Mud Puppy
Petty Officer 1st Class
- Joined
- Sep 8, 2013
- Messages
- 276
Re: Dust Collection when Grinding Fiberglass
It may no longer be a carcinogen, but once the glass fibers enter your lungs, they are with you for the rest of your life as I have heard from a couple of Doctors and a friend who is a funeral director and mortician. One of the reasons they don't sell Angle Hair for Christmas trees any longer which was made from spun glass (fibers).
I worked for a Ready To Assemble furniture manufacturer in Maintenance back years ago and they had 7 extremely large dust collectors, each containing 4 or more cyclones. Below each cyclone tower was a bag house containing up to 50 6' by 24" bags which collected the heavy particulate as well as dust to the outside of the bags with a air pulse every minute or so to clean these bags. The bottom of the bag house was a hopper with a rotatory gate that ran all the time allowing the dust to fall through to an auger. The facility was over 10 acres when I started and had 36" or 48" duct supported from the ceiling running to these cyclones with 3" "dust sweeps" every 50 foot or so. The machines that moved had "zippers" which were rubber flaps on either side of the zipper that allowed the machine to move. We also had portable units which were constructed using 55 gallon barrels so I may be of little help on smaller systems, but I remember none of the portable units had very large motors at all; I think the largest was a half horse or so.
My point being, all of these worked extremely well including the smaller units. The larger ones would suck a ball cap off your head in a New York second as well as tools or your arm just as easy. Take it from 11 years experience.
I followed the link to look over the cyclone and it should work very well. Where I work currently, we have a little four bag collector we use for such.
I personally used a good respirator, Tyvec suits, and a large swamp cooler type roll around shop fan to move the air-born dust stopping frequently for the shop vac for escaping dust. I capture most of the heavier stuff at the source with the hose clamped to prevent it from moving just barely downstream from where I am working and I don't have to drag anything else along other than the air hose for my high speed sander. I mounted the clamp to a "L" shaped bracket I made form a couple of 1x6s and threw a 10 lb shot-peen bag on it so I can still drag it along when I move, plus I can change the height any time as I need. I position the hose up against the hull within an inch or two from my work. Works very well for me and it was cheap.
EDIT: I also use the swamp cooler fan only, no water.
It may no longer be a carcinogen, but once the glass fibers enter your lungs, they are with you for the rest of your life as I have heard from a couple of Doctors and a friend who is a funeral director and mortician. One of the reasons they don't sell Angle Hair for Christmas trees any longer which was made from spun glass (fibers).
I worked for a Ready To Assemble furniture manufacturer in Maintenance back years ago and they had 7 extremely large dust collectors, each containing 4 or more cyclones. Below each cyclone tower was a bag house containing up to 50 6' by 24" bags which collected the heavy particulate as well as dust to the outside of the bags with a air pulse every minute or so to clean these bags. The bottom of the bag house was a hopper with a rotatory gate that ran all the time allowing the dust to fall through to an auger. The facility was over 10 acres when I started and had 36" or 48" duct supported from the ceiling running to these cyclones with 3" "dust sweeps" every 50 foot or so. The machines that moved had "zippers" which were rubber flaps on either side of the zipper that allowed the machine to move. We also had portable units which were constructed using 55 gallon barrels so I may be of little help on smaller systems, but I remember none of the portable units had very large motors at all; I think the largest was a half horse or so.
My point being, all of these worked extremely well including the smaller units. The larger ones would suck a ball cap off your head in a New York second as well as tools or your arm just as easy. Take it from 11 years experience.
I followed the link to look over the cyclone and it should work very well. Where I work currently, we have a little four bag collector we use for such.
I personally used a good respirator, Tyvec suits, and a large swamp cooler type roll around shop fan to move the air-born dust stopping frequently for the shop vac for escaping dust. I capture most of the heavier stuff at the source with the hose clamped to prevent it from moving just barely downstream from where I am working and I don't have to drag anything else along other than the air hose for my high speed sander. I mounted the clamp to a "L" shaped bracket I made form a couple of 1x6s and threw a 10 lb shot-peen bag on it so I can still drag it along when I move, plus I can change the height any time as I need. I position the hose up against the hull within an inch or two from my work. Works very well for me and it was cheap.
EDIT: I also use the swamp cooler fan only, no water.
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