Shop Air Cleaner

[mr95gst]

I have been working out of a 2 car garage recently and I have been increasingly concerned about the air quality. Every time I do any woodworking I can see a cloud of fine particles floating around the garage. I happened to come into possession of some damaged fans and decided to build an air cleaner. I modeled it after the Jet/Wen/Powertec air cleaners. I purchased the Powertec brand filters from Amazon for under $20. All the other materials were free.

*****PHOTOBUCKET HIJACKED MY PICTURES SO I HAVE EDITED THE POST TO ADD THE PICTURES BACK. THEY ARE NO LONGER IN ORDER TO MATCH COMMENTARY MADE WHEN THE THREAD WAS STARTED.

These are the fans I used. They are cooling fans designed to be mounted on the doors of industrial control panels. Each fan was rated at 300 cfm. The fan cages were damaged so they were thrown in the trash. The motors still worked so I grabbed them..

I made some custom mounts out of oak scrap. Then I put them on a MDF frame.

This is the box that houses the fans and filters. The main panels are 1/4" mdf and braced with pine.

This is the 1 micron inner filter

This is the 3 micron outer filter

This is the air cleaner finished and mounted on the ceiling. The dimensions are 18"x11"x22" and it weights roughly 15 to 20 lbs. Right now I am controlling it will a simple on/off switch. I am think about changing it to a variable speed switch so that I can control the speed of the fans. Initially I was a bit worried that I wasn't going to get enough flow through the filters, but I was wrong. This thing is a beast. I am getting plenty of suction through the filters. I still need to make a front cover to diffuser the air coming out of the fans, but it is functional for the time being.