Tiger-Vac is one company that has begun offering vacuum cleaners for additive manufacturing. The company has quite a wide variety of vacuum cleaners for cleaning 3D printers; it offers seven “wet mix” models for cleaning with water as well as four “dry recovery” models simply for suctioning powder. The cleaners are available both in electrically and pneumatically controlled versions. When working with powder for 3D printing, there are numerous hazards, including the risk of fire or explosion, but Tiger-Vac offers several levels of protection against such hazards.
Delfin is another vacuum cleaner company that has developed a vacuum for cleaning powder-based 3D printers; the Delfin Zefiro 75 Inert is a new vacuum cleaner designed to extract and inert combustible dust. The vacuum cleaner container, which is also available as an independent separator, is equipped with several filters that make the vacuumed material inert and assure complete safety.
“The extracted dust gets immersed directly into an inert oil, which makes it harmless,” the company states. “A sieve grid and a PPL filter allows to easy dispose of the collected material. Additional fiber filters protects from oil mists the upper part of the vacuum cleaner, while an overpressure safety guarantee the complete safety of the system, even in case something goes wrong with the inert bath.”
You can learn more about the Delfin Zefiro 75 Inert below:
Nilfisk Industrial Vacuum Solutions also offers a vacuum cleaner for safe cleaning of 3D printers. The Pennsylvania company’s additive manufacturing-specific vacuum, the VHS110, is designed to collect metal shavings produced after a metal 3D print is completed. It consists of an oil mist filter, filtration for metal powders, a separator for liquid and metal powder, and a container for the collection and rendering of inert metal dust. Metal powder is collected in the first filter and immersed in an inert fluid bath. It’s perfectly safe, preventing the ignition of combustible powders.
Discuss this and other 3D printing topics at 3DPrintBoard.com or share your thoughts below.