A career center in West Virginia needed efficient ventilation to create a weld school in their existing facility. While many companies had suggested installing snorkel arms, this would rely on students to move and properly use the arms. The school needed a better solution. They wanted to effectively remove weld fume without extra effort from the students or administration.
The Situation with Fumes in a Weld School
A school district in West Virginia was preparing to convert a childcare training area into a weld school. This was happening at their Career and Technical Center to fill the local demand for trained fabricators and welders. Imperial Systems’ territory manager Mitch Augustine was tapped by a sales partner in the weld gas supply industry to meet with the school’s team looking for ventilation systems.
The Evaluation
During initial discussions, Mitch quickly identified the team’s desire to capture the smoke and fume effectively at the source. They intended on relying on the snorkel arms that Lincoln Electric, Miller Electric, and others had proposed. However, there’s an issue with using extraction arms. Because the effective capture area is limited, students must keep the arms in the capture zone. This creates a reliance on the students to consistently maneuver the flexible arms as they focus on their tasks. It was important for the administration to keep the space clean and clear of smoke and haze. But they didn’t want to rely on their instructor to “police” the students’ proper use of the extraction arms.
Mitch took this into consideration and suggested that the school consider weld fume hoods instead of fume arms. These hoods allow the students to focus on their tasks without the worry and burden of adjusting fume arms. Weld fume hoods are oftentimes the solution for a more immediate capture than an ambient collection system provides.
The Solution
Imperial was awarded the project and fabricated custom hoods with LED lighting and offset overhead fume extraction. This keeps the smoke and fume out of the operator’s breathing zone. Most importantly, It requires no adjustments or action from either the student or instructor at the weld school. Ultimately, 24 hoods, a Spark Trap, and a 16-filter cartridge CMAXX Dust & Fume Collector were supplied. Professional installation was done by Imperial’s own OSHA-trained field crew. The Spark Trap ensures that any sparks collected by the hoods are eliminated before reaching the dust collector and filter media.
Weld School Success in Extracting Manual Weld Fume
After several months of active training in the weld school, the space remains clean and smoke-free. The instructor reported that the installed system is both effective and easy to use. “Simply turn the thing on when we get started and the room stays clear and smoke-free. This system is so much easier to use than any of the other portable-type units with the flex arms that I have always used in the past. I guess it is best to leave the fume extraction to the real experts and let the welding guys supply the welders!”
A steel manufacturing company had a problem keeping their motor control center (MCC) clean. Poor ventilation and filtration were allowing dust to get into the MCC room, which is a vital part of keeping the mill operational. They had recurring issues with the starters and controls due to the buildup of dust. The room was enclosed, but they were not able to keep the dust-laden air from getting inside.
Additionally, the customer had purchased a commercial-grade air handler with panel filters. They were replacing filters every week, costing them thousands of dollars per month. If you’ve ever been in a steel mill or a foundry, you would understand the large amount of dust that can accumulate. What the company needed was a self-cleaning dust collector. This would continuously clean the air while putting the room under positive pressure to keep small leaks from allowing dust to enter.
This company also needed a collector that could handle the large volume of dust that was accumulating in their facility. They needed a unit that would reliably keep their motor control center clean, protecting it from dust buildup.
Challenge
The application required taking existing air inside the control room, combining it with ambient plant air, and sending it through a dust collector. The cleaned air would then be returned to the control room. The reason for combining air from inside and outside the control room is to put the room under positive pressure. When the room is pressurized, any leaks around wires, poorly sealed doors, and other openings would have air blowing out. This keeps dirty air from getting in.
This customer was unsuccessfully using HVAC filters. The problem with these is that they are not designed to clean themselves like a dust collector. Once the HVAC filters were loaded up with dust, the customer was back to the same problem. Their goal was to filter the dust, having a system that would effectively capture even the finest material with filters that would last longer.
Solution
Imperial Systems supplied a CMAXX with a top-mounted fan and cleaning controls to this customer. The CMAXX takes dust-laden plant air, filters it, and fills the room with clean, positive pressure 24/7. Filter replacement went from once a week to an estimated two-year changeout period. Now the filters are out of sight and out of mind. Problem solved.
Contact an Imperial Systems representative today to get started cleaning up the motor control center for your facility. We will properly size a system and will work with your facilities staff. Let us show you how a system like this can save you downtime due to control room electrical failures.
