Thread: Combined spray/dust/fume booth?

Do you have suburban neighbours or are you rural? Or put in a different way can you vent outside?

Pete

You need to add a filter before the fan or you will load the fan with paint etc. causing it to be inefficient, if you are venting to the outside don't tell your council.

i have to agree with the previous poster [China]you would be surprised how much paint,overspray will attach to the fan.

Polyester pillow stuffer makes a cheap filter for such a purpose. I made up dozens of these for lab use and used everything from chicken wire to plastic garden trellis mesh to make up a sandwich of the pillow stuffing. It;s less likely to clog quickly if you use a largish funnel input into the ducting so's you can make a up a larger area of filter. I have several I use over my fume hood extractor fan and they get crudded up with dust and dirt so every 6 months I replace them and eventually chuck then in the washing machine.

I probably could have been a bit clearer - it's venting straight out the back of the shed, no bag, no cyclone, no neighbours for miles.

I could make this thing a full width Dexion bay, so a couple of square metres of filter surface area behind the work surface. I'm also thinking the void could function as a kind of vacuum manifold, by adding various port configurations and covering the filter to suit various machines and tasks.

There's no reason I couldn't also use a shop-vac on things like sanding tools, with a 6" flared port behind the workpiece feeding to the DE, to really maximise dust control.

As Adam said to Eve: stand back, I don't know how big this thing is gonna get...

I’m not sure a 2 HP dusty will have the required CFM for the capture area you are envisaging. I reckon you want a very high CFM fan(s) with relatively low static pressure rating. Or the dusty you have with a relatively small capture area.

Since you don't have neighbours to worry about I would suggest getting either a squirrel cage fan with at least a half horsepower motor or an axial flow style fan like the ones used to ventilate barns, greenhouses, etc, (shuttered to keep out the critters and weather when not using).

BobL has at least one squirrel cage fan in his shop that he has posted about. They don't seem to be common in your neck of the woods but we have lots because of our central heating systems. Maybe your air-conditioning systems use them for distribution through the house.

The axial flow fans should be easier to find and can move a lot of air depending on how big or how many you have. Again BobL has discussed using them in the form of grow op fans to ventilate a shop. You could add that function by using the booth to draw the air out of the building when doing any kind of dusty work in the rest of the shop.

One consideration to keep in mind is whether you are going to spray solvent base paints. In that case explosion proof motors would be called for.

Pete

I was looking online re making a temporary spray booth to etch prime some car panels.
Plenty of ideas re tents etc indoors.
Then a few posts re explosions and fires from these sort of rigs without flame proof motor powered ventilation.

If you want a serious booth and have the space I have seen very recently the offer of a free large booth from a company vacating a factory. Time deadline and leaving site clean were required but a booth for just your time is a possibility.

Ive seen same sort of offers re large dust extraction set ups.
H.

Originally Posted by QC Inspector

Since you don't have neighbours to worry about I would suggest getting either a squirrel cage fan with at least a half horsepower motor or an axial flow style fan like the ones used to ventilate barns, greenhouses, etc, (shuttered to keep out the critters and weather when not using).

BobL has at least one squirrel cage fan in his shop that he has posted about. They don't seem to be common in your neck of the woods but we have lots because of our central heating systems. Maybe your air-conditioning systems use them for distribution through the house.

I have two.

This is 1200 CFM that sits under the highest part of the roof and is used to ventilate the shed..
I found this fan in a skip at work in 2012 with the 1/4HP original motor dated 1966.
That fan and motor was in a chemistry lab and had run almost 24/7 since 1966.
The 1966 motor died last year and was replaced with a new 1/2 HP motor.
I could have used a 1/4HP but the 1/2 HP motor was cheaper.
Adpater2.jpg

This is my wekding bay/spraybooth/fune hood (for chemistry experiments)
The fan/motor is dated 1983? and is from the same skip.
The motor is a 1/3 HP German motor - this moves about 1600 CFM!
I dont spray with a full size spray gun in this booth, just an air brush or rattle cans.
Fumehood8.jpg

I cobbled together a small spray booth from a room air filter, MDF box, lazy susan and a pleated paper filter. I use it for painting small parts with rattle cans. It does a great job of removing the paint from the air, but doesn't remove the vapours. So I still need to wear a mask with an organic filter cartridge. Venting outside would obviously solve that problem.

Thanks all, yes this is really just to give me a convenient spot for occasional rattle can spraying, no car panels or the like. It seems like a bit of a no-brainer really, I have some storage shelving already there which I've been angrily eyeing as a waste of good potential working space, and the duct runs right past it.

I suppose if I ever wanted to upgrade it I could put a bunch of fans straight through the shed wall!