Hi y’all I am a business owner that is regularly cutting acrylic with my laser cutter. I live in a pretty dense city and I feel weird about venting fumes out my window. I’m trying to hunt for a studio space right now and it’s a hard sell to tell people that I need to vent my stinky plastic air out of a window. I don’t feel comfortable using the glow forge air filter as it vents directly into the room and I feel like I am going to poison myself with toxic gasses because I am often printing for long hours.
My question is … is there some kind of air filter on the market right now that is designed to scrub the laser fumes and then vent out of the window? It doesn’t need to be too inexpensive (safety first!) but something under like 2k would be preferred. Let me know, I just don’t want to be a neighborhood nuisance.
For the record, using the Glowforge filter is not venting into the room - it is venting into a closed system filter. Many C02 lasers are safely vented into industrial filters in this way.
It sounds like you want something like a charcoal filter that may change the smell of the exhaust, but doesn’t really stop the particulates the way a filter does. This allows you to vent outside, but may make you a better neighbor.
Thank you so much! This is extremely helpful! I also definitely think my fear of the Glowforge filter is unfounded but I’m scared about sitting in a room of fumes without knowing it because most of the materials I use are not proof grade. Maybe if I had a better ventilated studio I would feel more comfortable.
I think that you might be less than satisfied as you need at least 200 CFM going through to move the air out of the machine fast enough to not have air coming out where it should be going in. That includes going through the filter. The filter of course will pass the most gas when it is fresh and ever less as it fills up.
The charcoal filters is all that will take in the smells so if you can replace only those you will be best off. It is the HEPA filter tht costs the most.
I have this one so with 500 CFM I can just run it in a room and even popcorn smells will not escape.
My current AC infinity fan is rated at 400 CFM so I’m crossing my fingers that it pushes things along properly.
Thank you for the suggestion of this other air filter, definitely more high powered than my current setup so I will consider purchasing if things don’t work out quite right with my plan.
That one is fan and filters in one piece. It is made for industrial use like a small gambling room where most folk are smoking cigars, and the rest hate cigar smoke.