A customer in the Oil and Gas industry needed a new dust collector to replace their old one. The old collector was inefficient and creating workplace hazards. The customer needed a more efficient solution that would properly gather the dust created by their tumble blasters while reclaiming the shot for later use.
The Situation
This major supplier to the Oil and Gas industry needed to replace an aging dust collector installed on three tumble blasters, their surface preparation machines. A new dust collector was needed because the system was not sized properly. Further, it was pulling too much air in certain places and not enough in others. Their dust collector and ductwork were also just completely worn out. The customer had shot media falling on the floor due to holes in the duct. This was causing slip and fall hazards.
Tumble blasters use a process of tumbling parts within a housing that spins to expose all sides of a part. On the side of the housing, there are typically multiple wheels. They rotate at high speeds and sling abrasive shot media into the housing. This is how they clean or prep the outside edge of a part. The shot creates dust from the part and the blast media breaking down.
A dust collector is needed in the process to ensure the dust is removed and allows the reusable shot to flow through and back to the wheel. When done properly, this process saves the end-user a significant amount of money on replacement shot media. They also get a more desirable surface on their part.
The Evaluations
The company contacted Tri-State Industrial Contractors, a local contractor, to specify the best dust collection system for the project. They in turn brought in Scott Davis of Air Solutions, Inc., an independent manufacturers’ rep firm. They specialize in industrial ventilation solutions and represent Imperial Systems. When he arrived on site, he learned that they already had been quoted a 9,000 CFM Donaldson Torit replacement system.
Instead of taking that Donaldson Torit quote and offering a similar size dust collector, Scott reviewed the system to ensure that Air Solutions was providing the right equipment for the job. While reviewing the system requirements, it was determined that Donaldson’s quote did not include enough air for all the drops. This system required 11,000 CFM. When selecting and sizing a new dust collector, it is very important to give the system adjustability. There must be enough air to clean the dust from the shot, but not too much suction that reusable shot is pulled through the system to the dust collector.
The Solution
Air Solutions did the most thorough evaluation of the customer’s needs including replacement ductwork and a new dust collector. Education was provided for the customer regarding the blast machine dust collectors and included a review of several requirements for a successful blast filtration project:
All drops should be balanced with air bleed-in fittings. This allows the end-user to reduce the air at the blast machine by bleeding air into the duct. This process maintains the duct velocity in the trunk line to ensure settling of dust does not occur.
The conveying velocity in the duct needs to be high enough that the dust and spent shot do not settle in the duct. This is a significant safety concern. If conveying velocity is not maintained and materials do settle in the ducting, the ductwork could collapse or fall due to excessive weight endangering personnel and processes below.
Energy savings are realized by using a VFD airflow controller. The VFD allows the dust collector to run at a consistent designed static pressure in the ductwork to maintain the same airflow when the filters load and the pressure drop increases through those filters. When the filters are new, the customer saves energy because the fan does not have to consume as much electricity to draw the required air volume.
Dust Collection Masters for Those Tumble Blasters
Ultimately, the customer selected Air Solutions and Imperial Systems to provide a CMAXX Dust & Fume Collector. The CMAXX is a perfect fit for multiple reasons. The absence of external hardware and the domed roof offers a leak-free design. These features combined with the lifetime warranty gave the customer the peace of mind to install the dust collector outside. Robust, heavy-duty construction also ensures a long life for the machine in an abrasive blast application.
The CM012 model was selected for this project. The CMAXX was sized for 11,000 CFM with an air-to-media ratio (AMR) of 2.62:1. An integral 40 HP, top-mounted fan was used to provide the design air volume at 12” w.g. static pressure. This dust collector was installed during the summer of 2018 and at publication has only required one filter change.
The big Plasma Cutting debate, Water Tables vs Downdraft Tables. Which works best for your application. Chris Phillip from AKS Cutting Systems breaks down the pros and cons of each. He also talks about how plasma tables work, as well as how AKS became one of the first Cutting table manufactures in the USA.
Narrator: Welcome to the Dusty Jobs Podcast from Imperial Systems. Industry knowledge to make your job easier and safer.
Donovan: Good afternoon, and welcome to Imperial Systems Podcast. We’re here again. We’re glad to have Chris Phillip with us from AKS. How are you doing today Chris?
Chris: Good. Good. I’m doing well. We drove in this morning from just north of here and had a nice little factory tour. It’s just a good day. It’s finally somewhat spring-y out. That’s an advantage.
