I was shopping around for a new woodworking dust collector when I came across this Grizzly fume extractor, model G0953.
It’s described as a fume extractor for laser engravers, 3D printers, and as a “general air purifier.”
There are 8 filtration stages. It has a smallish footprint. There’s a pressure gauge that clues you in as to when it’s time to replace the filter. Grizzly has replacements for all of the filters.
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There’s a 6″ inlet, or you can use one or two 4″ inlets via an adapter. There are 4 ports on top that you can open up for drawing in the air.
Here’s what I’m thinking. A few readers asked me to consider posting about laser engraving tools. Lasers create fumes, and those fumes need to be controlled. It’s best to exhaust them to the environment outside, but that’s not always possible. There are filters for indoors use, and the good ones are not any less expensive than this one.
I have a separate fume extractor for my soldering station. It’ll be good to be able to do soldering in the garage too.
I’ve been hesitant to get started with other 3D printer filaments, such as ASA. A fume extractor would allow me to test more filaments without having to figure out a window ventilation setup.
I keep dragging my feet on a benchtop airbrush paint booth because I don’t yet have room by the window for a workbench. This could be good for that too.
When looking for more info, I noticed Grizzly said:
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It can also be used to filter harmful odors from welding booths and chemical hoods.
There are limitations. Grizzly says it can’t be used with liquids (someone asked them about machining coolant mist), or flammable materials (which means no solvent glues or similar).
I looked at fume hoods before, both the kind that exhausts air outside and the kind that filters it and exhausts the clear air back inside.
This Grizzly product looks pretty good.
I don’t need it. But I am also frustrated by the lack of reviews or commentary, and that’s making another good argument as to why I should buy it.
I have some hesitations about the price, Grizzly quality, and the ability to find replacement filters in the future.
Grizzly doesn’t mention the filter size. It’d be great if it fit 20″ filters.
Grizzly also doesn’t specify when any of the filters need to be replaced, which is also frustrating. It’s hard to take them seriously.
Potential project applications aside, I’ve never seen a product quite like this. I’ve shopped for fume hoods before, extractors, and also 3D printer fume extractors. This one’s different.
I don’t have any contacts at Grizzly. I also can’t find any other products like this – it could be exclusive to Grizzly. Thus, if I want to check it even if just for ToolGuyd purposes, that’s what my sample budget is for.
It is pricey at $2400 including shipping. I’ve seen a lot of hoods and fume extractors cost more. There are also some smaller ones that are more affordable, but there seems to be a very small list of reputable brands that are accessible to consumers.
For me, it looks like an answer to several needs albeit at higher pricing than I’d like. For testing any laser engravers or moving to engineering filaments like ASA, it – or something like this – will be necessary.
Is there any reason not to buy this? Is there anything similar I should look into ordering for review instead?
My biggest hesitation is that it’s officially described as a HEPA FUME EXTRACTOR FOR LASERS, but the design looks versatile for broader applications than that.
Jeremy
Stuart
“someone asked them about machining **must**”
And possibly
“There are filters **outside**, and the good ones are not any less pricy than this one.”
Stuart
Thanks. *fixed*!
Matt F
Grizzly’s quality has stepped up in the past few years, I wouldn’t have any hesitation about it from that perspective. You get what it says on the tin in my experience, they make pretty solid value-oriented stuff. ~Everyone uses the same overseas contracted manufacturing business model these days and they’ve been doing it longer than most.
This probably isn’t the right filter for an airbrush station (at least on its own, it can help with fumes but you wouldn’t want to suck up paint spray with it directly). They also mention that it isn’t for metal dust/shavings. Woodworking dust looks like the main secondary use from what I can tell.
Stuart
This is for fumes, not woodworking dust or metal dust or shavings.
They did say somewhere it was suitable for paint vapors, but not varnish spraying.
For airbrush use, I’m thinking other fillers can be used and this as final exhaust, if it’s something I will already have on hand. Or it can be inspiration for a as smaller DIY plan. I have also been considering a water trap.
3D printing and vapor fumes is the top consideration.
Ben
I’m sure it doesn’t give a rating for how long the filters last because it’s highly reliant on what fumes are being extracted. Heavier fumes probably really lower the life of each filter.
Nathan
Is it one filter or multiple. I’d see a minimum of 3. First particles second hepa and third some chemical trap like treated charcoal something
Because to clean fumes you have to have some form of a chemical trap. Treated paper or those woven plastics with catalyst. So without that I d hesitate to think fume clean. Especially with abs or other plastics. Wood and even common metals would be less toxic. But plastics especially from non epa counties could contain nearly anything.
Laser is probably the most common thing it would be used for and most think their 3d printer is already safe.
The shipping thing is crazy though is it crazy heavy? Or bigger than a table saw? Is there a grizzly near you to pick one up? 2400 buys a lot of gas and effort
Stuart
8 filters including 3 types of carbon, plus HEPA at the bottom.
Freight is $200, which isn’t unreasonable for a palleted machine.
