• Hi all and welcome to TheWoodHaven2 brought into the 21st Century, kicking and screaming! We all have Alasdair to thank for the vast bulk of the heavy lifting to get us here, no more so than me because he's taken away a huge burden of responsibility from my shoulders and brought us to this new shiny home, with all your previous content (hopefully) still intact! Please peruse and feed back. There is still plenty to do, like changing the colour scheme, adding the banner graphic, tweaking the odd setting here and there so I have added a new thread in the 'Technical Issues, Bugs and Feature Requests' forum for you to add any issues you find, any missing settings or just anything you'd like to see added/removed from the feature set that Xenforo offers. We will get to everything over the coming weeks so please be patient, but add anything at all to the thread I mention above and we promise to get to them over the next few days/weeks/months. In the meantime, please enjoy!

Desciions, decisions....

ScaredyCat

ScaredyCat

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Hi everyone,

So after a quite flrankly godawful year or two (which many of you have shared) I had a little good news. A local farmer had a small unit up for rent, so now I have a workshop! No more dragging stuf in and out of the house for me. Can't tell you how good it feels to get a proper space to work in.

I spent a couple of days paralysed with so much to do, I stalled but I cured that by doing a skip dive and recovering some cheap laminate flooing which I've layed over the carpet.

Anyway, on to my question. Now that I've moved from working in the garden to an enclosed space, my first bige purchase has been the Axminster AC153E but I didn't get the cartridge filter thing (couldn't afford it). I intend to get it eventually, but I'm a little torn between getting an air filter (eg record power AC400) first or getting that cartridge.

I'm leaning towards the air filter becuase I have other equipment, eg mitre saw that even with a vac attached like to spit sawdust into the air.

I can't really afford both at the same time. I wont be buying either until next month but I'm thinking that getting the air filter next month then the cartridge the month after. I have been using a Rutlands R8566 (tin can extractor) but it doesn't really have enough air flow for my table saw. The AC153E should cover my table saw planer/thicknesser too.

Can those of you with more experience give me your thoughts.
 
Big chips are not your real problem Andy. Very fine dust is. The absence of the cartridge filter means you are filtering out the less hazardous material and letting the almost invisible fine particles float in the air you breathe. Deal with that first.

Gravity deals with the heavier stuff to start with, so focus on that next. Buy a broom 8-)

In my experience, unless you have very significant and noisy throughput, the ceiling extractor filters are not super effective. I would tend to try to deal with most dust and waste as close to source as possible in the first instance.

I use a Jet cyclone system, with extraction outlets by every machine, and I get hardly any airborne dust. This separates fine dust into a bag and heavy stuff into a bin. For info, the dustbin sized bin can be full in about an hour if using the planer thicknesser - by far the biggest waste producer in most workshops. For my large belt sander I use a Startright triple filter system bought off eBay for £100 and that is brilliant and dealing with very fine dust too. It goes under a bench.

We now need workshop pictures.

Good luck. Adrian
 
its a shed on a farm..... open the doors! :lol: :lol:

Seriously, I work in a garage with a roller door. I always work with the door open, which removes the very vast majority of fine dust. I do have an extractor system with a cyclone and bin for the bigger stuff as well though.

If the place is too cold to work with the doors open all the time, invest in one of those large chicken house fans and fit it low down in one wall and have it running when you are actually making fine dust, but then a flap across it to stop the cold air coming in when you arent.

Thats a very simple, very cheap temporary solution until you can afford the whole HEPA thing.
 
The problem with air filters as opposed to a LEV is that the really bad fine dust is drawn past your nose to get to the ceiling filter.
If you cannot afford the canister for your extractor at the moment just set your extractor up outside and extract to the outside. I built my extractor a little shed to keep it dry and reduce the plume of dust. It works so well you will probably never buy a canister. The only problem is I forget to empty it!
 
Peter's idea makes a lot of sense and keeps the air very clean. In summer.

I didn't do that because my workshop is cold enough in winter without me extracting the heat directly to outside with a 3hp suction fan 8-)
 
Thanks for all the replies, looks like I'll be getting that canister first then.

I usually have the door wide open sunnybob, not only for the air but also for the view I have ( also, ssshh don't tell anyone, but the farmer's dogs occasionally visit me for pets and cuddles, which I find to be a huge bonus).

I did think of building an airfilter based on some of the ones I'd seen on youtube but I wasn't confident that I'd manage make it so that it would do the job properly.

Putting the extractor is a bit of a problem. There are a couple of other people working there and I don't think any of them would appreciate the dust flying around.

Power cable on the AC153 is stupidly short too.
 
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