Donovan: Yeah, nice weather day today. We’ve been working with you guys on different products for how many years now, with AKS?
Chris: Probably since really your inception into dust collection and plasma, I believe. So four or five years now, at least.
Donovan: We’ve had a good long relationship, you could say. For everybody out there listening who doesn’t know who you are, or who AKS, how about you give us a little bit of background on yourself. Let’s start out with you. Tell us about yourself first and then tell us about AKS.
Chris: Sure. So, I’m Chris Phillip. I’m one of the regional sales managers AKS Cutting Systems and my territory is eastern PA, so starting at State College and going east, Maryland up to Maine and New York State. In that territory I manage somewhere around, on a good day seven to eight dealers, on a bad day three or four dealers, depending on who’s doing their job that day. That’s what I do. I drive around. I live in Cleveland, Ohio, right about twelve minutes from our factory. I drive around and fly around and go meet new people who want to get into the world of plasma cutting or want to get into the world of laser cutting and really need a plasma table or people who want to get a waterjet as well. That’s also a world I dabble in as well.
AKS has been around now for, boy, 120 years. My great-grandfather purchased the business in the late forties I think is the most accurate story I’ve heard so far, and my grandfather, Dale Phillip, ran the business for fifty years. Maybe a little longer than that, somewhere around there. My dad, three or four years ago, took over the presidency. My grandfather is still CEO of the company, and I got out of that office as fast as possible and got on the road. I wouldn’t trade it for the world. I love being on the road.
Donovan: You could say plasmas in your blood almost.
Chris: Yeah.
Donovan: Not technically. Not actually.
Chris: Actually, technically, it can.
Donovan: Oh, that’s true!
Chris: Theres plasma in your blood. You need it there. That’s actually a really great little story. When my grandfather first got into the plasma industry, a guy called him out of Luxembourg or something. Somewhere – Switzerland or something. He said, “Hey, have you ever worked with plasma before?” We made automotive assembly lines. We made gauges to measure distribution caps for airbag deployment, any kind of gauges for nuclear rod insertion systems, making high speed battery assembly lines…we were all over the place. Imploding torpedos with liquid helium, all sorts of random stuff. We were the essence of a job shop. The guy called him and said, “Hey have you ever done anything with plasma?” This is like in the early 80s.
So my grandfather says, “No, we don’t do anything in the medical business.” He didn’t even know that plasma was a thing that you could cut with. Obviously now everybody knows that plasma is one of the three main technologies that you use to cut steel, and stainless steel, and aluminum plate. When we started in this twenty-five, well, boy, thirty-five years ago now, we had no idea what we were doing.
Donovan: Thirty-five years ago you guys were probably one of the first ones in the states to be using this technology.
Chris: Definitely. We were actually exporting them to Europe because for some reason the European market place started using CNC cutting technology. It seems at least to me a little bit quicker than the United States steel processing centers. Now it’s everywhere. Now we have over 1,500 installations and we make 100 or 120 machines a year.
Donovan: Now, when you say 120 – because you guys carry a variety of different types of machines, correct?
Chris: Yeah.
Donovan: So you’re talking total machines, or are we talking about just plasma tables? What are we talking about?
Chris: Yeah, total machines. For every five plasma tables we sell, we sell about one waterjet, which is in line with the market distribution as well. When you look at how many waterjets are sold nationally and how many plasma tables are sold nationally that’s about the ratio as well.
Donovan: So, kind of like your grandfather, when I see a plasma table working I am like, “How does this thing even do what it’s doing?” It’s interesting to watch it cut, and you’re like, “What is going on here?” Now, can you tell us, for people that are a little bit ignorant like me what is the actual technology? What is it doing there?
Chris: No, I can’t, because even after doing this and living in it I’m still pretty amazed by it every day that I see it. I can give you a rough metaphor of what it’s doing. You’re taking a tremendous amount of energy. Usually it’s 480V 3 phase, 67 amps. So, a lot of power, maybe 70 kW of power into this system. So, you think your lasers in the world – if you get a 10 kW laser, wow. That’s big time. That’s big time. You’re cutting half inch plate. We’re taking seven times that and we’re putting it into an area about this big, maybe an eighth of an inch big.