Jim Felt
Not at all “unreasonable” IMO. Plus what’s your time worth if they were reasonably “nearby”?
Nathan
I read it 2000, my bad. Going too fast
Matt_T
Laser fume extractors do look to be available. Fumex website is worth a look. Their laser fume extractors appear to use HEPA plus activated carbon filtration similar to what’s in the Grizzly unit.
Regards the size of the Grizzly filters buying their T33153 pre filter for $40 would be one way to find the filter size. It looks like a $5 HVAC filter……………. And it looks like replacing the entire filter stack would run north of $800 if none of it can be sourced elsewhere!!
Air brush paint booth is probably a flammable application.
Stuart
Yes, laser fume extractors are available, such as from Bofa.
In a quick search, I found Fumex models for $2000 and $3500. The Grizzly has more features, such as the 4 ports for room air purifying.
With water based acrylics, not much makes it past a good filter, and by the time it’s exhausted you mainly have extremely fine particulates.
The Grizzly’s first filter box holds what looks exactly like a spray booth pocket filter.
Bonnie
Air brush paints come in all varieties. I use almost exclusively water based acrylics, though I did use a marine engine blower fan (explosion resistant) for my spray booth so I could spray rattle cans in the winter.
Jon F
I went to the webpage for the extractor. It appears to have multiple filters. I then went to the individual pages for the filters that they linked to as accessories. Pre filter, bag filter, Aluminum and Potassium permanganate filter weirdly built in with carbon filters. That one raised an eyebrow. I’m not familiar with using KMnO4 for filtration but it is a powerful oxidizer. They’re breaking something down with it. Probably 20″ filters. Grizzly always uses industry standard stuff like that since they are using off the shelf parts all the time.
I was just at Grizzly in Springfield and didn’t see this filter. Their stuff isn’t bad but be wary of the specs. Especially look at the flow rate and pressure rating curves. Their documentation is online and they’ll tell you exactly what you’re getting but the “pump curve” vs service conditions are important to look at closely. Their regular dust extractors typically move a lot of air without load but quickly drop off as you load their filters or have a lot of ductwork.
Stuart
This isn’t a dust collector, it’s a fume extractor, and they make it clear it’ll clog if used inappropriately.
Ken
Grizzly does list the filter sizes in the spec sheet on the product page. looks like they are all 15×15″ of different types and thicknesses.
Stuart
I didn’t see that, thanks!
I saw one question for the spare filters, and Grizzly’s answer was that they won’t provide this since it only fits their machine.
Nathan
So then are the filters reasonable and available? Compared to other fine extractors? I’m guessing so.
David Brock
if your not worried about recycling the air, why not just a vent to outside? No need for lots of fancy filters and the cost to condition replacement air has got to be way cheaper than this units price and filters. It would be different if you were in a clean room or something.
Stuart
Because it’s an enormous pain to route through a window or garage door, and I’m not ready to start drilling holes for permanent duct placement.
TIME is the biggest pain point. Exhausting to the outside requires time-consuming temporary measures or easier permanent measures. Filtration – assuming it works well – would be better for how I do things.
Daniel L
It all comes down to heat, honestly.
Do you need your air quality system in your workshop to be adiabatic?
A sufficiently sized exhaust system is both cheaper and more effective than a fume filter like this.
But as you exhaust, you will need to make up the volume of air that you exhaust. If it is significantly colder outside than it is inside, your workshop will lose heat. If it is significantly warmer outside than it is inside, your workshop will gain heat.
In a 3d printing environment this may be quite useful: some filaments *really* need to be printed in elevated ambient conditions. A fume filter makes filtration adiabatic, meaning no energy enters or leaves the system.
Exhaust? Well, you might need to pre-heat your makeup air if it’s too cold outside.
Honestly, it seems to me that this is mostly a niche product, which is likely why there are few options at a customer-facing level. As far as longevity of filters goes: HEPAs last a good long while…provided that you filter the hell out of the air that passes over them first.
In clean rooms, they often are fed by air handlers that already utilize MERV15 and above into a ceiling plenum. Then the air is drawn through another filter by a powered fan, and finally *pushed* through the HEPA by that same fan.
The more particles that make it through the previous filtration layers, the faster the HEPA loads. Given that different environments are going to have differing particle loads of varying sizes, it’s not easy to provide a real estimate of how long a filter will last.
They become more efficient as they load, in the sense that they capture more particles as they become more clogged. The problem then becomes reduced airflow, which has ramifications for how effective the filtration scheme is. Less volume of air filtered eventually leads to greater particle count.
Those pressure gauges they mention are a good indicator. That’s what I do on my furnace filter: I check the magnehelic gauge I connected and change it when the needle gets to roughly 2x the initial “clean filter” delta.
You can generally get away with just changing the pre-filters for quite some time unless you let the filters get so impacted that they blow out.
Stuart
For me, the challenge has been in setting up temporary ventilation or exhaust.
Filtration means I can move a 3D printer around and not be tied to a window. The same with soldering and potentially testing out a laser engraver.