Official Luthiers Forum!

Hi guys. I build I’m not so much a shop as a bedroom size room with tools in it:)
Pretty small, but cozy and it forces me to keep things tidy.
I’ve done a lot of sawdust making down there and I do vac / clean, but air quality is a concern.
What kind of air cleaner would you recommend for a small space like that?
Thanks for your wisdom / advice
B


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

If you have room for it, one like that pictured ought to work for you. It uses a 3m 1900 20x25 filter and is built around a squirrel cage furnace fan. The output is ducted toward the ceiling forcing the dust that didn’t fall down so the filter can capture it. I have a particle meter. This cleans my 30 x15 shop from 80,000 down to less than 1000 .5 micron particles per cubic foot in 10 minutes. It ought to do your room faster. But, when you’re making dust, you’ll still have to wear a mask.

I have one of these...

https://www.amazon.com/708620B-AFS-1000 ... B00004R9LO

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LjZHeJazibk

_________________
Thank You and Best To All

Bear in mind it's the submicron particles that'll kill you. So Bob's filter is better than the Jet for actual cleaning of the air. However, you can get filters for the Jet from Wynn Environmental, I believe, which will turn your Jet into a HEPA...

Looks like maybe not HEPA, but at least an improvement over stock filters...
https://wynnenv.com/ambient-filters/

Curious, Bob's filter is better why? Couldn't one use the same 3m 1900 filter in the Jet? Or is the design inherently better?

_________________
Thank You and Best To All

Because his filter goes to .5 micron...the JET filters only to 1 micron

Got it, and 3M makes the same filter that will fit the jet 24 x 12 x 1. I believe the internal Jet filter goes to 1 micron and the external filter can be as fine as you can find.

https://www.amazon.com/Filtrete-Ultimat ... 261&sr=8-7

_________________
Thank You and Best To All

The problem with depending on even the best air cleaner/filter is that it takes time for the all dust to get pulled into the filter...~10 minutes for the best units. They work great in keeping your surfaces visibly clean but there will be lots of microscopic dust floating around which can cause lung damage after you breathe it. It can't be cleared from your lungs completely. The best strategy is to collect it at its source with an adequate volume and velocity of air. I bring my shop to the dining room when the temps are too cold or warm in my shop and have 2, 20" box fans with 20x20X2" HEPA pleated filters duct taped to the "suck" side of the fans. These are placed in a "V" configuration blowing away from my work when making dust with a large piece of cardboard bridging them on top...like a negative flow fume hood used in a lab. It makes a lot of noise but it works great at keeping dust out of my lungs and the house.

I have the JET. It comes with a five year warranty. It is built like a little furnace fan. Though not connected to my shop, my furnace fan runs all the time in the summer for air conditioning or to circulate cool air up from the basement. My furnace fan has never worn out. Point being, you can run the JET for at least five years at no risk (warranty) and maybe for decades. You would be limited by how much you want to spend on electricity. So, you do not have to be too stingy about trying to turn the filter on with enough lead time to enter the shop. But it does generate heat, which might be a problem in the summer.

Bob, do you know what the specs for 'clean' air is?

The submicron filters from Wynn are the inside filters. As I understand it, the external filter is for the big stuff, the internal for the small stuff...

The Jet filter absolutely collects .5 micron particles. Jet does not advertise the percentage of .5 particles it collects, but that doesn't mean that it doesn't get any.

I have the Jet in my shop (a 3-car garage), and I use a Dylos meter. When I turn on the Jet, it will bring the .5 micron count down from the thousands to under 1000 within minutes, and down under 100 in half an hour or so. Under 100 is way lower than the outside count. So, the Jet is definitely filtering the .5 micron particles. The Wynn filter probably does even better, but it's not accurate to say that the Jet doesn't get them.

I have a Jet air handler in my shop with a Wynn Environmental inner filter (a new one I installed in October). The standard Jet inner filter is rated for 1.0 micron particles (91%), but is unrated for 0.5 micron particles. By contrast, the Wynn filter is rated for 0.5 micron particles (79%) as well as 1.0 micron particles (92%). The standard Jet filter likely catches 0.5 micron particles too, but to what degree is unknown.

I got a Dylos 1100 Pro particle detector last month. It detects particles in two ranges: 0.5 to 2.5 microns and 2.5 microns and above. The display on the unit shows counts of particles in those ranges per 0.01 cubic foot of air so you have to multiply the display numbers by 100 to get the numbers of particles per cubic foot of air.

