Official Luthiers Forum!

Thinking about getting a Craftex CT168 Air Filter. I wonder if any one has any experience with this make and/or model and could supply some feed back?
Tom

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A person who has never made a mistake has never made anything!!!

Anyone using any type of air filter...........???
Tom

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A person who has never made a mistake has never made anything!!!

I'm waiting till I develop some respiratory problems before I invest in one Tom. Seriously, I don't have one but looking at that model from Busy Bee, I might pick one up. What's not to like. 3 speed, 1 and 5 micron filters and a remote. Pretty reasonable price too. Some of the Craftex stuff can be pretty mediocre but there's not a lot of moving parts on those units. Busy Bee service has always been good for me. They took back 2 crappy band saws without a fight. The comparable General unit is $150 more and they're probably made in the same factory. Thanks thanks for the heads up.

Don`t try to scrimp and save on an air filtration unit.
I`ve been around some pretty nasty stuff in my years of different occupations, and the toll it takes in the long run is the absence of the air you breathe. It may be all around you, but if your lungs won`t process it, you`re done.
Yeah, COPD sucks.
I have a hard time doing menial things around the place nowadays.

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Give me 50 cents worth of regular.
Check my oil too, if you don`t mind,,,

I am using a nano filter which is supposed to be better than HEPA. Seems to work great and it has great air flow.

Been running that unit for a few years now and no issues. Reasonably quiet anf 3 speeds are nice but I run mine on high speed all the time. I will probably need new filters soon, I clean them with my shop vac but they are getting quite dirty, so are removing lots of dust.

Fred

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Fred Tellier
http://www.fetellierguitars.com
Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/pages/FE-Tellier-Guitars/163451547003866

Danny: Strange you should say this..........the main reason I'm looking at an air filter is because I've set up a new shop and am tired of dealing with the fine dust,( the real dangerous stuff)like I did at the old shop,it gets everywhere. Thanks to you and Coe I realize I should also be worried about my lungs.

Fred: Thanks for that, I was hoping someone had used one for a while and had a good experience, lets me buy with more confidence.

Barry: Thanks for the tip.
Tom

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A person who has never made a mistake has never made anything!!!

If we are talking about health here, how can you not go to a HEPA? Supposably the real dangerous stuff is under one micron. I run an Austin Air. 400 CFPM and huge HEPA media for $400+ iirc. Can anyone else touch that? I can't believe I worked for a few years without it!

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Pat

Tom,

I have both a delta and steel city version of the same thing. They are effective. But here's the thing. It's the sub micron particles you need to worry about, and the stock filters will help not one iota in that regard, and in fact will serve well to keep them flying through your shop.

I was developing sensitivities. The feeling you get when you walk into the shop and it feels like the flu, hot face, watery nose and eyes. So I complemented the dust collector and air filter with a Honeywell HEPA filter, and literally overnight the problem disappeared. I leave it running on full 24hrs a day and clean it weekly. I highly recommend it, it's been the best shop improvement since getting a dust collector in the first place. In fact I'm going to get an even bigger one and put the smaller one in the smaller shop. Can't say enough good things about it.

As well, a company called Wynn Environmental makes filters for both dust collectors and air filters like the one you're asking about that do filter sub micron particles. I believe the last time I checked, they were about 75$ for the machine you're asking about, so a very modest investment in your health.

Maybe you've been there already, but if you google Bill Pentz, there is a lot of info on dust collection in general...

Cheers!

I bought a Dylos DC1100Pro air quality monitor. It continuously measures the quantity of half micron particles in the air. The results were surprising. I found that the level in my carpeted living room was between four and seven thousand particles per cubic foot (with playing grandchildren on the room). I decided I would use that as the standard of acceptability for the shop. Using a "Merv 1900" filter ( the best you can get for an HVAC system at Lowes) in front of a squirrel cage fan in a box, I have been able to keep my workshop at 2000/cubic foot or less. I use this in addition to a good dust collection system. Without the filter, some operations can take the particle count well over 10,000. The air quality monitor was well worth the expense to me. Sometimes, an operation that I expected to be clean produced a lot more dust than I could see and the air quality monitor warned me to turn on the filtered fan. The filter (the 3M brand with pleated paper--the other brand with a woven material can't be cleaned) can be cleaned several times with a vacuum cleaner or compressed air before it fuzzes out and becomes useless.

Meddling, which model Honeywell Hepa are you using right now, and how big is your shop roughly? Trying to figure out which unit I should be looking at for my shop. Thanks

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Brad

It's this one.

But I'm going to get the taller version when I can, just cause bigger must be better, right?

Shop is about 10x12x8...

Thanks! How loud is this model when running on high? I've read some reviews that talk about the Honeywell units being quite loud when running on medium or high.

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Brad

It's presence is noticeable when I'm not doing anything. However, the routers, bandsaw, tablesaw, dust collector, edge sander, vacuum cleaner, in essence everything else is way louder...

Matthias on www.woodgears.ca has done some interesting experiments and has some interesting discussion about dust. You can see some of it here: http://woodgears.ca/dust/dylos.html

Pat

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There are three kinds of people:

Those that make things happen,
those that watch things happen,
and those that wondered what happened.