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3D Printers - Dirty Secret

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Vurbal:
Even thought it's exactly the opposite problem this reminds me of a job I had with a company that provided printers for 3M factories. One of the two 3M locations in this area produces sandpaper. They had one room which IIRC was used exclusively for cutting the huge rolls of sandpaper into sheets and packaging them. Each station had a HP LaserJet for printing shipping labels.

What they didn't have was any type of cover over the printers which were sitting about 3-4 feet away from the sandpaper rolls. Every so often the printers would have to be "cleaned" which meant taking the paper tray out, picking up the printer, and dumping the sand out on the floor.

Ath:
Unfortunately, the referenced article in the first post of this thread, doesn't mention the relativity of this 'polution' caused by 3D printers: it's comparable to grilling meat on a charcoal barbeque or smoking a cigarette, as mentioned here and in other articles.
Let us not get too worried.

As my father in law, who died over 15 years ago, used to say "the more accurate measurements they can make, the more bad stuff they are able to find, but still there are people dying of old age instead of all those 'bad disseases'".
Guess he had a point there :huh:

Tinman57:
Filtering particles that small is a difficult problem. I don't think your wet/dry vac would be all that effective. I'm sure it would get some, but how much is another question.

Probably an airtight housing for the printer would be a good start. At least contain the dust while printing. -Renegade (July 27, 2013, 08:51 PM)
--- End quote ---

  Wet/dry vacs have two filters, one filter that catches real fine particles like dust.  The outer filter which fits over the dust filter is foam.  I've used it on real fine saw-dust and nothing got by the filters, the exhaust was blowing clean air even though the foam filter was dry....

Renegade:
Unfortunately, the referenced article in the first post of this thread, doesn't mention the relativity of this 'polution' caused by 3D printers: it's comparable to grilling meat on a charcoal barbeque or smoking a cigarette, as mentioned here and in other articles.
-Ath (July 28, 2013, 12:33 PM)
--- End quote ---

I'm not sure... see below...

  Wet/dry vacs have two filters, one filter that catches real fine particles like dust.  The outer filter which fits over the dust filter is foam.  I've used it on real fine saw-dust and nothing got by the filters, the exhaust was blowing clean air even though the foam filter was dry....
-Tinman57 (July 28, 2013, 08:30 PM)
--- End quote ---

The problem isn't so much the volume of dust. The problem is the size of it. Regular filters simply aren't equipped to deal with nano-particles. They're just too small.

A good example of the problem in action is when you see outbreaks of cryptosporidium in the water. It makes a lot of people sick and kills some elderly and kids. It's a very small pathogen that isn't filtered out of the water by things like Brita filters or granular carbon filters. You need an RO or high-quality compressed carbon block filter as their particulate filtering size is very small, and enough to get the pathogen. My guess is that the filters on a wet/dry vac are more like a Brita filter than an RO filter.

There are other kinds of filters that act fundamentally differently though - e.g. electrostatic and chemical/resin filters. I don't know enough about 3D printing media to know what kind of filter would help though.

From what I've read across a few different articles in different disciplines, nano-particles are very much different as they can interact on much smaller scales, which is what makes them so effective in many cases.

I have NO idea whether 3D printing material is safe or not or whether it's mostly safe or whatever.

I AM willing to bet that the small size of the particles is relevant to the discussion of whether they are safe or not. Beyond that, no clue.

My guess is that it's probably better to be safe than sorry, and to try to minimize the amount that you breathe in. Given how small they are, it's going to make filtering out all of it tough, but some basic precautions would still be a good idea.

Tinman57:

  I'm pretty sure that sawdust is on the nano scale, it's a very fine silt-like dust.  But even so, the wet/dry vacs use hepa-type filters, or at least the ones I buy.  The foam filters themselves filter out the real small stuff, and when wet nothing is getting by except air.  When I do paint sanding indoors I use my wet/dry vac to filter the air because I hate dusting the house.  lol

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