How it gets there is kind of interesting though. So you get this three wave form electricity, AC electricity coming into your shop. It’s going like this through the air, and there’s this device called a chopper. It’s actually a really old piece of technology, but because of the power levels that you’re dealing with you’ve got to use them. It’s the only thing that’s robust enough to deal with this. What the chopper does is kind of like what the power supply on your laptop does. It takes that AC power and turns it into DC. So it actually chops up those waveforms – that’s why it’s called a chopper – and it makes it into a nice positive line. Hopefully. That’s the idea, unless you’ve got dirty power. That’s a separate conversation. We then take that and somehow it gets from the power supply, the big black box that Hypertherm makes. That box is 80% chopper. That’s the big thing that you’re buying in there, and then a lot of oscilloscopes and other pieces of technology to make sure that line is as straight as it can be.
Donovan: So 80% percent chopper, 20% magic?
Chris: Yup. Yeah. Somewhere…20, 25, maybe it’s over 100%. I’m not sure but its a lot. Then that goes into the torch body, and I’m definitely cutting out a lot of parts here but there’s high frequency stuff that’s going on. It gets to the torch body. It gets to the nozzle, to the electrode, and that electrode. That’s basically, I believe it’s the cathode in this relationship. It’s going to start arcing back and forth, and then you run a gas through it, and the gas turns into plasma. So plasmas the fourth state of matter, right? So that gas…you know, you’ve got solid, liquid, gas, plasma. When you super excite a gas with electricity, 60,000 watts of electricity in area this big, that’s a way to get that going. You do that and then run a gas through it at a high pressure and that gas actually becomes magnetic as it turns into a plasma. That wants to then grab something, right? It’s magnetic. So it grabs the steel plate that’s right below it. When it hits that steel plate, that 70,000 watts of power is also the temperature of the surface of the sun.
Donovan: Wow.
Chris: So, it doesn’t just melt it. It actually ionizes the material. It changes state again and turns it basically into electricity, at least a small portion of that material. Most of it gets melted, and then you have 150 psi assist gas that comes out that then actually blows the material out of the way. That’s basically the gist of how plasma works. We’re taking super high voltage electricity, arcing it, running a gas through it, and letting it do it’s thing.
Donovan: In a controlled pattern.
Chris: In as controlled as we can get, yeah. That’s the part that people always want to know. They say, “What’s the accuracy of your plasma table?” They’ve got three machining centers. “What’s the accuracy of your plasma table? Can it hold five tenths? Can it hold ten tenths?” The answer is imagine trying to hold a candle, and you want to know where that flame is. It’s really, really hard. Theres ways to do it. You can measure it, but it’s tricky. Obviously just like a candle one of the byproducts of having that flame is a lot of dust.
Donovan: Well, yeah.
Chris: Which takes us to the reason why we’re here on the Imperial podcast.
Donovan: That’s where we step in and start helping out with that. Now, from my base knowledge on plasma tables and boy I have a lot more know from just that conversation.
Chris: It’s all wrong. It’s all wrong. Any service technicians that are listening right now just close your ears to that last five minutes. It’s going to hurt.
Donovan: As that chemical process is happening that’s allowing that to cut that metal there’s obviously some byproducts and that’s what we’re talking about. There’s smoke, and from what I understand there’s two ways that basically the industry uses to capture that. That’s a bed of water underneath it or actual sucking that smoke down through the table. Is that…am I getting anything wrong here?
Chris: That’s the two methods that I know of. The third method is you just don’t care enough and you let it fill up your shop.
Donovan: I’m sure you’ve been in some shop…
Chris: It gets interesting. You don’t want to be in those for too long.
Donovan: I know we had one time out here where for some reason when someone changed the filters in our own collector they forgot to engage them so they were actually up tight and we had some blow through on our plasmasmoke and very quickly we knew in our shop as everything started to turn orange that we had done something wrong.
Chris: You guys cut a lot of mild steel so that definitely makes sense. It’s interesting. You can actually tell what product you’re cutting or what material you’re cutting based on the color of the smoke. Your aluminums its going to be a whiter smoke and on your mild steels, your carbon-based steels it’s orange. What is burning metal? We all know what burning metal really is. It’s oxidation. It is extremely accelerated oxidation. So what you’ve got there, the byproduct of cutting this material, along with the slag that falls off and the part that’s made, that stuff that isn’t there had to go somewhere. I know there’s a lot of magic in the box. But there’s not much magic on the table. That’s pretty simple. The answer to that is that it oxidizes and it becomes that smoke. The reason it looks all orange is because or rust. It’s rust. It’s rust flakes that are flying everywhere through the air. They’re just a lot smaller than what you consider rust.
