10/21

UNFINISHED PROPOSAL - Lasercutter room fumes air filtering

this link looks absolutely excellent it's a study/ paper on the various bad stuffs in a fablab - 3d printers + lasercutters.

Date for Decision

Usually one week after posting - but having a month on this might be better

Cost

• £170 alan suggested this one: some machine
• £190 this is the one peter suggested , but the reviews are poor and he can't find replacement filters.
• plexer is interested in finding out what fumes there are, and this is a £60 thing

What is being asked for

effective air cleaning.

Why/how this will be good to have

So what are the fumes? from acrylic this clever article says MMA, which is non toxic (But an irritant), but you can smell it at 0.05ppm, where 0.17ppm is safe for life-long inhalation, as it breaks down and is not accumulated in the body. That research was commissioned by a acrylic lasercutting company, who installed a 20m chimney and "Induflex has 6 lasers, which are all modified with much stronger suction than delivered by the manufacturer."

some chemist on reddit did back-of-the-envelope maths which suggests an unventilated (normal) lasercutter can go way over 0.17ppm.

acrylamide(wiki) - is the "cancerous" chemical in burned things. It is "likely or expected" to be cancerous, is as strong a wording as I could reasonably find.

Who is for it

peter, and everybody else

Comments

might be cancerous, might not, either way it stinks real bad and is bad news.

"The bottom line is that it is a good idea to take precautions but don't become paranoid."

these pro-grade lasercutter filters.. say:

A fume filter typically uses a combination of a HEPA (High Efficiency Particulate Air) pre-filter and a combined filter which contains activated charcoal. The HEPA filter captures the airborne particles in the extracted air and the charcoal filter removes the aroma.

Here is the datasheet for an £8k filter system.

this page here says: Electrocorp has designed air cleaners for laser engraving and laser cutting environments. They feature a deep bed of activated carbon for the removal of chemicals as well as a powerful HEPA filter to remove particles that are released in the laser cutting process.

lighter link:

"There’s no hard and fast rule for how much ventilation you need, other than as much as possible. For 3D printers we recommended that your ventilation system moves 3 times as much air as the volume of the room per hour. For laser cutters, it should probably be more."

formaldehyde....

seems to be the one plexer is worried about. I think it's from the glue in PLA.

Outcome

unrivalled success.