Does anyone know how small sanding dust is? Average dust collectors have 5 micron bags. Hepa filters are usually .3 microns. Where does sanding dust fall in?
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
I think that the size of the particle would depend on the grit of sandpaper that is being used, but that is just a guess. I found a site that has the size of different particles in microns, and saw dust is 30-600 microns. I'm pretty sure that sanding dust from resin would be close to those numbers. Can you vacuum the dust out of filters to clean them and reuse them or does that mess 'em up?
here's that site
http://www.soviet-power.com/detail.php?pid=45
I guess one of these should have no problem dealing wiht a bit of sanding dust. And on the plus side, this would look so bad ass, that no one will dare to question your badassness when you're sanding!
And im with astevens on this one, size of dust will prob. depend on grit used. However there will also be particles on nanoscale, no matter what grit you use: but i would not worry too much about them.
isn’t it quite the opposite…the smaller the particle the more worrisome it should be.
especially if your vac system is recycling through your shaping/sanding area.
I moved mine outside so that whatever is blown out gets handled by the wind and not rebreathed…
I take apart my filter when it ges dirty, and I can see where the dust hits the first white pad, and does not even touch the second one.
Hehe, indeed they are. I think reasearch that deals with materials on nanoscale has to be performed in highly controlled environments to ensure personal and environmental safety.
What I mean to say is that with regards to nanoscale sanding dust, and any other nanoscale particle (whatever it may be), there's not a whole one can do to ensure that you do not inhale any of it. Unless you shape, sand them board in a laminar flow hood, wearing full hazmat suit then chances are, everytime you take of that carbon filter mask you will inhale some micron and nano size dust that has either settled on the mask, or on your face or still floating in the air.
That is not to say however that one should not wear a mask, a mask is a must.
astevens - Do you know the size of your filter?
When I clean my sanding room with my shop vac, the dust goes right through. Too fine for the filter. But I’m not sure the filter size.
In my shaping bay, my planer is hooked to a 5 micron dust collector in a separate room. It collects nearly everything, but there is a super fine dust outside the bags. A dust that seems a similar size to sanding dust. That lead me to believe that sanding dust (a least some sanding dust) would be finer than 5 microns. But that is just a guess. I haven’t tried using that dust collector to clean my sanding room floor, it’s all piped in to my shaping bay.
Thanks for the help
Sorry, I have no idea. Would it help to somehow double line bag for extra protection?
I probably have the 5 micron filter too, but my shopvac sucks and blows alot of stuff out the side, and into my backyard.