I haven't been in major dust generating mode (drum sander) since I got it but I did test it out in my shop to get a baseline reading after there had been no activity in the shop for three days. I also tested to see what effect the Jet had on the counts.

The initial readings were 14,000 0.5-2.5 micron particles/cu ft. Dylos rates the range of 7500-15,000 particles/cu ft as "very good" air quality and zero to 7500 as "excellent". For comparison, the count in the family room next to my shop was 17,000 (which I will blame on the dog and cat).

The flow rate on my Jet running on low speed corresponds to one volume of my shop in 7.5 minutes.

minutes______0.5-2.5 micron particles/cu ft
0 ___________14,000
7.5___________7200
15____________4900
30____________3200

After running the Jet for just 7.5 minutes at low speed, the count was cut in half and into the "excellent" range and the count continued to drop over 30 minutes. So the Jet definitely removes fine particles from the air and pretty rapidly. I'm sure that running it at higher speed would drop the counts significantly faster.

_________________
Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

Some great information - thank you.

_________________
Thank You and Best To All

I made a mistake in my posting earlier. As J De Rocher pointed out above, the Dylos meter gives readings of particles in .01 cubic foot of air, so the readings must be multiplied by 100 to get particles per cubic foot (not by 10 which is what I had stuck in my head). So, the numbers in my earlier post should have been 800,000 and 10,000 particles per cubic foot.

Now, back to talking raw readings on the Dylos meter—that would be particles per .01 cubic foot. When I first got the meter, I turned it on in my living space. The count for .05 micron particles in a still room was 300. Since that’s what we live with all of the time, I figured that was a reasonble target for clean air. When the grandchildren were playing in the carpet in the room, the count was 700. Again, that is a normal state of living, so I considered 700 to be acceptable even though 300 is better. I run the counter whenever I am in the shop. When the count approaches 300, I turn on the filter and wear an N95 mask. The filter box, pictured above, pulls the count down very quickly.

I find that I have to frequently vacuum surfaces in the shop or just walking in the shop will raise the particle count. The filter box reduces the dust falling on surfaces, but doesn’t eliminate all of it. I use a dust collecter with a nominal 1 micron paper filter. It works very well with the drum sander. A drum sander session will bring the count in the shop down below 70 on the meter. Dust collection on the band saws and on the disk and belt sanders is not as effective. Dust manages to escape those tools in spite of the manufacturers’ dust ports. So, in my shop the N95 mask and the filter box are necessary in spite of dust collection at the source.

I would recommend the particle counter to everyone. Knowing what you are dealing with is quite worthwhile.

I have the Jet as I mentioned but it has been sitting in my main garage for about 5 years basically unused. I built a small shop out back and just mounted it 2 days ago but never really gave it much thought as to how effective it might or might not be.

After reading this timely thread I'll simply turn it on every time I go in the shop and look in to the finer inner filters. Very helpful info.

_________________
Thank You and Best To All

I'd really like one of those meters.

Anyone know what gov safety standards are for clean air? OHSR or the US equivalent?

Kelby, interesting post. I was just going off what JET rates their own filters at. Are you multiplying by 100 as Bob noted? Just trying to get stats...

I've also read that the older a filter gets, the more effective it gets, while at the same time becoming less efficient. The larger holes end up getting plugged by particulate creating smaller holes that trap smaller particles.

Not knocking he JET at all, I have the Steel City version, just pointing out that the filters are the important part as long as the airflow is there...

If you do decide to get a Dylos particle counter, be sure to get the "Pro" version of the DC1100 because it detects particles down to 0.5 microns. For the non-Pro version of the DC1100, the lower detection threshold is 1.0 microns, so not as useful for us.

_________________
Once in a while you get shown the light in the strangest of places if you look at it right - Robert Hunter

I use one of these: https://www.grizzly.com/products/Grizzl ... peed/G0738 which only goes down to 1 micron. I wonder if I can get a better filter for it.

I use one of these at point sources: https://www.clearvuecyclones.com/cv06-m ... ystem.html

Every spring I open up the shop and put a strong fan in the door and use my vacuum on reverse as a blower and blow the shop out clean.

It's good to have dust collection threads every once in a while because dust is truly a silent killer and easy to get lazy about.

_________________
Thank You and Best To All

I would assume the grizzly to be a delta or jet knockoff, so those filters would fit, or Wynn could make one that did...