What are you guys using to vent your laser? Can you show some pictures and links please. Needs some ideas.
Thanks!!
What are you guys using to vent your laser? Can you show some pictures and links please. Needs some ideas.
Thanks!!
I’m venting a chinese CO2 laser, not an MPCNC, so it is already fully enclosed, from a basement workshop. I can’t do pictures at the moment, but I’m lucky that we’ve got a whole-house fresh air-to-air heat exchanger with 6" vents to outside so I didn’t need to punch any new holes through the wall. I got a 4" inline hydroponics ventilation fan and tee-d the laser exhaust into the exhaust line of the air exchanger with a 4"-6" adapter from the HVAC aisle of the local home center. My whole ventilation run is less than 6’ in length, but I put the laser where it is with that in mind. I’m venting to outside, not trying to filter the exhaust.
I’ve heard folks have had good luck with “bouncy house” fans. They move a lot of air and can do better if the exhaust run is longer. I’ve also heard that it is better to put the fan closer to the exhaust end of the run rather than the source, but I didn’t have a lot of flexibility in my current setup.
A friend of mine has his running in his basement through a cleanout in his chimney. I was thinking about the furnace exhaust. I don’t want to have laser poison or furnace poison in the house, so I might wait and kindly ask for a port when we get our furnace replaced (it is coming).
As long as they both have some kind of damper. Path of least resistance might be back down one of the other’s exhaust.
Our whole-house exchanger runs constantly, so path of least resistance for laser exhaust is to join that flow to outside. The laser fan does have a damper.
How do you heat and cool with constant export of inside air? Must be costly?
That’s where the “exchanger” comes into play. As the fresh and stale air streams pass, the heat gets exchanged between them, and you actually save money, regardless of whether you’re heating or cooling (in the summer, the heat of the incoming fresh air is transferred to the outgoing stale air, and in the winter, the heat of the outgoing stale air is transferred to the incoming fresh air). Your HVAC system doesn’t have to work quite as hard to get the incoming air to the proper temperature. And depending on the type (and your climate), it might even help with the humidity.
What he said.
FWIW, I’m not that smart, I just have good Google-Fu. I initially was thinking closed-loop heat exchange, like nuclear reactors, but I wanted to verify, and hoo-boy, I was wrong! It’s ventilation…
I have a box fan blowing the smoke out a nearby window.
Thanks David I was thinking one fan blowing it off the work area and another sucking it away