RE: ShopTalk: Dust Collection

[Bill Pentz]

Carl, Ed, and all.   It’s a pleasure to visit.   I suspect most who make clubs think about dust control about the same way I did before getting ill. I had so little time for my woodworking and made so little dust, plus had a good mask that I wore anytime I made lots of dust or worked with toxic wood, so figured I was at minimal risk. It turns out I was wrong and got blindsided not by the dust I was making, but instead by the invisible dust that missed capture and kept building in my shop. Depending on how much dust you make and how well you get rid of it, you could have similar problems.   To give a brief overview, the medical risks from fine dust are pretty well known and studied. Airborne dust is defined as dust that does not normally quickly settle in normal room air currents. Most of the airborne dust is sized smaller than 30-microns. A 30-micron particle is roughly one third the thickness of a human hair. Although we get all clogged up and feel miserable our bodies do a pretty good job getting rid of the 10 to 30-micron sized dust particles. Dust sized 10-micron and below is not visible without magnification. Moreover, dust smaller than 10-microns gets right past our first layers of protection and gets trapped in our nasal and throat tissues where we have a very difficult time getting rid of it. Dust particles sized 5-microns and smaller are known as respirable dust because these sized particles go right into and lodge deep in our lungs. The 10-micron and smaller particles often take a very long time to settle even in air that has minimal movement. Particles sized 2.5-microns and smaller have long been studied because many of these are associated with asbestosis and silicosis, the illnesses that come from inhaling fine particles of glass and asbestos. These don’t settle in anything but almost completely dead air not being stirred at all. Graphite has not been studied as much but both glass and asbestos particles cut and poke holes in cells killing them until the particle can be surrounded in mucus, a cyst or other tissue. Over time these are bad news and known to lead to many medical problems. This stuff is so bad and well studied it has its own name, PM 2.5. Do a Google search on “PM 2.5 health risks” to see over 8 million references that say we don’t want to inhale this stuff. Particles sized 1-micron and below are even worse news. Instead of just getting trapped in the respiratory system, they go from the lungs directly into the blood and can deposit anywhere in our bodies. In short there is no end of evidence that says breathing fine particles is unhealthy.   Like any risk analysis we need to know the probability of being affected as well as the consequences. Nearly forty years of insurance data on commercial woodworkers show all develop some dust related problems with about 1 in 14 now forced by those problems into an early medical retirement or worse. That is pretty bad news for hobbyist woodworkers because to meet national fire protection association codes almost all commercial dust collection systems have been placed outside for more than four decades where the finest particles just blow away into the outside air. Typical small shop woodworkers vent their dust collection inside. Because the worst particles are invisible and these particles last six months or longer, even in shops that make minimal dust we can build up dangerously high fine dust levels. Almost any air movement can launch the dust that escaped collection airborne again and again. Cal-OSHA tests air quality in small woodshops in California who apply for commercial licenses. In spite of only doing little woodworking, almost all shops that vent indoors fail their air quality tests with two to five times more than the OSHA maximum and average particle counts over 10,000 times higher than recommended by medical experts. That is really bad news as the medical folks are pushing hard to make the OSHA standard fifty times tougher just like the European community has already done. At these levels of exposure the research and insurance statistics show 100% develop some chronic health problems with 1 in 8 developing debilitation medical problems.   Now for club makers you need to know that about 3 ounces of airborne dust in an 8x10 foot room will give just about double the maximum allowed by OSHA, yet only one quarter ounce in that same room busts the medical standards. In short, it takes almost no dust to get in trouble with excessive exposure.   So should everyone who works on golf clubs immediately panic and go build the 5 hp cyclone dust collection system I invented and share plans with on my web pages? No, but there are some simple things you can do that will make a huge difference. First, make sure that you either collect the dust as it is being made or work somewhere other than inside your home, preferably a garage or workshop that you can regularly open up and use a leaf blower to blow all out. For those looking for an excuse for a new tool, a big compressor works well too. When you are making the fine dust, slip on a good fitting 3M model 7500 mask. It will provide excellent protection while you work and blowing out that area regularly will minimize any problems from a build up.   