Dust Filter for Model Workshop

[Gordon Whitehead 1]

Can anyone recommend a decent dust filter for keeping the air in one's workshop clean and free from balsa dust etc floating about?

The sort of thing I'm thinking of is a filter screen which can be cleaned of collected dust, backed by a quiet suction fan.

Home made, as well as commercially available suggestions are welcome, but please do mention where the items mentioned can be bought.

Gordon

[Denis Watkins]

You can buy a filter Gordon, as you suggest and box this in behind a fan, and on a monthly basis, vacuum the filter as they are designed for this. These filters even gather pollen.

Or look at air cleaners on Argos, where they are free standing, and work out of the box

[Gordon Tarling]

Hi Gordon - not cheap, but I'm going to be fitting one of these in my new workshop. Axminster also do a larger version.

[David P Williams]

Or there's this one - a bit cheaper. Just got outbid on a second hand one of these a while back - may splash out on a new one thoug.

[Gordon Whitehead 1]

Thanks for your suggestions guys. My workshop is a spare bedroom, with occasional forays into the garage.

I looked at the Argos "air purifiers" but would expect them to be expensive to use in a workshop dust environment. The main turn-off is the cost of replacement filters - over £40 and they're non-reusable - with a recommended domestic use replacement period of 6 months. It did get me thinking whether one would help to ease my wife's bronchiectasis however, so the recommendation was very welcome as I wasn't aware such things existed.

The two purely workshop filters look interesting. Reading the Jet reviews, it seems as if the electronic motor control unit could be unreliable, but Axminster's backup looks OK. I couldn't download the instructions for the AC400 without opening an account, but the spec looks OK, the price is certainly more attractive, and the filters can be self-cleaned too, as well as not being very expensive. Either of these filter units will probably be far better than a home-made lash-up, I suspect, unless someone knows better.

Great food for thought gents, and thanks for your replies.

Gordon

[Denis Watkins]

Apologies Gordon but this unit is £74.99, with filters less than £20 and can be vaccumed out until no longer serviceable, about 2 years

http://www.argos.co.uk/product/6126483

[Gordon Whitehead 1]

Thanks for that Denis. The price and the ability to clean the filters do make this an attractive option. The AR-10A looks well worth a try for a dual purpose air filter, ie hobby and household use. I've downloaded and read the manuals on all of the suggested items, and although the the AR-10A has a lower throughput than the others, it's more compact, and should have enough filtering capacity given the small amount of construction I do these days. When it's not helping to filter my workshop air, it can be used for its intended purpose in other rooms of the house, where clearly the workshop filters would look out of place and take a bit of lugging to get there too. The reviews on Amazon are encouraging, allowing that there are some negative ones of course. One guy liked his enough to make it deluxe with the addition of a cheap activated carbon cooker filter slotted in front of the hepa filter.

Gordon

[John Stainforth]

I have a Jet AFS dust extractor/air filter that does the job pretty wel l- it collects almost all sanding dust. To clean the filter I just bash it against an outside wall. It was quite expensive, when I bought it a few years ago.