A Rigid 5hp shop vac flows 289 cfm. A 5hp shop vac with the rectangular adapter can catch nearly all the dust flying off a band saw.
An airmover (Rigid sold at homedepot) flows 2500 cfm. So Im guessing your house might implode when you turn it on.
Sweet!
That’s some serious vacuum!
Do you remember the one at the classroom? I’m sure the school just tossed it! :rolleyes:
A machine shop company i used to work at in CA made carbon fiber image quality indicators for the aerospace industry. My boss got ticked off one day because he had to make like 10 of them on the surface grinder ( held down with double stick tape ). Dust was everywhere and he was using a shop vac. It just wasn’t powerful enough and didn’t have a large enough collector to suck up all the dust the grinder was making. If you ask me my boss was just being a wimp about telling the customer we would no longer make them.
But yeah carbon dust is messy stuff and it seems to stick to everything.
make a vacuum table. a table with a metal mesh top, and a vacuum/blower source below, sand all your parts on the table
Hojo…where have you been mr.?lol
I plan on making a shielded/lens water bath to cut/trim and sand my parts in.The water run off can be recycled after a filter/trap up to a point.
I use several different Dynabrade tools and also some hand finishing.
Water keeps things clean and dust free.
Vinny
Now if we only knew WHERE they tossed it!
So these tables have to be pretty big I guess? Big enough to hold a hood or fender and still catch the dust.
I also want to be able to use a table top router, belt sander, DA sander, whatever. Will the downdraft table work for my needs?
[QUOTE=Worldwealth;14979]Hojo…where have you been mr.?lol
well, mostly here in missouri, but also a little bit in china. its amazing how hard it is to find good workers here in missouri, I think Maine has more talented people. We have actually decided were just going to do apprenticeship, and hire some green kids out of highschool. are you still around missouri?
Hojo that’s a really good idea. I’ve used a down draft grinding bench before, neat thing. Ours had these big 20"x20"x 4" thick filters between the bottom of the bench and the suction vent, then the it vented thru the wall to outdoors. If a person were to buy one of those relatively small downdraft benches they cost over $1000 to buy new. It’s an excellent idea to build one and save some serious coin.
I imagine in time i will end up building one… thanks for the tip.
Could probably buy a used dust collector system somewhere. I’m thinking like a thin sheetmetal top with a thousand holes drilled in it, then supporting it an expanded steel mesh. This way the part can slide over the surface of the table without getting hung up on the expanded steel mesh.
I always find reasons i wish I had never sold my Lincoln 255 mig welder 
also, a good thing to do is to make a mixing station with a blower, fan or vacuum system to suck out any fillers(cabisol, microbaloons.etc…) that your mixing in to your resins to the outside. looks like a arcade machine(same dimentions).
I was under the impression that c/f dust is pretty bad for you… if you’re tracking it through the house, that’s a pretty serious problem isn’t it?
cf dust is bad to breathe in just like fiberglass, once you breathe it in to your lungs it is there forever. just like the coal miners " the black lung" but it takes alot of exposure of numerous years of heavy exposure. I wouldnt worry about tracking it through your house, other then making a mess and being a little itchy if you get it on you it wont be enough to ever matter
Yes, still below you in Springfield. Finding pre trained composites experts where your at demographically will be tough. There are more to be found near the lakes areas.
Going for green students will probably yield the best worker in the end one would think ?Thats how I’d do it .
Vinny
[quote=“Worldwealth,post:22,topic:33148”]
Yep. Hire them green. Thats how I started.
The downside to hiring a seasoned employee is that they are hard headed. Probably wont follow your instructions when you not watching. Think they know better. ETC…
Thanks everybody for the numerous replies. I bought a shop vac but honestly it does not move all the dust, either in blowing or suction. I guess the cement in my garage is porous enough that even putting the blower right on top of it does not remove all the dust, you can wipe a wet rag across afterwards and still get black. So I returned the vac and mopped the garage with a $5 mop. That got all the dust up but I still have to clean every single shelf (and every item on them) with wet rag by hand.
Hopefully I haven’t breathed too much of this stuff in, I do wear my mask 90% of the time but these posts about the black lung are scary.
On a similar note, I managed to cut my toe in the garage on a broken plate of carbon fiber (very stupid… I was actually stress testing and intentionally breaking a plate - wearing flip flops - and using my own body as the stress load - go ahead and call me an idiot :D). It wasn’t very deep and doesn’t hurt but now a few days later there is what appears to be a blood blister… sort of black colored, and I can’t help but wondering if the black color could be CF dust instead of dried blood as I would assume. I scrubbed it with a soapy brush and sprayed it with high pressure water but I am still going to my doctor tomorrow to be sure, and see what he says. I read on some message board about somebody getting CF splinter in his finger and then one year later noticing massive cartilage growth in that region. That does not sound good.
I think hiring experienced people is even worse. they have a tendancy to think that there way is the best way, and they do what they want, and usely have a bad attitude. I am open minded, but there needs to be order in a shop, no john waynes allowed
worldwealth, what are you doing for composite work these days? did you ever receive that rubber squeegie I sent you?
Yes And thank you . I’ve been adapting it on several molds.
Currently working over molds for several makes of collector car parts such as hoods,Interior parts,and other facsia’s.
My library is slowly growing.
Vinny
sounds cool, ill have to come down to your parts some time and check it out