Air filtration system
Posted: Mon Aug 01, 2016 4:37 pm
I have solved my dust issues in my shop. Dust is always a problem, no matter how much or little you use your shop. I have a shopsmith dust collector and a shop vac for my tools yet fine dust was still over everything. I watched a number of youtube videos from people who built their own systems and came up with a pretty good one for my shop. I have a 1000 sq ft shop that I also share with my cars, when I have a large project I move the cars out and expand to my needs. I went down to a local heating and air conditioning company and asked them if they had a blower off of an old furnace that I could purchase, they told me if I had the tools just to go ahead and take one if I wanted it. Not a problem, it took me about ten minutes to remove it ( I spent my summers as a kid working in a sheet metal shop). I bought a sheet of 1/2" cabinet grade plywood and started to design the system. My first decision was the filters and their size, ended up with a 16 x 25" filter which is a real common size that you can pick up at any big box store or hardware. I wanted a three stage filter, the first one being the blue filter material you can buy from a roll (about $2.00 @ ft), the second was a 2" regular AC filter, the third filter was a 1" 3M high performance filter. The first thing I built was the frames for the filters so I could easily change them, I used some 1 1/2" pine that I had around the shop and pocket screws. I then built a box out of the plywood to house the filters and the squirrel cage blower. Over all its 17 x 26 x 30", I ran a dado where I mounted the blower so I could slide it out if ever need be (trying to think ahead). On the out flow side I put in a 8 x 10 " 2 way adjustable register. For the fan control I went to Harbor Freight and purchased a router control switch so I could vary the speed of the fan, for $18 this works great. I also wanted this portable so I got 4 casters and built a portable base out of 2 x 4" for it to sit on and also do double duty as a catch all or work station, it stands 36" tall. This thing works great, I figured out that I can filter the air in the entire shop in about 2 minutes on high speed also it helps keep me cool while working. For those of you who will say post pictures well this site is somewhat a pain to do that but if you are interested in doing something like it there plenty of ideas for these on youtube and it's a cheap way to go. I only paid for a sheet of plywood and the router control switch for a grand total of $38 and solved my dust problem.
