oil mist collector experience-technology

We have a Star SR20 R. We are a microprecision custom job shop that runs small runs at relatively high speeds. Utilize various materials, brass, steels, aluminum, etc. and most of our parts are the held to a quarter of the size of a pinky finger nail (to give a visual) with very tight tolerances, so the 'lid' on the Star gets opened and closed a lot during a run.

We are new to the CNC world and, normally, due to the specialized nature of parts we are asked to produce and smaller quantities we run have no problem with oil mist. However, on larger quantities (10,000 up) we are experiencing the 'fog' from oil mist. We use Hangs Missle Lube-so the stuff is pretty safe from what we have read.

However, we are exploring mist collectors of various types from electrostatic like Tri Mist, centrifugal like Royal and a relative 'newbie' 3nine which uses 'disk stack-centrifugal' type of technology.

The costs of these things are all over the map from about $2,900 for an electrostatic to about $8,000 including install on the 3nine "Lina" type unit that seems to be newest on the marktet.

Have listened to the various salesmen and want to know what experiences there are in the actual use in the field by folks who have been there and done that and know what true operation and effect on the production floor is with these things and what actually works or doesn't. Do you 'really' get what you pay for and what really seems to work? $8,000+ for a mist collector seems like a lot--no?

Thanks, in advance, for any advice/feedback.

The shop I retired from had several Royal Filtermist units or copies of, directly connected to machines that tended to generate mist or smoke. Swiss machines, big lathes, sinker EDMs and high speed machining centers. A mix of machines with oil or water based coolant. They worked quite well and did not require much maintenance but on some machines they were not capable of filtering it all and emitted a little mist. Possibly a larger unit might have helped there. The one in particular was >100HP 32k rpm machining center.

Additionally we had several large electrostatic collectors that just cleaned the general shop air. They did a great job cleaning up the overall air quality. Very maintenance intensive to keep them running well. We had 4 units and once a month the electrostatic elements had to be removed and cleaned. About 16 hours per month.

Thanks for responding. One concern we had, in fact, was maintenance required on the electrostatic (TriMist) as we don't know what to expect. I found a really old thread on the forum where some guys talked about the Royal and was hoping to get more feedback on each of them and the newer 3nine units as well. Stuff has gotten pricey and just don't want to make an uneducated choice if we can avoid it.

We have Aercology centrifugal mist collecters on all our mills. They are zero maintenance and work great. I bought them all off E-bay for a pretty good deal.

Thanks for the feedback. How long have you had them? Any problems with them going out of balance?

We have 5 total. Only been running them for about a year. We've never had one go out of balance but when you put new filters in, You sometimes have to adjust them around the drum to get them balanced. They have a pre-filter that's about as thick as napkin. This is very handy when we do the occasional wood job. I made a casting pattern out of hardwood that created huge amounts of dust. When I finished, all I did was change the pre-flter and I was good to go!

We have a few (couple hundred at least) Airflow Systems MP-8 units running in our facility. Very good units. Not the cheapest solution, but a very good solution.

Thanks for replying. Not familiar, but googled it and they seem like pretty big units, right?

I was really hoping someone had experience with 3nine units as they are about $8k by the time the installation is done and that seems like a rather large chunk o'change for a unit. But the Electrostatics which are only about $2,900 seem like a lot of maintenance. Guess most folks on this forum don't really have mist issues that they use collectors for......must just tough it out.

I have 3 of these and love them MistAway Mist Collector | Mist Eliminator Simple - Reliable - Affordable
Very quiet and 120 plug in, so super easy to set up. Right up there in your back yardish
Gary

I can speak about the Aercology Centrifugal, I used to work for Aercology as an applications engineer. The issue with this unit going out of balance is to prevent any chips, grinding swarf, and fine particulate from getting inside the spinning drum. You have several options, the best is to mount a deflector inside the machine so only the mist is pulled into the opening connected to the Centrifugal. Other solutions is to use a pre-filter trap.
Aercology isn't open anymore, but AER Control Systems took over for them making the same products as Aercology plus many more products. I am the applications engineer. Check out the website Home - AER Control Systems & Filtration. Between Aercology and AER Control Systems, these companies have been supplying mist collectors to shops for over 30 years.

We have all of the above at our shop, the royal filtermist units are not very good, the aercology units are probably the best fan style filter out there. However if you are running high pressure coolant you really need to go e-cell or rooftop unit. We use the coolblaster (through citizen) I believe they are made by mistbuster or something along those lines they work the best and if you buy an extra set of cells and mesh filters there is no down time. We have been dealing with mist problems for a very long time the e-cells are the best thing we have found aside from going crazy with a rooftop containment system.

If you have high pressure over 1000 PSI, the mist is very fine and you have to use coalescing pre-filters, this helps with taking the fog like mist and coalescing the mist into larger droplets so you can filter it efficiently, otherwise you are blowing it right through any electrostatic unit. AER Control Systems makes a small machine mounted VMW-10 unit where we can use a coalescing pre-filter plus a very high efficient impinger and then a MERV 14 filter which drains. See the follwing link for the VMW-10 Mist Collector; Vertical Media Filtration, VMW Series - AER Control Systems & Filtration