Donovan: Well, that makes a lot of sense. So, when we’re talking about the water based tables and we’re talking about the air based tables, can you kind of tell us a little bit…I mean I’m sure each one has some advantages, some disadvantages. Can you tell us a little bit more and unpack if someone’s listening to this and trying to decide if they should get a water based table or “Should I get an air based table?” What would be some things that they should think about?
Chris: Well, I’ll prep that question by saying that I am, and this is no accolade to Imperial, I’m 100% downdraft.
Donovan: Gotcha.
Chris: 100% downdraft, and the reason being is because of that idea that we started with this conversation. Controlling the candle. We’ve figured out that you can just have a candle waving in the air. You can have a plasma torch that’s just doing it’s thing like we did back in the early 80s when we didn’t really know what we were doing. Since then there has been all sorts of developments. There is the different PSI assist gas. You can take that candle flame and if you run a high speed current of air up the side of that candle, guess what? You stabilize that candle flame, right? It’s called a shield gas. Same thing that we do. We run a cut gas that gets electrified and turned into the plasma arc. Then there is also a gas on the outside of that, just like a welder does, that isolates that gas, the plasma arc, from ambient air. We don’t really know what’s in the ambient. Theres a lot of nitrogen. Theres other stuff. Who knows? By doing that, by isolating that flame from atmosphere, you really include the quality of your cut.
Donovan: Right, it gives it more of a controlled environment to live in. You’re saying on a downdraft table then that helps assist with that, right?
Chris: We’re getting there. We’re getting closer. So after they did those types of shield gas type things, they were still cutting, plus or minus, twenty, twenty five thousandths of an inch. Maybe more than that. Fifty thousandths of an inch. You think it’s minuscule but a human hair is about five thousandths of an inch. So we’re cutting hairs here, literally. That’s what they were living at when they started doing that. They started looking at other variables. What else can we change? At that point, basically everybody was using a water table. They just said, “It captures it and it works.” Somebody eventually had the idea of, “Well, we know that by cutting this we are obviously causing a lot of thermal changes in the material, and maybe if that was more consistent we would cut better.” Meaning, “Why are we quenching the bottom of the plate with water?” This is a thermal process. We’re melting stuff. What if we just let air be underneath the plate? That improved the quality of cutting. You don’t get as much dross. When you cut the material, obviously some of it is liquid and it’s going to build on the bottom of the plate. If you cool it right away, more of it’s going to build on the bottom of the plate. Makes sense, right?
Donovan: Yup.
Chris: Also, it causes more thermal things to occur with the material. So, in my experience across the board, if I want to show somebody a really good part…you know, the system we have in our facility, when we cut samples for customers all day long, it’s a downdraft system, 110%. It would never be a water table.
Donovan: I got you, because you just get a little more of an accurate cut. You get a better cut.
Chris: I’ve had this conversation, obviously, literally a couple hundred times with people trying to decide between a water table and a downdraft table. I should say this. There are two huge factors in determining where a customer is actually going to end up between plasma and water jet. The first one is their space. Huge. In the plasma world the dust collector is honestly kind of seen as a pain, you know? I’ve got this big thing that I’ve got to deal with. It takes filters. I’ve got to do stuff to it. For some reason a lot of these guys look at the water table and they say, “Oh, I just fill it up with a hose and you’re good to go.” Then they’re surprised when somebody knocks on their door and says, “Hey, have you bought your 5,000 gallons of plasma table additive to add to your water every month to keep it from becoming a cesspool in the middle of your shop? “Whoa, what’s this?” So that’s definitely a big thing, that people think that it’s easier to have a water table.
Donovan: I think a lot of people don’t – once the water is in there, it’s hard to know what to do to get rid of it, too. I know we’ve had some calls like that in our own facility. We don’t deal with that so we’re not really experts.
Chris: What do you say to that?
Donovan: We say that they have to contact someone else that’s a hazardous waste manufacturer or disposal. “We’re not able to help you with that. Sorry.” If you want to get a downdraft table we know what to do with those filters when they’re done. That’s another question we usually get, what to do with this water. The best answer I’ve come up with, I don’t know if you know a better one, is to contact your local hazardous waste disposal people.
Chris: Yeah, you can actually contact a sewer cleaning company.
Donovan: Oh, okay.