If you can’t work in an area that can be regularly blown out, you still should wear the dust mask when making the dust, plus need to figure out a way to capture that fine dust as it is made. Study after study shows trying to get rid of the fine dust with an exhaust fan, air filter, or air cleaner after it has escaped into our shop air takes four to six hours during which time we get a dangerously high exposure. Collecting the fine dust as it is made of a challenge, yet we do not want this dust trapped inside. Many become sensitized to the resins used in epoxy and fiberglass over time, and breathing this stuff with no break is not a good idea. In terms of controlling the fine dust, the best thing to do is not spread it all over. A wet tile saw that traps the dust in the water stream is also a good idea if you get one that does not spray all over. Although many think putting a vacuum hose right next to what we are cutting will help, that generally works poorly. Because air pulled by a vacuum drops off in speed where it won’t even pickup sawdust just 2” from the nozzle, you need not only a good vacuum, but also a pretty good hood that contains and controls whatever dust you make. The trick is to use the slowest speed cutter you can because the slower and less aggressive your cutting the less you will throw the dust and smaller your hood needs to be. With a low speed cutter, say a diamond blade in a saber saw or scroll saw, you only need to build a jig with a small hood that traps the fine dust and leads it right into your vacuum hose. The faster and more aggressive your cutting action, the bigger the hood you need to keep that dust from escaping. If you do like me and use a big air powered cut-off abrasive wheel, you need a hood like power wood carvers use which is a clear box with hand holes coupled to a big fan and filter. With just a little more patience and slower tool, we can get by with a good vacuum and still get fairly quick cuts. The best vacuum I’ve found is the Fein 18 gallon stainless which you can sometimes get from Fein from their scratch and dent sales to keep it only being outrageously expensive. You then need a Sears HEPA “red-line” filter to convert that over to a really fine dust collection system. Its internal bag filter does a good job on the larger particles and HEPA gets almost all the rest. Plus this two layered filtering approach works wonders in terms of making the expensive HEPA filters last for a very long time. The only other one close that I found was the Festool which was equally expensive, plus required frequent expensive filter replacements. My old big Sears and big ShopVac neither generated more than 40” w.c. of suction. W.C. means how many inches up a water column that vacuum will suck. The Fein and Festool both pull over 90” but cost more than twice as much.   Whew.. enough for one sitting. Bill Pentz Cyclone and Dust Collection Research:  http://BillPentz.com/Woodworking/Cyclone/Index.cfm From: [EMAIL PROTECTED] [mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED] On Behalf Of Ed Reeder Sent: Wednesday, September 13, 2006 6:08 PM To: ShopTalk@mail.msen.com Subject: Re: ShopTalk: Dust Collection   Bill, Welcome to the forum!       (I changed the subject to Dust Collection) I'm curious if you have any general thoughts about the dust collection issues club makers face vs. those of woodworkers?  I have some guesses on their different characteristics to get us started.  (Others please chime in). I would characterize woodworkers as producing a variety of different size particles and a variety of different quantities of particles.  The size may vary from chips to fine dust.  The quantities can be significant, as in the case of a planer, or relatively small as when finish sanding.  For the most part the particles are wood (which for some species can be toxic or inflammatory), but could be plastic, MDF, etc. Club makers typically produce only dust, primarily from their shaft cutting operations.  The quantities are very small compared to a woodworker.  The predominant dust is graphite or steel, with some plastic from ferrules.  (Some club makers use a wet tile saw to cut graphite shafts, which eliminates air borne dust).  Some club makers grind the soles of club heads, which is another source of steel "dust". The club makers "dust" is produced almost exclusively from grinding, as opposed to a woodworker's cutting tools, so it is typically very fine. Given these assumptions, is there anything that jumps out to you as to specific advice to offer? Thx, /Ed Bill Pentz wrote: Hi,   John asked me to come and share a little on this forum. With my clubs long since retired after my handicap slipped from a 7 to a 28 with health problems, I probably can contribute little on the golfing side.   I might be able to contribute a little to the concerns about fine dust created in working with the clubs. Back in 1999 I had some worsening allergy problems so threw money at that problem buying the top recommended Oneida-Air cyclone and upgraded its stock filter with the “best” rated American Fabric Filter fine oversized bag filter. Within a couple of months I was in the hospital with dust triggered severe pneumonia. I spent my recovery time learning about dust collection and what went wrong. What I learned is it is the residual dust that lingers in our work areas which we keep putting airborne with our tools and dust collection that causes the biggest problem. I paid for a medical air quality test and found my woodworking tools and filter sprayed the finest dust all over, and my cyclone moved under half the air needed to collect the fine dust. I then went to work figuring out how to repair my cyclone. When all my changes only made a little improvement, I started over and built my own cyclone design. It worked so well my doc talked me into sharing and I did on a couple of woodworking forums. I was immediately so overwhelmed, I moved those few articles to their own web pages and included a rapidly growing Frequently Asked Question (FAQ) page. Either crazy or a touch of a fanatic I’ve kept those pages and my designs evolving and now see in excess of 18,000 unique visitors a day to my pages, and almost every cyclone maker now uses some of my innovations. I’m pretty pleased right now because Harvard Medical School just did some testing and gave me a gold star with my cyclone separating 98.2% of the finest dust particles versus the closest competitor, which uses my design changes to a standard cyclone at only 42%. When they finally get published, I will share the details. Anyhow, the point is don’t let yourself get in trouble from too much exposure to resins, fiberglass, graphite, etc.   Happy to be abord. Bill Pentz Cyclone and Dust Collection Research:  http://BillPentz.com/Woodworking/Cyclone/Index.cfm