Quote:
Originally Posted by Slow78
Does your mom and dad know where your at, LOL..
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Actually, it is the basic answer. A standard initial step to avoid the fumes is this 3M pancake respirator. I’m not a top-flight welder, I can make stuff stick together with my Lincoln 220 MIG welder but real welders run circles around me.
I took a couple of community college classes which were really useful. The pancake respirator was a good discovery. I use it in construction, especially when dry cutting concrete. Much less bulky than the big cartridge respirators. A lot of the dust is stopped by the pink fabric, I will periodically go out into the open air, take it off and slap the filters to shake the bulk of the dust off, but there are also carbon filters inside. You can’t smell a cigar when you’re wearing it.
One thing I found however, when using it in my welding mask, which the compact size is tailored for, the glasses would tend to steam up. So I came up with an ad hoc supplied air set up. I had some of that clear, flexible three-quarter inch plastic tubing, I cleaned out my small shop vac really well, put the hose on the outflow side, inserted the tubing in the vac hose, and sealed it with duct tape.
I then fastened the hose to the helmet webbing with tape so that it was blowing air downward at about the top of my forehead level. I had the shop vac about 20 feet away and was using a fan blowing on my work in the opposite direction.
It worked great. No more condensate on the glasses. If I actually welded for a living, I would look for a better setup.