I currently have my GF vented nice and easily out a window. But now I’m moving my business to my parents house and I’m using an old dryer vent that vents out the existing vent from the basement up and out.
My brother in law is trying to help and he says he thinks, because it is going up and out through an existing dryer vent I should add an inline fan to help push the exhaust up and out.
Here are my questions is you know the answers:
1)What do you think of this idea? Is it necessary? Will it assist enough?
2)If we do this, do I just add this and all is good or is there something else I have to do? I read somewhere that the internal fan should be disconnected. I really don’t want to do this if it isn’t necessary.
Any help you can give me would be greatly appreciated.
TIA!
it’s better to “pull” the air than “push” it, so if the fan is closer to the end of the hose than the beginning, that would be preferable.
you may need to figure out how much fan power you need based on the length of the run. do you know how long that is? some of the “engineer” types here can give you an idea of how much CFM you need to move that distance.
if you’re using an existing hose, you probably don’t know what the condition is. it may leak like a sieve. you may want to test it and hopefully, if there’s an issue, you can replace that hose. dryer vents can leak air and it’s no big deal, clothes drying generally smell nice. GF fumes, on the other hand… not so much.
you don’t have to physically disconnect the fan, just turn it off in the UI (it’s near the bottom of the three dots menu in the top menu bar). it says “glowforge air filter attached.” if that is turned to “on,” then the fan is off.
The internal fan isn’t very powerful and I think it isn’t very effective if you’re going a long distance, have more than one bend in the hose, or especially if you’re trying to push the air upward. That’s a good reason to add your own fan to help it along.
Ideally, you’d put it right at the end of the run, so it’s sucking rather than blowing. This will help avoid leaks.
You don’t need to disconnect the internal fan. Many of us have added a secondary fan and left the internal one alone. You can turn it off to make the machine a lot quieter, or just run both. That’s what I do.
mine is a 4" hose, looks like @chris1 may be using a 6"?
My hose run is very short. less than 1 ft from the GF to the fan, and about 3ft to the window (i’d have put the fan closer to the window, but my wall/window sill/desk configuration doesn’t make that work).
i’m using what seems to be the favorite GF fan, the AC Infinity CLOUDLINE S6. my hose is 4" and i have adapters to fit the 6" fan to my 4" hose.
Mine used to run through a setup like that, before we moved. It worked pretty well, but did leave more residual smell in the room than it does now (currently venting straight out the wall). I’d definitely add the in-line fan, both for the extra “oomph” and also because it makes the machine SO amazingly quiet.
