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Who makes the best mist collectors?

npolanosky

Cast Iron
Joined
Apr 9, 2016
Location
USA, FL
The shop can get a little foggy now that I have 4 machine tools in here, usually with 2-3 running simultaneously. I have a MistAway unit on one machine and it seems to do pretty well- Not a ton of flow, but it makes enough negative pressure to do the job and it's so quiet I don't even know it's there.

Before I go buy 3 more though, I was curious about which ones people like. Is the MistAway as good as it gets, are the Royal units worth the dough, are there others worth looking at? Should I look at a big one and run ducting to all the machines, or should I run individual collectors on each machine?

I have two 40x20 VMCs, a 30x16 VMC, and a medium sized turning center in case that matters at all with regard to sizing and such.
 
I have an older Royal Filtermist F-1200 on a Fadal. The only time I've ever seen coolant come out of the outlet was when using a 1/2 drill that had a large ball of swarf wrapped around it and collant at 100%. Any other end mill/drill/facemill I don't see any flow from the spigot. It does get rid of the very fine coolant smell you get when you open the doors, but that's about it. I've sprayed collant up into the inlet using a spray bottle, and collected the same qty of coolant that I sprayed in, so it does work, but only it appears with a range of droplet size. Also I went to some effort to enclose the top of the machine to prevent it pulling all the air in from the top of the machine.

One of the reasons I got the Filtermist was to reduce coolant usage, caoolant usage as far as I can tell hasnt gone down one iota.

The other issue with the Filtermist is the cost, there imho way overpriced for what you get, in addition the F-1200 pulls 6A and 208V 3PH so not a trivial amount of power.

If I did it again I would get a Mistaway, 110V is conveniant, price is right, and people seem to like them.
 
If I had TSC on the machine, then it might be a different story vis a vis the Filtermist.
 
We have 10 Fadals, mostly 4020 and 3016, all of which are now serviced by MistAways. In earlier times most were connected to central Smog Hog - but that system was expensive to install (both hanging the unit from ceiling and ducting to the machines) and expensive to maintain (cleaning service).

The MistAways are easy to maintain and install. We also went for the gizmo from MistAway that turns on the unit only when there is current flowing to the coolant pump.

There may be better solutions now, but MistAway still appears (to us) to be good solution at reasonable price. HTH

Fred
 
The only downside to ducting is the mist will collect in the ducting, not in the filter unit.

I have wondered how well a larger, 6"-10", centrifugal fan would work. Restrict the flow to it to reduce the air pressure at the fan and duct it back to the machine. I have something like this on a tile saw and it seems to work quite well. The fans are $170 and up and don't use much electricity.
 
Thank you for the positive feedback SND! I am happy to answer any questions about mist collection. If anyone is looking to add mist collectors to their production facility, feel free to contact me regarding a free trial!
 
Ducting multiple machines gets complicated fast.
The pipe size needs to change as you go to each to keep the air velocity up or the mist will drop out and the pipe will have a layer or water or coolant held inside.
Sort of the opposite but the same as HVAC guys deal with. There has to be a dead pipe area past the last machine also.
Can also be "tuned" with stopper valves and a CFM tester which numbers can be changed into air velocity but this a real pain and not quite as good.
90's are bad so two 45's a bit apart better if possible.
A correct system gets smaller and smaller as it goes downstream to keep the air velocity up and keep the "mist" from settling.
You will know when you have it wrong, The mist collector will have very little discharge and later the pipe joints will drool or drip on your head. (Then of course "duct tape")
Bob
 








 
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