Oil Mist be Gone: Oil Mist Collector Options
CNC shops can have a variety of machine tools, so it’s important to match the machine with the appropriate oil mist collector. Electrostatic, centrifugal and multi-stage media are the three most common types of oil mist collectors. Each type has unique characteristics that can impact efficiency in different ways.
To keep a CNC shop clean, healthy and safe for employees, an oil/coolant mist collection device is a critical piece of equipment to have running on some of your machines. CNC shops can have a variety of machine tools, so it’s important to match the machine with the appropriate oil mist collector.
Electrostatic, centrifugal and multi-stage media are the three most common types of oil mist collectors. Each type has unique characteristics that can impact efficiency in different ways.
Electrostatic technology used in some oil/coolant mist collectors are designed to eliminate dust and other particulates in air handling systems and to remove dry smoke. However, when continually exposed to oil/coolant mist, the system’s cells can become coated by layers of liquid, which reduces air efficiency. Therefore, cleaning the system regularly is necessary, but each time the cells are cleaned, they lose some of their ability to remove the oil/coolant mist.
Centrifugal collectors depend on centrifugal force to thrust impurities outward from the center of the device. When used to collect oil mist, the unit’s sponge-foam filtering pads quickly become saturated. When this happens, airflow is reduced and the amount of impurities that can be processed is reduced, so efficiency drops off and mist escapes into the air from the machine enclosure.
Multi-stage oil mist collectors use a three-stage system that consists of an initial pre-filtration cartridge, a cyclonic separation chamber and a final stage filter to achieve as high as 99-percent filtration. This design is created to eliminate the maintenance requirements of electrostatic oil mist collectors, and the noise and vibration problems of the centrifugal-type units.
Our website offers articles to help you learn more about mist oil collectors. Read “Oil/Coolant Mist Collector Addresses Challenges” to learn more about the types of oil mist collectors. Read “Mist and Smoke Collectors for Metalworking Applications” to learn about a mist collector that uses centrifugal impaction to eliminate mist and smoke.
