Exhaust fans

Moore Bettah Ukuleles

Moore Bettah Ukuleles

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I'm remodeling my spray room and I figured it's time for me to start using an explosion proof fan before my luck runs out. Anyone have any experience with these? The ones I've looked at are extremely expensive. I'm currently using a box fan with filters and a shield over the motor. I can't do any cheaper but I think I can do better.
 
What about pressurizing the room ( with a fan ) with a tall chimney to get a good draft?
 
That's one way of doing it but impractical in my case. What I have essentially is a 8' X 8" "tent" or booth within my spray room in which the actual spraying is done and where the instruments are hung. The idea is that I can remove the vinyl wall panels occasionally to clean them. My objective is to keep the room as clean and dust free as I can while still moving an adequate amount of air.
There seems to be quite a bit of controversy on the various painting forums whether or not a explosion proof fan is really necessary. I'm reading that most of these cheap 20" box fans are brushless anyway but I don't have positive verification of this. I have nothing else inside this tent except for a light and all the switches, my HVLP and fresh air respirator are located outside. From what I'm reading it seems the main cause from explosions is the sparking of switches when there are volatile vapors in the room and not from the fan itself.
 
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Moore Bettah Ukuleles said:
. . . From what I'm reading it seems the main cause from explosions is the sparking of switches when there are volatile vapors in the room and not from the fan itself.
Click to expand...

Exactly. Explosion proof fans have a sealed motor, that's the main thing about it. Of course blade can spark, but I don't think its the main cause. If you already have the fan, just swap out the motor. Grizzly has some TEFC in their catalog. If its a direct drive, swap it out with a pulley and put the motor to the side. Imagine a direct drive fan pulling vapors right across an unsealed motor that is sparking . . .
 
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A couple of years ago I bought an "On-Off" switch on E-bay (at the right price)..it's specialy designed for the Petrochemical industry..it consists of twin rocking glass enclosed liquid mercury contacts..its garanteed not to produce sparking within the switch...it's still on the shelf in my shed, I never found a use for it.
 
I have a lot of back issues of Fine Woodworking. There have been articles in the past about spray booths and keeping the cost down. I'll check them out.

When I was a luthier, we had a belt drive fan and the motor was outside the booth area. The lighting was explosion proof and so was the heater (chicago... not your problem).
 
This thread has just reminded me of about 25 years ago when I was a QA man at a company in the UK..One day the compressor broke down, putting the Spray shop out of work...so an enterpising young Sprayer Chap had this great idea and connected his spray gear to an Oxygen bottle and commenced spraying:(..I just happened to walk by and spotted what he was doing, and I thought that Guy is spraying with "Celulose and Oxygen" = "Rocket Fuel":mad:...so I went and stopped him....Because I stopped him I was confronted by the shop Forman and the Shop Manager..I thought my actions would be appreciated ??? but No ..instead I got a complaint to the upper Management..That I was detrimental to the Project:confused: and I was interfering with Production...Luckily the MD was more inteligent than his Staff.:D
 
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Chuck,
There are a bunch of table top spray booths on the market that are designed specifically for the hobbyist and small shop applications. We looked at several under $500 for one area of our shop where we used rattle can spray paint, as we had gotten written up by an environmental hygienist from OSHA. I could track down the info we came up with if you can't find anything but I'd start by searching for table top spray booths.

I have a large booth, 400 Sq ft +/- in my shop and the smallest fan we could get sucks the air out of the booth in a matter of moments and out of the 3000 sq ft shop in about 15 minutes. My insurance agent was dismayed with my fluorescent lights and outlets in the spray booth and said that having an explosion proof motor with them in there was senseless.

I would suggest turning the fan on before spraying and letting it run for sometime after spraying. Its primarily the starting spark that you should be most concerned about.
 
I'm spraying up to 8 ukes at a time so a smaller booth would be impractical. I've used my spraying room in it's current configuration for 6 or 7 years with no problem. Since I've been shooting with the HVLP I don't have a lot of stuff in the air, maybe because the particle size is bigger. I'm going to keep doing what I've been doing. If I go up in smoke, you guys can have my stuff. Or what's left of it.
Thanks for the input.
 
I just go outside with my explosive lacquers and try to stand upwind. I have a natural gas water heater in my shop/garage and don't risk potential re-arranging of my molecular structure and home.


Shame you don't live in Minnesota. Pretty good buy on the auction block tomorrow: $25 for a whole booth, filters, fan and all.
http://www.irsauctions.com/index_lots.asp?id=13987&ind=50
 
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Tarhead said:
I just go outside with my explosive lacquers and try to stand upwind. I have a natural gas water heater in my shop/garage and don't risk potential re-arranging of my molecular structure and home.


Shame you don't live in Minnesota. Pretty good buy on the auction block tomorrow: $25 for a whole booth, filters, fan and all.
http://www.irsauctions.com/index_lots.asp?id=13987&ind=50
Click to expand...

"to bad you don't live in Minnesota".... You're funny :D
 
Hey Chuck. You'll be fine. Our old spray booth was not a professional setup and we were using some old motor we had lying around the shop. Thousands of ukes in runs from 10-20 at a time came out of the booth on a daily basis and we're still here. I actually did talk to the firemen a few times during the yearly safety inspections and asked them specifically about the spray booth and it's chances of blowing up. If you're spraying nitro, you're not at a very high risk. The fuel to oxygen ratio for an explosion will almost never happen, unless you start shooting tons of very finely vaporized laquer thinner. In short, you would have to try to create and explosion and it probably still wouldn't happen. Of course that conversation was off the record and our current spray booth does meet the safety requirements. Better safe than sorry, but it's not something I would lose any sleep over.
 
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