As I mentioned in my earlier post, I am fairly new to laser engraving. In the past, I’ve been doing engraving via CNC routing, and I’m running into a new situation for me - the odor left over from the lasing. Now, before since I’d generate some heat, the smell would mostly be localized around the machine. Now, with the laser, as it is vaporizing the acrylic, it’s creating a rather strong smell in the entire room.I do have an air handler connected to the laser that draws out ~530 cfm vented to the outside, but I seem to still have a very strong smell in the room, which seems to drift to other nearby rooms. A 6×7 image engraved into acrylic has successfully created a stink in well > 1500sqft of indoor space.I’m wondering what everyone else does to vent the gasses and smells out of their work spaces? I realize I won’t get rid of all of it, but for some reason I think I have more then I really should….
I don’t know if this is the problem or not, do you have like a vent cap on the exhaust end?
What I am wondering is are you getting a back draft to bring the smell back into the machine through your exhaust. We have a restaurant right next to our business and I thought they were gonna kill us every time we cut acrylic! What we ended up doing was putting a elbow joint right outside running the pipe straight up about 6 feet then putting a flapper on top to eliminate the back draft.
If you think acrylic stinks up your shop, wait til you try rubber stamps!
Interesting thought. Right now I just have a louvered cap on the exit pipe outside, I had assumed that since the louvers were all the way open while the blower was on it was being funneled outside. It would be possible that I’m getting backdraft into the room. How much did the smell change after you changed your venting method?
We have a “duster” that is normally used for wood working on the outside of our building with dryer piping going through a window and into this machine. The machine pulls the air and stink out. So you really don’t notice so much in the main room where we work. Now outside is another story.
The first time I tried to engrave acrylic; I didn’t have my laser vented outside at all! 5 minutes later, 7000 sq ft with 16′ ceilings was full of stink. Luckily I have a huge exhaust fan for summer time. It only took 10 minutes to suck out all the heat (and smell).
Now seriously, if you are venting 530cfm outside, where is your intake air for your building? Some might come in through door cracks, garage doors, etc. If your building is tight, you might be drawing a vacuum on your shop, and not moving much air. Try opening a door and see if it gets better. If you have a way for air to get into the building, it might be sucking the fumes back in. 530cfm out needs 530cfm in.
I found out where my problem is, but I don’t know if it is normal.
I have a pinnacle laser and the odor reduction unit for it. I was looking into the backdraft idea, and I think I found where the problem is - if anyone has one of these, maybe you can tell me if what I’m seeing is normal or what the deal is.
On the odor reduction unit, there is the blower/motor unit mounted on top of the cabinet. It seems to have a rear “pull” area (where it is taking in air) and air seems to be exhausting over the vanes of the motor. Unfortunately, some of the air its exhausting seems to be air from the laser rather then just the fresh air it is drawing in from behind the motor.Has anyone else experienced this?
I just set up my laser system and had a very hard time getting it all sealed up from exhausting smoke. I don’t have a odor reduction system like you do however I have a dust collector system that has a motor that looks similar to yours. When I took off the cover to the motor all I found was a plastic fan on a shaft that was mounted outside the motor itself. The only way I figured I could be getting smoke would be coming thorough the two bearings at each end of the motor therefore actually passing through the motor itself. I found this very unlikely and pursued other avenues. It seemed to me at first that the odor was coming from the motor itself but you have to realize that any odor escaping from the blower would be drawn toward the fan inlet and then dispersed through the room.
My smoke ended up coming from alot of different sources. Since I was using a dust collector blower it had several small holes and overlapped seems that were leaking a little. I determined this by disassembling the fan on fan on the motor and holding a lit match at every conceivable joint on the blower unit. I siliconed ever joint and bolt hole on the blower including the overlapped spot welded joints. It helped but I still had the smoke smell. I then found that my steel hose clamps were putting holes in my plastic dust collector hose. Everytime I took the blower out to try to find the problem I was putting another bunch of small holes in it. I cut out the bad hose and taped the hose to the blower. Again this helped but I still had quite a bit of smoke smell. I noticed that it was much worse when I had the door to the room closed so I surmised that I was drawing a vacuum in the room. I finally found that the main culprit was where I was exhausting through my window. Although I had siliconed all the joints that I could find when I installed the system it was still drawing in air where the window slides on itself. After siliconing the sliding area my smoke problem went away.
Personally, I don’t vent to the outside of the building because I didn’t want to lose any AC from the building situated in Florida. Therefore, I bought a unit from a company up in Canada, and they have different sizes. Mine, is one of the larger units and was around $2,000. It is a 4 stage unit.
- 1″ filter
- 3″ filter
- 6″ Hepa filter(not sure of spelling)
- 50lbs of charcoal
It sucks out the dust and fumes and blows out clean air. Cannot smell a thing, and kept my electricity bill to within pennies of what it was before. Keeps the wife happy :-). It may not be an in-expensive solution up front for many, but in the long run with my AC running normally, I have to believe that I will save over time.
I’m in Georgia and have the same problem with the A/C. In a matter of minutes the exhaust fan can pump all the cool air out of the room and the A/C isn’t able to keep up. My solution was to locate the laser in a shop area and use a sideline cooler (swamp cooler). SO I work with the roll up door open and sit in the breeze of the fan.
I’ve considered relocating to a more retail location but odor would be an issue. I’m amazed you’re able to get away with venting back into the room. What sort of material do you engrave? How often do the filters need changing?
I engrave metals and the laser being a class 1 system offers the advantage of removing the dust and the fumes from an enclosed area. I am therefore not extracting from the entire room as an example, which helps the solution to be as effective as possible.
Here is the link for the company where I got mine from.
http://www.quatro-air.com/
These are designed for hospitals and surgery/office situations, and especially a factor for the doctors doing laser eye surgery etc.
The smell of metal is not as bad as the plastic, but it was bad enough where it was a health concern, and further I did not want all of the fine dust floating around after the ablation was done. After working with the laser without it whilst I was waiting for delivery, everything I ate tasted like aluminum :-)
I have no connection to the company, just a satisfied customer, and in addition, if I can save you some grief, then I am a happy camper.