personal respirators?

[sandman]

I'm looking to purchase a good quality dust helmet/ respirator and am interested in feedback from anyone using one.
Regards, Sandman.

[q9]

I have a brand new 3M personal respirator, very soft silicone rubber, lightweight. Using solvent type filters + dust pads. Cost is about $90 (break down - mask $70, filters $18/pair dust pads $5/pair, roughly). But work bought me mine. Very comfortable for long time use and can be worn under a standard face shield.

[Eastie]

I use a survivair 2000 series half face respirator. Had it for about five years – very comfortable for a respirator. Uses dual filter cartridges at about $10 ea.
Also consider filter life.

For woodturning I’d consider investing in a hood with some sort of remote filters and airline due to the level of dust often encountered and cost of replacing filters

A search for dust hoods or similar should drag up a couple of posts on similar.

[rsser]

With a beard and glasses, a respirator was out for me, so I use a Trend Airshield filtered visor. Not cheap but it works a treat.

Triton are bringing out a filtered visor - it will have the filter unit on a waistbelt pumping air to what looks like a traditional helmet/visor combo. They claim it will be cheaper than similar units from overseas.

Then there's the question of safety standards. Check out the postings on rec.crafts.woodturning

Cheers,

Ern

[Badger]

I have a 3M full filter mask - works great although a back-up battery would be great but at $90 I continue to limit my turning to 4-5 hours. Only trouble I have had is forgetting to turn the fan on - then wondering why it's getting so hot and stuffy!

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Badger - A gruff short tempered animal that sleeps most of the winter

[BrianR]

If its any help, I described how to make a 10hr battery pack for the Purlite for about $16. http://ubb.ubeaut.com.au/ubb/wink.gif Do a search under "battery purelite". The Purelite battery lasts about 4hrs and a replacement costs around $90 so I expect they are very similar if not identical.

From a useage view, the Purelite (or Trend I think) works very well.