OK guys I need opinions, thoughts, and expert advice (I hope). What would your opinion be concerning the possibility of venting my spray paint booth to one of these:
Thanks for the help / thoughts
Why not just vent it to one of these...it would be more efficient...
is there a reason you can't vent outdoors? this would probably work if you filter the hell out of it. that would mean filters as good as the face mask kind to get all the particles out...
Depends on what you are shooting. I use enamels and duracryl for a clear coat. If I used that to vent the gases throughout the house, I sure could save money on all that crack that I would otherwise buy... I could be high all the time. So would my cats...all my clothes would smell like duracryl. Yum....
On the other hand, if you shoot acrylics, it wouldn't get you high enough; you'd still have to buy crack on the side somehow.
Thanks for the chuckle!
--- Stephen
I've seen one of these in use. The vent goes into the water not above it. Wouldn't the density of the water trap all the particles and fumes?
Particles, probably. But I wouldn't think it would trap the fumes - I'd think you'd need a charcoal canister or something of the sort.
Just curious....I was at a craft / art show today. There was a guy there with an artograph booth just like mine and he had it hooked up to one of these (see the amazon link below). I'm pretty sure he was spraying acrylic. I got up close and personal because it looked outrageous. I swear, I couldn't smell anything. Maybe it's because of all the pre-filtering you get with the artograph booth or the type of paint he was using?
I still don't see how you can trap a gas with a liquid...at least not without a chemical reaction taking place. Yeah, if he was using acrylics I could see how this might work with water. If you use enamel (which I do just about exclusively) I'd just stick to outdoor venting.
AHA! From the Artograph website, about their filtering system:
My understanding is that much of the fumes comes from surface evaporation of the fine particles. They have gobs of surface area being so small. I have found that just a good filter cuts down a LOT on oder. However, I put a vent dryer hose flange on my booth, and another flange on a section of particle board that sits in the window sash opening, with a hose between them. With the sash down on board, it seals the window opening, except for what blows backwards through the hose and booth when the booth is not running.
Why not just purchase a Shop Vac? I used one for many years. I just made a booth from a cardboard box. I used the paper filter coupled with the reusable silk/nylon filter. You can also make a charcol filter for them. Get an extra section of the skinny hose and you'll be able to route the exhaust side out through a window.
Just a note to those thinking of building a spray booth: Sparks from a fan motor can make solvent based paint fumes go BOOM! For a good explosion proof high capacity fan get a bilge blower. They're the fans used to ventilate the bilges of small to medium pleasure boats where gasoline and fumes of same tend to collect. The only down side is that they're 12 volt units so you have to come up with a power supply of so sort. WRF
"Nooooooo! Stop me before I build again."
pc power supplys work well. you can often buy a junker pc at a thrift for very short money and take out the power supply. the yellow wires are the +12v and the black are grounds. for more amps, twist two or more yellows together. i have lots of supplies for short money if anyone needs.
read about them from long ago.
Nope, I agree that it's highly unlikely, if not impossible.
That being said, it's easy enough to find an induction (brushless) motor and they don't produce sparks at all. Cost is not prohibitive and it functions equally effectively as a motor with brushes.
I built my own spray booth, and it's pretty good until the furnace filter I have in there is gunked up. I know that because right now it IS gunked up and I can smell the difference when I'm spraying. I'm just too lazy to replace the filter... I can use those 15 minutes here, telling you how cool my spray booth is... grins
--Stephen
I also built a homebuilt booth using a furnace filter. I had built a couple before, using auto air cleaner felements. I find the furnace filter much better, lower pressure drop (better flow), and they go for about the same price as an air filter element.
A ''bottom of the barrel'' approached once was a good size cardboard box,open on oneend w/ a furnace filter taped on,worked pretty good,but was known to have ''blow bacl if you sprayed too close to the box.The way I figure it,if threes no ready made gadgets on the market,go the cheap route.
I used to work in an analytical lab. Any kind of solvent fumes make me antsy. Then again, I used to boil of ether by the quart on a hot plate, daily. (cooked a few brain cells) And it's not the paint, so much, that worries me, it's the lacquer thinner I spray through as 100%. I guess I have an industrial fume hood bias. We had a nice one that we didn't use much that I would have loved to truck home. 2 1/2 by 5 foot work area, great filters and a fan that would move huge amounts of air. The price was a little steep,
10,000$+. All that being said, a bilge blower moves a lot of airfor a little bit of money as compared to bathroom fans, etc. WRF"Nooooooo! Stop me before I build again."
Yes. I've done it. But under extreme conditions. By which I mean extremely stupid.
I was using a shop vac to suck up the chips while milling. In the middle of a long cut, I ran out of the coolant that I was spraying on the cutter with a squeeze bottle. Rather than stop (and leave a nasty dwell mark in my beautiful part!) I grabbed a handy squeeze bottle of iso-alcohol and kept going. Unfortunately, lot of liquid was going along with the chips.
After a few minutes, enough alcohol had accumulated in the vac that it went on full afterburner. Someone in the shop yelled and I turned around to see a three foot pale blue flame shooting out of the vacuum cleaner exhaust.
Now, of course, having turned away from the milling machine, the nozzle of the vacuum cleaner was gulping pure air. The mixture inside the canister went from rich to lean and there was a dull THUMP as the top of the vacuum cleaner blew out.
Fortunately, no one was hurt. Even the vacuum cleaner lived to suck another day. But I did acquire a health caution for mixing potential fuels with potential ignition sources.
Solvent vapor and dust DO burn. Under the right conditions, they will explode. Yes, it's rare. But why risk it at all? I challenge anyone to find a modern commercial ventilation fan with an in-flow motor that uses brushes. It just isn't done.
Greg Reynolds, IPMS
Exactly. I haven't seen a small fan with brushes in years - they are all mains-voltage synchronous motors - no contact, no possibility of a spark.
In any case the risk in the case of hobby airbrushing is negligable - the quantities of vapour, which is mostly low-flammability (the exception is lacquers) is not sufficient to cause an explosion danger.
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