Keeping The Shop Safe From Dust

In our shop, we do take safety seriously. We wear dustmasks, eye protection and ear protection. One other aspect of safety that most folks don't think about is dust. Too much dust is a danger to respiration, a fire hazard and a slipping hazard. To combat dust in our shop, we regularly sweep and vacuum, plus we have a great dust collection system and several air filters.

This is our dust collector. It is hard to get a sense of scale, but the entire unit is about 12 feet tall, and the barrels are 55 gallon drums. We typically fill a couple of these barrels every week.

Running the full length of each wall in our shop by the ceiling is a large duct that is connected to the dust collector. You can also just see one of our air filter units hanging from the ceiling.

Each tool has its own feed directly to the main dust collector duct. We can open and close each of these individual feeds as needed.

All in all, it is a very good system. We regularly get comments from visitors about how clean we keep the shop - and it isn't just vanity, it really does help keep us safe while we are making instruments.