Popular Woodworking 2000-02 № 113, страница 54

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Cleaner

Tired of sucking dust? Building an efficient air cleaner is simple and inexpensive.

orking in a cloud of sawdust in the workshop can take the fun out of woodworking. Your dust mask has to stay on longer and cleanup becomes more of a challenge.

You can reduce if not eliminate this problem with an air cleaner. Air cleaners are different than dust collectors, which pick up large dust particles and wood chips when attached to a machine, trapping the stuff in large bags. Dust collectors, however, don't trap the finer particles.

For that you need an air cleaner. It is designed to remove the smaller dust particles suspended in the air. Because the dust collector and air cleaner don't do the same thing, it's wise to have both.

The human body can filter small concentrations of dust found in the air, however the high concentration of dust generated in a wood workshop can damage your health. Lung-damaging dust is be

tween 0.5 microns and 5 microns in size. To put things in perspective, a period on a typewriter is about 500 microns across.

An air cleaner quickly removes most of the dust from your shop, but you still need to wear a proper dust mask. Don't use your air cleaner as a reason to abandon good safety practices.

Commercial air cleaners for the shop are readily available, but building your own can be just as easy. It's hard to improve on the design of store-bought air cleaners, but a homemade unit is cheaper and can be built to your needs, either for space or capacity.

There are three important elements to an air cleaner: a fan, a filter and the housing to put them in. Make sure you have the right combination of filter and fan to do the job.

Fans

The best fan for an air cleaner is a squirrel cage fan (also called a centrifugal fan

by Michel Theriault

Michel Theriault works wood part time from his home in Ottawa, Canada. He has written more than 100 magazine and newspaper articles based on his woodworking, which includes carving, turning and general cabinetry.He has also written a project book titled "Woodworking with a Few Basic Tools."