air for spray booth
 

Virtually all my projects got a hand rubbed finish that didn't
require any spraying. Still, about anybody with a shop will
occasionally need to spray something, even if it's from a spray
can of paint.

Long ago, Northern Hydraulic (now Northern Tools) had a store in
our town and I bought some take-off (used) blowers. They had a
5/8hp motor and were dual stage centrifugal blowers presumably
from some big copier machines. I had to locate run capacitors for
the motors, but outside of that, I had some pretty cool toys to
play with.

I built a plywood box, complete with castors, and installed the
blower inside. On the outflow port of the blower, I installed the
biggest air filter I could find from a semi truck, then continued
on with a 4" flex hose. This gave me a pretty decent supply of
some finely filtered air. On the blower's intake side was just a
plain old Filtrete furnace filter.

When spraying something small, I'd use a 55 gallon trash can liner
with the corner cut out and the 4" hose inserted and tied off with
black plastic tape. There would be adequate airflow to partially
hold the bag open, and this was supplemented by a couple hoops of
metal I made from an electrician's conduit snake. The ends of the
cut off pieces of the snake were stuck into little holes I drilled
in the workbench to keep them secure and upright.

The result was a barrel-shaped, flat bottomed bag with an outward
airflow of dust-free air. I could put the part inside and spray
the heck out of it. In fact, I later learned I could hold the
piece in front of the bag opening, with the clean air blowing past
it, and hit it with the air hose to knock off any residual dust or
debris before spraying. Taking things down was simple- I'd just
remove the two metal hoops, fold up the bag and roll the
blower-in-a-box back to its corner.

--
Nonny

ELOQUIDIOT (n) A highly educated, sophisticated,
and articulate person who has absolutely no clue
concerning what they are talking about.
The person is typically a media commentator or politician.