Exhaust question for busy street facing

[Dmitriy Kumets]

I'll preface this by saying that I've searched for exhaust and blower and still have some questions...

My friend's current set up is an epilog mini 24 with an air filtration unit in a cramped San Francisco office. The work this machine does is 50% acrylic cutting, 20% wood cutting and engraving, 20% leather cutting and deep engraving, 10% metal marking.

When cutting the acrylic or wood there are lots of small pieces that fall off and through the honeycomb table - with a high power blower they end up getting sucked out.

The office is on the 2nd floor with windows facing a busy street. I'd love to have her not spend hundreds of dollars on filters but also don't want to be shooting the acrylic pieces onto the heads of pedestrians.

Has anyone gotten around this? One of the windows hits a fire escape where we could probably use a 'lint trap' type box but I'm afraid that this will kill the air flow.

Also - any suggestions for a nice quiet blower? I've seen people suggest the jet dust collectors and am looking at their site. Any specific models you could suggest.

Thank you in advance - any advice is very appreciated

[Doug Griffith]

Not sure if this will reduce flow but it should help keep large particles from shooting out the window. You may need to add a baffle down the middel. From Rockler.

http://images.rockler.com/rockler/images/27351-01-500.jpg
(http://images.rockler.com/rockler/images/27351-01-500.jpg)

[Paul Brinkmeyer]

Boy would I like to have that kind of fan for mine.
I tried a bigger unit, but as I get close to 1 hp I trip breakers, the mall I am in is old and I am trying to run my entire store on a few 15amp breakers.

I have used a seperator like that one Doug posted, mine was a 6" version on 30 gallon drum, and was surprised at how good it worked.

[Dan Hintz]

Look at a Dyson vacuum next time you're in the mall... copy the basic design using a 5-gallon paint can and a 4" piece of PVC piping through the middle. Does a surprisingly good job at separating out the bigger chunks. It will let through plenty of dust, but it appears it's the small chunks you're truly worried about, so...

[Joe Pelonio]

My fan is strong enough to suck up small pieces of light material, but mostly only a problem with card stock. You can put metal screen in the laser to prevent things from going up, or in-line. Better yet, use a box between laser and fan that has the exhaust go in down low and out up high, so that any debris heavy enough to cause injury falls to the bottom of the box, and with a screen on the outlet you should be debris-free.

I'd be more concerned about complaints from neighbors about the smells.