Strong acrylic smell on small rastor and vector?

[Keith Upton]

Hi Mike,

It was not the wood adapter that I made and inserted into the window. That was sealed off good with weather stripping. The problem was that when you open a window part way, there is no longer a seal between the part of the window that slides, and the part that is stationary. There is a gap between those two parts with partially open. The exhaust system was pulling the stinky air that it had just pumped out of the room, back into the room from that gap. Once I found that, I sealed it off with weather stripping and covered that with duck tape to ensure it was as good a seal as I could get it. Is that clearer?

[Mike Lassiter]

Yes. Keith that makes sense. You test you exhaust air flow with another window cracked to allow air back into the room and see if the cfm increased over what you reported?
If you are exhausting 400-500 cfm out it HAS to be replaced somewhere or you will start starving the blower for air to exhaust. That would aggravate fumes getting back in the house as it would be under negative pressure relative to the outside of the building.

[Keith Upton]

Yes, I tested it with a different window open in the house. No change to CFM. I don't think I was starving it for air, I just think it was easy for it to pull the air from outside the window. Cold outside, warm inside, the air wanted to come back in anyways.

[Mike Lassiter]

There are a lot of places for air to be drawn back into houses. Got a fireplace?, furnaces, over the range microwave that is vented outside ( they do have a damper that attaches on the back or top to prevent air coming back in, but it's not 100% effective) exhaust vents in bathrooms, clothes dryers, around doors and windows. Around receptacle and light switches on walls, thru holes cut in cabinets for drain and water pipes and even pull air back through the vent pipes on plumbing that go thru the roof. Very hard to make houses air tight, but not exactly good to have them that way either. We do need some fresh air in which I guess you get in a pretty tightly built house by entering and exiting doors.
Anyway, I can understand now that it wasn't the laser itself that was the problem at all, it was sitting very close to the window which was the real problem. Glad you got it figured out.

[Gale Smith]

Hi,
I recently set up my laser as follows. Laser: 2 90 elbows: 660 cfm green dust collector from harbor freight : straight pipe to the outside. I think the dust collector might be leaking because there is a decent odor. Is there a better dust collector that is air tight?
Keith Upton- what did you find was the cause of odor? How did you fix it?

[Keith Upton]

The odor for me was being sucked back into the house around the window you can see in the photos above. I ended up replacing the loud red dust collector with the larger green one from HF. I then took 4 inch pvc pipe and plumbed it up out of the window well and down the side of the house about 8-10 feet. This got it far enough away from the windows and any other vent into the house so that it was not sucked back in.

I hope this helps you.

[Clark Pace]

Extruded acrylic does tend to be strong. It will be hard to get rid of the smell entirely in my experience

[Keith Winter]

Hi,
I recently set up my laser as follows. Laser: 2 90 elbows: 660 cfm green dust collector from harbor freight : straight pipe to the outside. I think the dust collector might be leaking because there is a decent odor. Is there a better dust collector that is air tight?
Keith Upton- what did you find was the cause of odor? How did you fix it?

What kind of machine do you have garth and what are you cutting?