What kind of fan do you guys use for get rid of laser smoke
The “big boys” lasers usually come with a centrifugal ducted fan that has a 6"/150 mm duct for pulling air from the laser enclosure and pushing it out a convenient or inconvenient exhaust port. When my diode laser was in service, it was operated solely in the garage with the door ajar to provide airflow and some exhaust capability.
For the smaller lasers typical of diode construction, one could assemble a simple cardboard enclosure and use a blower to pull from the enclosure and push out a window or door. There’s so much variety for this type of blower/fan that a search results in thousands of choices. Even an inexpensive bilge fan would move sufficient air to pull smoke from a small enclosure.
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to add to what Fred said above, any inline or duct fan should be capable of evacuating smoke from a standard laser enclosure. If you are evacuating a large area, or pushing the evacuated smoke a large distance then a larger cfm fan will be required.
I used the stock built-in fan for a while, then experimented with using a leaf-blower in an enclosure at the side of the house >30 feet away to get the smoke away from people.
It’s controlled with a remote.
This setup worked much better than expected. The leaf blower is too powerful for this application and it crumpled the cheap 6" vent pipe that came with the laser. Fortunately it has a built-in speed controller and it’s running at just over half speed now. It has no problem clearing smoke from the machine despite going through more than 30’ of 4" corrugated pipe. I also had to remove the built-in fan because it was spinning like crazy when the blower was on.
The leaf blower was supposed to be just a temporary stop-gap while I got a proper centrifugal blower, but now I’m curious to see how long it lasts.
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how do you arrange it inside ?
What do you mean? Where the laser is?
no the blower, to get the smoke out. please.
It goes from the laser through 6" metal ventilation ducting (from the hardware store), to a 6"- to-4" reducer.
Because the laser is in a garage with no windows and I don’t want to drill through the concrete wall, it uses a piece of 4" underground drainage tube to carry the fumes to the extractor. The ends are designed to press-fit into each other to seal shut without any clamps or glues so it’s very easy to take apart when not lasering. It also fits perfectly into the female 4" metal vent ducting.
The laser and other equipment currently in the garage will go to another building specially built for them.
The garage door closes on the 2x4/orange pool-noodle and the top of the door can be pushed in to seal the garage when working in it.
When the laser isn’t being used the section of pipe running into the garage is removed and now it looks like an ordinary drainspout extension. There’s chicken wire inside to keep stuff like frogs and mice from going into the tube and later getting sucked into the fan rotor.
The plastic drainage pipe runs into the extractor shelter where a piece of 4" vent is attached to a laser-cut flange using the existing holes meant for the guard.
The outlet is about 10’ high, angled downwards and towards the back so rain doesn’t get in. This is 3" ducting which fits perfectly into the end of the leaf blower.
It’s plugged into an outlet on the porch.
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thank’s Sir
now I have something to Think of.
Kristian
Yeah, it’s a cardboard box, but I am only burning the back of mirrors until I can replace the box with a metal one (and possibly just get a CO2 system) but the fan will remain in service.
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