Saturday I woke up and decided I put of redoing my Spray booth long enough. Not wanting to commit to a final design and speding more money to make one from Stainless Steel again, I decided to proof my design ideas with a unit that will work and I can play around with. I decided to use that Foam Core board form Staples for the base construction. It was laid out, cut out and hot glued together in less than 2 hours. I am still playing around with the vents to focus the suction where I want it and with the right velocity.
I also did as a friend suggested and made my bench into a down draft table and permantly mounted my blower fan to exhaust fumes from my shop. Works pretty well.
When done, I will provide plans for making this from 1/4" or 3/8" plywood on Ausfwerks, free of charge, complete with a measured drawing and materials list for those so inclined.
I also redid my mounting for my Regulator and moved my new compressor to the far corner of the basement and plumbed it in. This water Trap is also a new addition and is worth every penny paid for it. Works like a charm.
Hope this helps someone. Doesn’t look the best, but it works and in the end, it will be made from 304 stainless steel with a nice bead blast finish!!!
Your downdraft booth looks pretty good, and it looks as though you’ve put some thought into it. Having said that, I hope you don’t mind a couple comments.
Typically, most downdraft booths use the entire lower surface as an exhaust area, rather than having a couple exhaust ports, as yours seems to have. Since you already have what appears to be a plenum beneath your spray area, you might want to consider installing some perforated board or even a wire mesh in place of the solid surface you now have, and cover that with a paint pre-filter. This will help even out your airflow and also ensure more complete vapor capture. (For comparison purposes, the Artograph downdraft uses 2 layers of paint prefilters over an activated carbon filter.)
Lastly, I don’t know whether you’ve inserted your model just as a prop or not, but all painting on a downdraft booth should be accomplished directly on top of the booth surface. Since downdrafts only require about half the airflow of a typical side- or back-drafted booth (50fpm vs. 80-100fpm), keeping your work close to the airflow ensures more complete vapor capture (Another good reason for converting your total lower surface area to have vent capability).
My original idea was for a perforated table to use for the vent. However, the foam core board is almost impossible to drill, so I went with the vent idea. In the final version, I will do as you mentioned and use a perforated metal sheet.
As far as the second point, you taught me something and I will use this in the final version.
