High Vacuum Dust Collection Keeps
High Volume Welding Up To Speed
A West Coast manufacturer of car and truck bumpers for OEM and aftermarket customers was experiencing excessive amounts of in-plant smoke and dust generated by robotic welding in its assembly area.

The robotic units operate 20 hours a day, 6 days a week, consuming nearly 5,000 pounds of weld wire per month. The resulting high levels of weld fumes, smoke, and dust caused potential for worker health and product quality problems. To address these problems the company first considered a large, water wash industrial electrostatic precipitator with a custom-made canopy hood collection system over each welding booth. This approach was expensive, required downtime for setup and had potential to interfere with the robots arm movement. Instead, the company installed a small, cartridge-type vacuum dust collection unit. The unit, however, had no self-cleaning function, requiring frequent filter change-outs and higher than expected replacement filters and man hour costs.

Before Airflow Systems V Series in operation.

After Airflow Systems High Vacuum V Series in operation.

Positive Proof of High Vacuum Effectiveness
After just one month the company was impressed by the Airflow Systems V2 high vacuum performance and ordered two Airflow Systems V410 dust collection systems with the Vibra-Pulse® self-cleaning feature. Installing Airflow Systems V410 units saved the company over 50% of the cost of its original canopy hood proposal. The high vacuum V410s also proved powerful enough to accommodate a variety of process equipment used in their fabrication and assembly operations. The self-cleaning feature of the V410s extended filter life to an average of 6 months, reducing downtime and maintenance expense. The Airflow Systems design was also able to integrate with the robotic arm — eliminating the concern over interference with the arms movement.