At Fabtech in Chicago, Lee Adams of Leeco Solutions met representatives from a metal fabrication company in Cincinnati, OH who were struggling with their dust collection system. The company operates two robotic plasma cutting booths, cutting holes in ½ inch pipe. The dust collector seemed to be removing the fumes well enough, but there was a problem.
Short Dust Collector Filter Life
Running 8 hours per day, the filters in the dust collector needed replacing after only 80 hours of operation. Many manufacturers get six months to a year out of their filters before changing them. This company was spending enough on replacement filters to pay for a new dust collector.
Lee visited the facility and measured the airflow at each of the plasma cutting booths. He discovered that the system could capture the fumes. However, it failed to keep the filters clean, causing them to stop functioning.
Filter Cleaning Efficiency Required for Plasma Cutting Fumes
Lee examined the existing dust collector, a CMAXX competitor, a 12-cartridge collector with vertical filters and reverse pulse cleaning. He suggested replacing this collector with a 12-cartridge CMAXX for the plasma cutting operation.
Lee’s contact at the company was skeptical. He needed a guarantee that the new dust collector would give him 2000 hours of filter life. Lee knew the CMAXX could do the job.
CMAXX Replaces Failing Competitive Unit
The competitor’s collector was replaced with a CM012. The new dust collector worked as planned, easily handling the fumes from both plasma cutting booths.
Now, the next step was to wait. Would filters that used to last a week be able to give the company the 2000 hours of operation that Lee had guaranteed them?
Success and Satisfaction for Plasma Cutting Booth Customer
The CMAXX system on the plasma cutting booths has currently been operating for an entire year. Lee’s contact at the company reports “It’s been running a year and is setting at 1.9″ WC. I’m going to get two years out of these filters!”
Instead of needing to be changed after a week, these filters are still going strong after a year. Differential pressure readings show that they’re not going to need changing any time soon.
This example proves that to solve a problem, you don’t always need a bigger dust collector. Sometimes you just need a better one. A superior product with a better cleaning system, the company’s new CMAXX left the competition in the dust.
Learn more about plasma cutting fume extraction.
