I have been contemplating the flow of air in and our of a laser engraver. For CNC routers, we put a dust collector shoe and vacuum it up there. Why do we not do the same thing for a laser???
Questioning minds want to know
Bryan
I have been contemplating the flow of air in and our of a laser engraver. For CNC routers, we put a dust collector shoe and vacuum it up there. Why do we not do the same thing for a laser???
Questioning minds want to know
Bryan
Because our laser is pushing 5G's and we don't want the weight slowing us down?
Lasers : Trotec Speedy 300 75W, Trotec Speedy 300 80W, Galvo Fiber Laser 20W
Printers : Mimaki UJF-6042 UV Flatbed Printer , HP Designjet L26500 61" Wide Format Latex Printer, Summa S140-T 48" Vinyl Plotter
Router : ShopBot 48" x 96" CNC Router Rotary Engravers : (2) Xenetech XOT 16 x 25 Rotary Engravers
Real name Steve but that name was taken on the forum. Used Middle name. Call me Steve or Scott, doesn't matter.
A Router is throwing wood chips and fine dust directly into the air - Bad for your health and makes a huge mess in shops across the world. Dust shoes and dust collectors prevent this and helps solve this problem. A Laser uses a exhaust systems in a similar way, a high powered blower pulls any smoke, debris, harmful particles directly out of the laser case and sends it outside. No need to add a dust shoe to a machine that doesn't have a problem with dust. Dust collectors will suck up the dust, but they also have to filter the air and push it back out- Laser Exhaust has very fine particles and smoke, this would clog a dust filter very quickly.
3X Camfive 1200 48" x 24" 100watt Tube
Zcorp 450 3d Printer
Laguna Smartshop 2 - 4x8 ATC
The collection of the saw dust, chips and the dangerous superfines are usually captured by some sort of cyclone device before it gets to the dust collector filter, thus allowing it to be vented inside. Could a cyclone be used to capture the superfines of a laser engraver?
I think Steve hit the nail on the head. You would be adding a lot of mass to the gantry that the motors, belts, PS, etc. are not designed for. Plus stuffing the length of hose to cover the whole bed into an enclosed machine would be another engineering consideration.
Bryan visit youtube and you can see a video of how a cyclone dust collector works. The dust is thrown around in a cylinder and the heavy particles fall into the main bin (Chips), the lighter (Dangerous Particles) are sent into the filter chamber. Some of the dust will fall into the filter bin and most of it will get caught in the final filter before the air is pushed back into the room. We have two large Cyclone Collectors and have to clean the fillers daily with a compressed air or the systems performances starts to degrade rapidly.
3X Camfive 1200 48" x 24" 100watt Tube
Zcorp 450 3d Printer
Laguna Smartshop 2 - 4x8 ATC
What brand of cyclones do you have? I have followed the dust collection threads on here for a long time including the Thein one. Most of them deposit almost all of them in the cyclone. Not much if any gets to the filters.
We just upgraded to a new Oneida system (Made in the USA ) So we could setup all of our tools and Routers on one dust collector (Hopefully Saving us some money). We used a Laguna Cyclone and two jet cyclones for our Cnc's and other shop tools.
Ill try to take a quick snap shot before we empty it tomorrow afternoon to show the bin's contents.
Visit Oneida and check out any of there models (industrial Section) - They all have huge cyclones that drop into a 50 gallon drum - Then if you look on the side of them, they have several air filters with small bins attached to them. The 50 gallon drums take the wood chips and heavy particles (Bulk of the Dust Created) and the light particles (Small Harmful Particles) are forced into the filter, The filters prevents the small particles from leaving the system and the fine dust sticks to the inside of the filters (Preventing its escape). Most Small to medium Cyclone units work this way - I cant speak for the huge 50 - 350 hp systems way out of my price range and most others (Only seen a handful of these in my life)
We had to empty our old system several times a day and there was a clear difference between the drum and the bag attached to the filter (Super Fine Dust)
Still don't believe me visit your local tool store and they can give you a demo
https://www.oneida-air.com/inventoryD.asp?item_no=XXK200300&CatId={E2D6BE6D-A9B1-4F95-A716-44521A11896C}
3X Camfive 1200 48" x 24" 100watt Tube
Zcorp 450 3d Printer
Laguna Smartshop 2 - 4x8 ATC
If I am up in the the neighborhood I may just have to stop by and say Hi to a fellow creeker, I believe what your saying
I just finished looking at that link, my that is a hog of a system you have there!
Last edited by Bryan Rocker; 11-22-2017 at 10:02 AM.
That's the main reason, IMHO. The airflow in a CNC's dust/chip collection system runs the wrong direction relative to the head. Of course another way of looking at it is that the "vacuum shoe" of a laser is the entire bed.
(Trying to plumb the thing to coexist peacefully with air-assist sounds like a really fun project...or not.)
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