Air Filters and Vents for Scientific and Engineering Equipment

There are two categories of equipment:  one is when the machine (like a 3D printer) gives off particles that would potentially be a health risk.  In that case you need a solution that either filters or vents the particles away from the operator.  The best solution in this case is to use negative pressure inside the enclosure, which will create a vaccuum as particles are removed from the enclosure and either filtered or vented.

The other category is scientific equipment that is super sensitive to dust and particles, in which case you want to protect it from the environment.  For this scenario you want to use positive pressure to move air from the outside through a filter and inside the enclosure, forcing a small flow of air to keep the inside air clean.

We take two approaches to air quality management. Venting is cheap and effective since it relies on the fact that the lung-damaging particles are so small they drift along with the air. By keeping negative pressure on the enclosure, the particles are swept along through the vent to the outside, giving the best possible indoor air quality. This is approach taken by our large industrial lasers. There's actually a 1 ft x 5 ft hole in the front of the laser to give the largest volume of air flowing through the laser and to the outside.

If you can't vent to the outside, there are a variety of qualities of air filtering. Using a filter is less safe because the air is returned into your breathable airspace, but may be good enough for many situations. We provide a carbon filter that removes enough VOCs that we can't measure them, but may not remove smaller particles that only a HEPA filter can handle. Good quality air filters capable of getting both sizes of particles run $500 dollars and up and are a speciality unto themselves.  Should you want to go with an industrial grade air filter we can custom design and attachment for you.

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