Hello Everyone,
Thank you for help in advance and sorry if this is repeated question. I have been looking for an answer all over the place and can’t find a clear answer.
I just bought GF plus last week to start a mall kart for laser engraved gifts so i need an fume extraction and purification system to keep air clean in mall. I’m aware of the compact filter
option but hate how expensive the replacements filter are $250 especially that i’m supposed to use laser frequently with MDF materials that could fill up filter fast. I was able to find some alternative and cheaper fume extractor options with cheaper filter replacements online but i’m not sure if they will work.
Here’s what i’m thinking, i set up the GF to run and push the fumes out the fan and hose and then let the 3rd part extractor collect fumes as soon as they exit the GF hose. I loaded up a image that would show my idea below . And if anyone has used the compact filter can you please provide your experience on how long they last
You need to look at the cubic feet per minute that would be moved and the quality of the air that made it through, In that situation the noise level would also be a big consideration. The Glowforge itself would be plenty noisy when running and all the more so with the amount of sound coming from any sort of open exhaust. You could get something like this but you would need to build a box that would be 4" diameter in and 12" diameter to the filter. With some work and sound baffling you could get the sound down but you would need something that robust to reliably stay well ahead of the Glowforge as any filter will lose volume as it fills. I would also include a washable prefilter in that box that made the diameter change.
I believe the Glowgorge exhaust is supposed to be 200cfm and I found from experience that a 200cfm auxiliary fan would not keep the smoke from leaking out of the machine. The Blu-Dri is variable up to 500cfm and has a large filter area and a charcoal filter that does a very good job of eliminating smells and is far less expensive on the filters. If you built a table that could contain the Blu-Dri and had soundproofing built-in you would stand a chance of operating in a Mall environment that would be harder than say a school room.
We run a Teka LMD that maxed out is 190CFM but it is a true 3 stage industrial filter and have no issues. We are not saying that we recommend the OP go with there set up as we do not feel that a non industrial filter at 190CFM is going to work.
It just has to scale with the Machine. I have a 190 cfm fan that I was using when I was trying to avoid sending the previous machine back and it was easily overwhelmed. The OP machine could work very well around a sander or saw but you need excess power as as soon as the filter starts to fill up you will not have the max values but the Glowforge will still be kicking 200 cfm at one end and 160 or less at the other with the 40 or more cfm pumping out to the mall and setting off their smoke and fire alarms. anything that maxes out at 500 cfm will still be choking at 250 cfm when the filters need replacing but that is enough to stay doing its job.
edit: I looked up the Teka and the price is more than 4 times that of the Blu-Dri but less of a hassle to set up. Still, the Blue Monster will clear a smoky room in a few minutes sitting in the open and still clear the popcorn smell out of the kitchen.
I’ve seen the Blu-Dri solution posted a bunch of times, but I don’t know that anyone is actually using it heavily. Our compact filter, TEKA, and BOFA filters all have 10+ lbs of carbon. Over half the volume of the compact filter cartridge is carbon. A coating on a hepa filter is enough to remove odors from a room, but not for the huge amount a laser produces.
I wish I had a better solution, since I agree 250 for the tiny cartridge in the compact filter is really costly. With a good pre-filter I can get 20-30 hours out of it, but that's still over .16 per minute of laser time and the biggest cost in my production. @ssincity I’d be interested in knowing how the TEKA compares if you’ve gotten to replacement cartridges yet.
Thank you very very much with very detailed answer, i’ll give BlueDri AS-550 try just have to figure away to hook the together and keep noise down. I tried to do vedio search to see how load the noise is but found none.
Without the Glowforge running it is loud but the noise is less than the Glowforge, I was working in a small room with 4 cutters and a big 55 gal shopvac that would have been deafening in that small room but in a wooden box lined with the stuff sold to line the engine rooms of yachts and a baffled piece underneath to let the air out you could barely tell it was on.
do you by chance a photo of that setup, i can’t visualize it and i want show it a carpenter that would help build it for me. i really appreciate your help
