I have been racking my brain and trying a lot of different ways to vent the fumes/smoke from my machine. I have a 55w Omtech Laser with 16x24 bed. My machine is indoors in my office. I do not have the stock exhaust fan anymore, and have upgraded to 6" inline duct fan with 400+ CFM like most people suggest. My honest opinion is that it does not extract the fumes like I hoped it would. If I am cutting wood for example, the whole machine seems to be filled with the fumes/smoke until it stops cutting and sits for a minute or so.
My last option that I am thinking of doing is either A) Cut a hole in the top of the lid to run another exhaust tube or B) remove my pass through door to custom rig an exhaust fan to go through there.
My main goal is to keep the fume smell out of the house.
I am not sure if I am not thinking of something, or if anyone else has dealt with this. Any help or ideas would be great!
Side note…I can include pics and videos if that helps.
The cabinet must have an inlet vent of about the same size as the exhaust vent. AFAICT, no laser machines have such a vent.
I leave the front passthrough hatch open, added a baffle to keep the incoming air from diving under the platform, and block unused parts of the platform with cardboard sheets. As a result, air flows in the hatch, over the platform, down at the rear, and out the exhaust pipe to a window vent.
It’s not perfect, but it’s much better than it was!
If you have youngsters around, an open hatch at eye level is a terrible idea, but my thighs don’t mind.
Here is where I have a pic of normal exhaust filling with smoke. The other is with a less powerful fan closer to the engraving(cabinet open) and it does wonders. This is partly why I was thinking of drilling a hole in the cabinet lid to run an exhaust there.
Like @ednisley says, it’s all about airflow. The cabinet must allow air in for the vacuum to work properly.
Think about drinking from a bottle with a straw. If you seal the top of the bottle around the straw you cannot drink, or only a little bit as opposed to leaving the top of the bottle open and you can drink unencumbered.
I eventually cut MDF to replace the cardboard side sheets. The front baffle remains cardboard, because it tends to snag under the platform when I forget it’s there.
I generally plunk a big L-shaped cardboard sheet atop the platform when I’m doing small things, so the airflow goes across the cardboard and down around the thing.
Nothing fancy: the big improvement came from opening the front passthrough hatch.
There are numerous issues with venting these. My OMTech 50W (which wasn’t) did not allow much if any air flow.
It was quite clear to me that a lot of where my air went was through the honeycomb, not over the work piece.
I run mine with at least a 1" spacer in the front door to allow air to go into the machine. It’s also a relatively straight shot across the material.
If your room is airtight or even close, you’ll draw a vacuum in the room itself making it more difficult to vent the gasses outside. Doesn’t take much.
