Air Filtering Media - Experiences and Preferences . . .

[britechguy]

For my most recent client where we had the custom builds done, the case used was this one from: Rosewill PRISM S500 ATX Mid Tower

One of the selling points for this particular case in the setting it will be used is the triple in-flow fan arrangement on the bottom of the case that has a filter frame directly beneath it, but with a filter mesh that's really only intended to deal with dust. Two of these machines will be near a machine shop floor and there have been times in the past (but less so at the moment) where carbon dust was flying about in large quantity and having the expected end result of screwing up electronics not protected from it. The filter frame is definitely set up to allow for additional filtering medium to be inserted, and for those two machines I'm thinking that will be a very good idea.

Just soliciting experiences with air filtering media of the sort that gets used at the air intake and anyone's preferences as far as effectiveness goes. In this case, disposable rather than reusable is what's wanted.

We've looked at some roll material we can cut to custom fit the frame from McMaster-Carr, but it's a "best guess" kind of thing.

 

[phaZed]

I've had good luck using Solder Extractor filters, used in solder air fan/filter/suckers.

Amazon.com

www.amazon.com

It's thick enough to stop most things - yet allows for good airflow all the same. I assume the activated carbon in the filter would help with "charged" materials such as carbon dust and the like.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Our metal fab clients use these....such as the mini/micro/sff one in this page....

PC/Server Archives - DustShield®

www.dustshield.com

Those little foam filters you slide in the front of gaming chassis..they don't block much at all, computer cases have too many other openings where the fine dust gets sucked in. Gotta enclose the entire chassis. Nothing less.

Or...as we've done more recently, get the industrialized computers...like Dells Optiplex here. These are fanless. I mount these up on the wall. Work great!

 

[britechguy]

Thanks @phaZed and @YeOldeStonecat.

I think the enclosures are more than a bit of overkill in this case, since they have been using tower machines in the office and in one corner (behind a wall) of the shop without anything quite that elaborate for some time. The machines in the office (which is not far off the shop floor, but does have a solid wall & door separating the two) dated from the 1990s and had nothing protecting them.

This will definitely be a "trial and possible error" thing. I suspect something akin to what @phaZed proposes is very likely to do the trick in current conditions. If those change, we'll revisit.

 

[Larry Sabo]

I would think the carbon mesh filters would compound the problem, i.e., inject loose carbon particles into the air stream. Personally, I would use a HEPA filter cloth, something like this.

 

[britechguy]

@Larry Sabo,

So far, we're leaning toward a non-charcoal filter that's very much like your average kitchen scrubbing pad, but absent the actual abrasives. It allows things to get trapped that should be trapped as they make their way through the matrix, but still allows reasonable air flow.

One thing I don't want to do is get too aggressive and burn out the fans because they have to work too hard to pull air through the filtration material.

 

[frase]

Our metal fab clients use these....such as the mini/micro/sff one in this page....

PC/Server Archives - DustShield®

www.dustshield.com

Those little foam filters you slide in the front of gaming chassis..they don't block much at all, computer cases have too many other openings where the fine dust gets sucked in. Gotta enclose the entire chassis. Nothing less.

Or...as we've done more recently, get the industrialized computers...like Dells Optiplex here. These are fanless. I mount these up on the wall. Work great!

What Dell models are they, look like solid little units.

 

[Markverhyden]

That's an open "system" so to speak. So any decrease in flow in one area, by adding filter material, will most likely result in an increase in flow in other areas. In that particular case the back where the slot covers are would be one. At the end of the day anything with a fan is just like a vacuum cleaner.

 

[britechguy]

@Markverhyden

The plan is to cover any of the "open air grates" with a layer of something for the shop floor machines. This isn't about "perfect filtering" but just keeping the worst out and slowing the "crudding" process down to the extent possible.

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

What Dell models are they, look like solid little units.