Chris: They’ll bring in a pump truck and they’ll take an eight inch hose set up on some diaphragm pump, and they’ll take that eight inch hose and suck out your whole table dry in about forty five seconds, as long as they can access the table. They have to be able to back a truck up through your shop, and that’s usually the catching point because if somebody buys a water table, one of the bigger reasons why they want to do that is space. Two big factors: space, and the other one I actually haven’t gotten to yet, but it’s what they’ve already owned in the past. Usually if they’re buying it, it’s because they have piles of steel everywhere. Theres two rolling machines in the way. Theres a brake and there’s no way they can get a truck to the table. So they say, “That’s great. What else?” The answer to that is buy yourself a little sump pump, put it in there, get a 55 gallon bucket, and start pumping that thing out and dumping it down the drain until you have a wet sludge of empty table and then you have to go in there. Maybe if you have a guy who might be on his way out the door or something you can tell him to go clean out the water table because I wouldn’t want to do it. You’re just left with the gunk that builds up in the table that’s sat there for maybe a year with the water stagnant and all the drop outs and stuff. It gets gross. You can do it. People do it all the time. A lot of people still do it. The reason a lot of people do it is that second reason. It’s what they know. A lot of people if they had a water table they’re just going to get another water table. They don’t see the up front cost of a dust collector as advantageous because they’re blind to the dross they’re dealing with, the extra rust that they’re dealing with, all the extra stuff that the downdraft system helps alleviate the cost of down the line.
Donovan: Yeah, if you don’t know, you don’t know. So, do you feel like we’ve covered everything with the downdraft table setup? You know more than I do. If theres anything else out there that might be good for someone to know.
Chris: Yeah, I mean, I guess the only other thing that people definitely worry about with downdraft systems is the possibilities of explosions. That’s obviously a big thing, especially when you’re cutting aluminum. Powdered aluminum is literally what’s used to make military grade explosives. So, one of the byproducts of cutting aluminum on a table is powdered aluminum, basically. It’s the dust that’s created from the cutting, that white dust. With your spark arrestor properly maintained and the systems that you guys have offered, we cannot say with the couple hundred installations that we have that we have had an issue with the system being maintained and used they way it should be. The spark arrestor in particular is…I was just poking around and if you haven’t seen one on the inside look it up. They have some good cross sections on Imperial’s website. You can’t drop big drops into it. You’ve got to clean it out once in a while. That can be hard to get people to accept once in a while. If you maintain it, it shouldn’t be an issue.
Donovan: That’s why we build the clean out door on it, so you can do that, so you can inspect it. Everyone’s inspection level is different and how often you need to do it. Some of that comes down to the operation. Sometimes that comes down to the operator on that piece of equipment. You’re right. It’s good to poke your head into that every once in a while and make sure it’s good whether it’s every six months…we always, and I’m sure you guys do too, we always encourage preventative maintenance on everything. That’s with every piece of equipment you have in the shop. Anybody who’s running a shop knows that you’ve got to look at stuff every once in a while, right?
Okay, so, wet versus dry, I think we’ve got a really good feel for that, where we’re at, what the industry is like. So, I’m going to ask you a question and I know you’re not a doctor. I’m not a doctor, but one of the big questions we get people looking up is plasma smoke. What is the health implications for that, if I’m breathing that in? People get worried about that. I’m sure you’ve gotten asked that question too, being what you do for years and years and years. I’d love to hear what your answer is on that.
Chris: Cutting stainless steel in particular is a known carcinogen. That’s something that is factually know. You don’t want to breathe in the dust that’s creating from cutting stainless steel. Hexochromium variant gas, that’s the byproduct. Apparently that means its bad for you.
Donovan: *laughing* The name is just scary itself.
Chris: Aluminum, one of the byproducts of aluminum is hydrogen gas, which, something I didn’t touch on with a water table is with aluminum, you get hydrogen gas build up under the plate. That will eventually blow up. You’re worried about your dust collector blowing up once every fifteen years. If you don’t have a properly maintained bubbler system inside your water table you could have an explosion once a week on that. I actually saw one where a quarter inch plate of aluminum, they hit a pocket of hydrogen gas underneath it, and it looked like a thanker when through it. It hit the beam. The beam lifted up. It was a lot of, “Whoa, that was neat.”
