
The box is around 6" wide and 15" tall. A woodworking shop exhaust
unit pulls the vacuum with the large 5" hose. I have the vacuum
unit in an adjacent room because it is fairly loud. I also have
some coarse mesh screen (1/2" cells) from MSC Industrial Supply
covering the suction hole. The box gives the extra safety factor of
keeping things from shooting out to your face or body and very
little polishing mess gets out.
For grinding and Foredom type work, I have a fan at bench level
pointing away and down. The fine particles made by grinding are
pulled away from me and thrown to the floor. New fresh air needs to
come from behind and above me to replace it. It is less likely to
have all the particles in it. I recently found that woodworking
suppliers have powerful filters that will pull nearly as much air as
the fan does. It should work even better than the fan by itself.
I’ll be making a stand for one of those this week.
Bruce Boone
Boone Titanium Rings
770-645-6488
This is a TERRIBLE system … All this does is move stuff around and
really stir up the bad stuff… The really bad particulate for your
health are the small ones that you can’t even see.
Removing these is what HEPA (High efficiency particulate) filters
are designed to remove.
I have posted stuff on hood design and flow requirement a while
back … I lost what I said and the references included there in a
HD crash … I will have to put something together again and get
back with this.
Basically you want to remove the particles and fumes from your
workplace not stir them up.Ideally your work area would be a
laminar flow zone with all contaminates removed without coming
in contact with your lungs…
jesse