Background:
A leading aircraft manufacturer was developing a new training facility designed to prepare employees for production processes including grinding, sanding, buffing, and finishing aircraft components.
The new facility represented a significant expansion of the manufacturer’s training capabilities. Instead of training only two employees at a time, the new classroom-style environment was designed to accommodate as many as 12 people simultaneously.
Creating that environment required more than additional workspace. The manufacturer needed an air quality solution capable of capturing dust generated by multiple processes and tools throughout the training area.
Problem:
The training processes presented two different dust collection requirements. Certain handheld tools used for grinding, sanding, buffing, and finishing required source capture vacuum collection, allowing dust to be captured as close as possible to where it was generated. At the same time, the facility’s downdraft tables required a dedicated dust collection system.
Using source capture and conventional dust collection together in the same training environment created an unusual system design challenge. These approaches are often used separately, but this application required both to work effectively within one facility.
The presence of combustible dust added another important consideration. Available space was limited both inside and outside the building, making equipment selection and system layout particularly important.
Solution:
Selecting equipment from a single manufacturer offered an important advantage for this application. Eurovac could provide the source capture vacuum equipment, dust collector, downdraft tables, and source capture tools needed for the complete system.
This allowed Glacier to help create a coordinated air quality solution rather than combining equipment from multiple manufacturers.
The completed system incorporated:
- Source capture vacuum equipment for dust-producing handheld tools
- Source capture tools and connections at individual work areas
- Downdraft tables for grinding, sanding, buffing, and finishing operations
- Dust collection equipment supporting the downdraft tables
- Ductwork and related system components
- Equipment placement designed around the facility’s limited available space
The exterior portion of the system was also carefully configured around the available building space while accommodating the dust collection requirements of the application.
Results:
The completed system helped transform the manufacturer’s training process into a significantly larger and more capable operation. Most importantly, the new facility increased training capacity from approximately two employees at a time to as many as 12, allowing more employees to receive hands-on instruction in a controlled classroom-style environment.
By integrating source capture with downdraft dust collection, the facility can address airborne contaminants generated by different tools and processes rather than relying on a single collection method for every application.
The manufacturer also benefited from being able to source the major components of the system through one equipment manufacturer, simplifying the development of a solution involving several different forms of dust capture.
For manufacturers working with grinding, sanding, buffing, finishing, or other dust-generating processes, effective collection often requires looking at the entire operation rather than selecting a collector in isolation. Glacier Technology can help evaluate the process, contaminants, available space, source capture requirements, and collection equipment needed to develop an integrated solution.
Contact the Glacier Technology team to discuss dust collection or source capture requirements for your facility.