Donovan: We’ll just pause here for a second on the dangers of smoke and I want to talk about one thing. If you have a wet table, are you saying that still doesn’t collect everything that the byproducts are? Are you saying you still might need a ventilation system on that? You’ve seen a lot more of these in the field. You’re talking about it could possibly blow up. Is that something that even on a wet table you might still want to consider? I’m going to let you speak to that.
Chris: Sure, definitely. In an ideal setting, if you’re using your water table properly, meaning you’re running your water about half way up the side of your plate. It has an internal bladder system so when you take your one inch plate of steel and you put it on it, it is up to the bottom of the plate. That’s really important. You can’t have a gap. You can’t have an air gap there. If you have an air gap, the smoke just goes out from underneath the plate and you might as well not have anything. So you’ve got to keep that water up. Well, by having that water up then you deal with all the issues that the guys down the line don’t want. That after the pain of a capital expense up front goes away, your production guys say, “Well every part I get off this machine has dross on it, and there’s flash rust on the bottom. Lower the water.” So they lower the water just a little bit. Now their dust collection went down from 95% or so to like 10%, but their parts turn out great. They say, “Well, I have a water table, so let’s just not worry about it. Theres a lot less dross because you’re not quenching the slag as it comes off the part. You’re running a current through steel in water. You get rust, right?
Donovan: Right.
Chris: You can flash rust a part in a couple seconds, especially when it’s submerged in water. You can literally watch the rust grow on a piece of steel. It’s kind of wild.
Donovan: So you’re saying when people do that, when they drop that water level then…
Chris: Yeah, then they’re not even using the water table. They have the water table. They’re maintaining it. They’re cleaning it. They’re doing everything they need to do. They paid more for the water table on the base system than a downdraft system, at least the ones I sell. Our downdraft tables are cheaper than our water tables. But you still have smoke that gets out. So now you’re dealing with all the negatives of the capital costs of a water table and very few of the positives. That’s after six months. You got back into a shop and sure enough, you see that they’re running it below where they should.
Donovan: We’ll just throw this out there. If that happens, and you guys need some other type of collection system, Chris, you can definitely help them out with that. You can help them figure out a solution for that. Whether it’s a hood, whether it’s whatever…
Chris: I liked your ambient system out there in your factory. That’s a nice system.
Donovan: It’s working really well for us.
Chris: I could see that in a lot of shops.
Donovan: It’s a good solution. We’ve talked about that on a previous episode with Jeremiah, so if anybody is listening and they want to go back and look at industrial setups that’s one of the things. You can go back to that podcast episode and listen to that and Jeremiah can walk you through what an ambient system is. Alright, so that dangers of plasma – we’re coming back around to the health implications. So, a lot of it comes down to what you’re cutting.
Chris: Yeah, at the end of the day I don’t know if mild steel smoke is actually poisonous. You know, like you said, we’re not doctors, but I’ve watched guys have to breathe it in and it looks a lot like welding fumes and it doesn’t look nice. You can be around a plasma table and watch it cut one inch plate for five minutes and literally watch smoke billow off the table in rolling fumes. This stuff, you’ll watch it settle, and everything around you, the whole shop is covered in orange. It can’t be good for your lungs. I can’t believe it would be. You know, if you walk away from something coughing…
Donovan: That’s probably a good indicator.
Chris: Yeah:
Donovan: Well, Chris, I think we’ve talked a lot about how different tables work and everything. Is there anything else that you think people should know about out there or can you think of anything else we haven’t touched on that might be beneficial?
Chris: Yeah, sure. So, the last thing that I leave you with is understanding that when you’re making this decision between a water table or a downdraft system we’re in between technologies. Laser cutting or plasma cutting, all that type of stuff…get samples. Get samples from your supplier, honestly. I can get you some samples cut on a water table or cut on a downdraft system and there’s notable differences. When you hand those to an operations guy and he looks at those two parts and he says, “Well this one is going to take me five minutes of grinding to prep. This ones going to take me thirty seconds to prep.” That’s the game. That’s it. Those five minutes add up very quickly. All of a sudden you’re employing two more people just to grind the parts because the water table is set too low and you’re not even collecting the dust anyways and you’re dealing with bad parts. I think the water table back in the day made sense, but now we’ve gotten all these other variable solved to the point that we’re looking for other things. The next variable is sticking with downdraft.