Well WTF...looks like they got disco'd during Covid.
Dells Embedded PCs....they're fanless, heavy duty chassis, able to withstand extreme temps high and low, chassis that can mount on a wall over under a desk, legacy interfaces, etc. Models were Optiplex 3000 Embedded and Optiplex 5000 Embedded.
We got quite a few of those just a few years ago for several manufacturing clients.

Embedded Box Computers | Dell USA

Dell Embedded Box PCs are industrially rugged, fanless, highly reliable devices for speed solutions with many I/O options & low energy requirements.

www.dell.com

Since I've switched over to all Lenovo in recent years, next time I need one I'll try out Lenovo's IoT Thin Client desktop.
Hopefully they have options for more RAM, so far only see 4. But I like the fanless, sealed ones. Some of our metal fab shops use the welders that just get that metallic "coating" everywhere. It's not "dust" that can stopped with filters. It will get through, and it creates a conductive coating on any surface...death for system boards.

ThinkCentre M75n IoT Thin Client | Portable Desktop PC

Meet the Lenovo ThinkCentre M75n IoT Thin Client desktop. Powered by AMD® Athlon processors. Ultralight & fits anywhere, deploys easily & is incredibly secure.

www.lenovo.com

 

[Markverhyden]

@Markverhyden

The plan is to cover any of the "open air grates" with a layer of something for the shop floor machines. This isn't about "perfect filtering" but just keeping the worst out and slowing the "crudding" process down to the extent possible.

I understand what your plan is. If it was me I'd just make an enclosure that covers the machine using something like this. Crude but effective. Just cut the panels to leave a 1-2" gap between the material and case all the way around. Glue or use duct tape along the seams to join them. No bottom panel.

 

[britechguy]

@YeOldeStonecat

These machines are marvelous options, IF they meet the need. For what they're doing, which is CAD-CAM workstations, they just don't.

It's too late now. We have what we have, which is a much more recent version of "what they had." My partner is a studio potter and, believe me, there are filter fabrics that can catch even the finest clay dust yet "breath" quite well, too. The idea of creating "an enclosure bag" out of this material isn't off the table, either.

There's only so much I can do here, and I'm trying to do what I can.

 

[britechguy]

@Markverhyden

This is very, very similar indeed to what we have coming from McMaster-Carr. I don't think we will end up enveloping the machine but will end up putting filter material over all the openings as well as on the filter grate at the bottom.

I'll have to see once the roll arrives.

 

[frase]

@YeOldeStonecat Currently I use these for Basic Office based environments, not heavy CPU\GPU work.

Lenovo ThinkCentre M70q Gen 3 i5-12400T 8GB DDR4 256GB NVMe UHD730 Windows 11 Desktop

​

 

[YeOldeStonecat]

Currently I use these for Basic Office based environments, not heavy CPU\GPU work.

Lenovo ThinkCentre M70q ​

Oh we do TONS of those Lenovo TinyPCs...lots and lots of them, I love 'em love 'em love 'em. And clients do too! Usually combining them with the TIO 24 monitor that has the cradle dock in the back for them so it turns them into an "all in one". We spec them with 16 giggies for rammage and 512 minimum for the M.2. Intel i5 or Ryzen 5 (I try to lean towards Ryzens if I can). For heavier duty graphics work clients, I use the "Tiny Workstation" version, the P360 versions for example...get that nVidia Quadro graphics card with quad mini DP outputs...that's what I use at my office.(I actually have an older P350 Tiny Workstation).

But for an industrial client in a really dirty environment, I'd want to enclose these in a special case.

 

[britechguy]

It appears that now the direction will be literally building a solid box enclosure for the shop floor machines where one side will be a wall of filter material as the only air ingress/egress from the enclosure.

Since the business is a machine shop, crafting same should not prove to be an insurmountable challenge.

 

[Markverhyden]

@britechguy proper cooling should have intake(s) which are separate from exhaust(s). If it was me I'd have a large slot cut on one side at the bottom and another slot cut at the top on the other side for the filtering material. That'll use the natural convection as well as have airflow on both sides of the machine. A single side will just have airflow from that side, not the opposite side.

 

[britechguy]

@Markverhyden

Thanks much!