Donovan: And efficiency and just trying to…if they’re trained to weld, you want them to be welding. You know what I mean? You don’t want them to be messing with parts more than they have to. You want them to do the job you’re paying them to do. I get it. Uptime, productive time, is helping people make money. That’s what you guys want to do, that’s what we want to do. We want people to be productive, and we want them to be in the healthiest and safest environment that they can. That’s what we’re trying to do on this podcast is help people understand what’s a good decision for them to be healthy. That’s what you guys are doing over at AKS, trying to create a good, healthy shop environment.
Chris: Definitely.
Donovan: Thanks for coming on. I really appreciate it. Everyone who is listening, you can check us out on social media. You can like, subscribe, check us out there. AKS, do you guys have a lot of social media?
Chris: Yeah, we have all that stuff too.
Donovan: So find us all on Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube, all of that. Chris is glad to talk to you. I’m glad to talk to you if you have any questions. You can check us out there. Until next time, stay healthy, stay safe and we’ll be looking forward to talking to you again.
Chris: You go it. Thank you for having me on.
Donovan: Yup, thanks for coming.
Narrator: Thanks for listening to the Dusty Jobs Podcast. Breathe better, work safer.
For many businesses, summer brings vacations, holiday weekends, and summer maintenance shutdowns. While you’re checking and maintaining your other equipment, why not also give your dust collector a summer shutdown checkup?
In the lovely winters of western Pennsylvania where we’re located, nobody wants to be outside changing filters in the freezing rain. So, if your location has winters like ours, consider doing your dust collector maintenance during a summer shutdown.
The biggest advantage of doing your maintenance in the summer is that, well, it’s summer. Plus, many companies have downtime over the July 4th holiday and do all their shutdown work then. However you do it, plan ahead so you’re not doing it in the snow.
MAKING A PLAN FOR SUMMER FILTER CHANGEOUTS
With cold weather hanging on for what seems like an eternity, summer might seem like a distant daydream. But it’s going to happen faster than we think, so now is a good time to start planning.
You certainly don’t want to reach your shutdown time and find out that you need new filters. If you’re ordering filters for your Imperial Systems dust collector, we usually (but not always) have them in stock. Otherwise, some filters have a lead time of several weeks.
We never want to have a customer frustrated because their filters won’t arrive in time for their July 4th shutdown. Therefore, we will help you get your order ahead of time so you have them in stock when changeout time comes.
OTHER SUMMER SHUTDOWN CHECKUPS
It’s the right time of year to check your differential pressure gauge if you haven’t checked it lately. If the differential pressure gauge is reading close to 5”, it’s time to order replacement filters.
Inspect the diaphragm valves for damage or leaks. We can assist you with replacement kits. But ordering them before you actually need them will make sure you’ve got them on hand.
There’s also a small filter called the gauge or intake filter. This should be replaced every time the cartridge filters get replaced. But if you’re not sure where to find this on your equipment, contact us and we’ll help you.
Another neglected part, the airlock needs a little care as well. To meet NFPA standards, airlock wipers need to maintain a seal as they rotate. Some people change their airlock wipers each year, which we recommend. Meanwhile, some people have NEVER changed their airlock wipers. They just don’t know that they need to be changed. If it’s been a while since you took a look at those wipers, check to make sure they aren’t worn or damaged.
If you’re going to replace your airlock wipers, we recommend that you buy a set of bearings at the same time. Regardless of how careful you are, these bearings often break while you’re changing the wipers. So, make sure you don’t get caught with brand new wipers and broken bearings. In short, add them to your plan.
YOUR TIME MATTERS
You probably don’t have much time to shut down your dust collector for maintenance during most of the year. After all, that might mean shutting down some major parts of production. Many companies have a shutdown in the summer. Therefore, now’s a good time for you to get ready and order those parts as soon as you can.
If you need help inspecting or figuring out what you need, we’re here for you. Schedule a visit from our ServiceMAXX team or check out our Dust Collector Maintenance Checklist. Our ServiceMAXX team can also help you with your summer maintenance projects. But call now, because they’ll be booked fast!
AFTERMARKET FILTERS
Ready to start preparing for summer shutdown? Fill out the form below to receive a filter quote from our aftermarket team.
A school district in West Virginia was preparing to convert a childcare training area into a weld school. This was happening at their Career and Technical Center to fill the local demand for trained fabricators and welders. Imperial Systems’ territory manager Mitch Augustine was tapped by a sales partner in the weld gas supply industry to meet with the school’s team looking for ventilation systems.
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