AndyG
Established Member
After a weekend of routing and spending the following few days feeling my lungs had suffered a severe clogging, I decided it was time to invest in a shop air filter to complement my face mask.
After some thought I went for the Axminster MTM. I was tempted by the slightly more expensive AFS-500, thinking the different speed settings might be useful. But, I received the good advice that anything needing a remote control might not be a great idea considering their tendency to hide themselves.
Anyway, I thought I'd post a few pictures of the MTM, seeing as there's not much to go on at the Axminster website. Hopefully if anyone else is considering a similar purchase these might help their decision.
This is the filter inlet, showing the coarser pre-filter.
A pair of clips hold the filter and front grill on. When removed you get access to the inner fine filter.
This is the inner filter. I assume the shape increases the filter surface area, reducing impedance to air flow and increasing dust collection capacity.
Here's the fan unit at the back.
Finally, the filter outlet. The red arrow points to a free nut that came with the filter. It's a nice extra, but it would have been nicer still if it didn't arrive rattling around inside the filter casing.
So, what's it like? Well, it does seem to pump a fair amount of air through it. It easily sucks a sheet of paper to the inlet. I wouldn't say it was Very Quiet like the website claims, but it's not ridiculously loud and doesn't get annoying when left on for a while.
It comes with a good length mains cable with a on/off switch halfway down. There's no remote, and no switch-off timer, but the latter could probably be solved with a cheap timer switch (although you'll need one that didn't switch on again 24 hours later).
The build quality is on the whole O.K. Although, one of the welds that holds the sheet metal seam running the length of the filter has parted, But that's nothing a rivet and a bit of duct tape can't fix.
I haven't had much of a chance to really test how effective the dust control is yet. But you can definitely feel the air circulating in the shop [1]. The next time I create some serious dust, I'll add to this post how well it performs.
All in all, I'd say a winner. It's not too loud, it's got a good air flow rate and it's solid but light.
Andy
[1] - This is in a 2.5 x 6 x 2.8m shop (WxLxH)
Update
After some time I've had a chance to get more of an opinion about this air filter.
I'm still very happy with it, but I've a few more niggles. I wish I'd bought a filter with an adjustable speed control. In general use it could have been on a slower setting, and then sped up for dustier times. This is a noise related thing as this filter does drone a bit. You tend to forget about it, but occasionally it does get annoying. Since the initial review I've moved into a smaller workshop, so the noise is more noticable, but in a larger shop the noise will probably be less noticable.
Noise aside, as an air filter it works very well.
Here's a picture of it finally mounted.
After some thought I went for the Axminster MTM. I was tempted by the slightly more expensive AFS-500, thinking the different speed settings might be useful. But, I received the good advice that anything needing a remote control might not be a great idea considering their tendency to hide themselves.
Anyway, I thought I'd post a few pictures of the MTM, seeing as there's not much to go on at the Axminster website. Hopefully if anyone else is considering a similar purchase these might help their decision.
This is the filter inlet, showing the coarser pre-filter.
A pair of clips hold the filter and front grill on. When removed you get access to the inner fine filter.
This is the inner filter. I assume the shape increases the filter surface area, reducing impedance to air flow and increasing dust collection capacity.
Here's the fan unit at the back.
Finally, the filter outlet. The red arrow points to a free nut that came with the filter. It's a nice extra, but it would have been nicer still if it didn't arrive rattling around inside the filter casing.
So, what's it like? Well, it does seem to pump a fair amount of air through it. It easily sucks a sheet of paper to the inlet. I wouldn't say it was Very Quiet like the website claims, but it's not ridiculously loud and doesn't get annoying when left on for a while.
It comes with a good length mains cable with a on/off switch halfway down. There's no remote, and no switch-off timer, but the latter could probably be solved with a cheap timer switch (although you'll need one that didn't switch on again 24 hours later).
The build quality is on the whole O.K. Although, one of the welds that holds the sheet metal seam running the length of the filter has parted, But that's nothing a rivet and a bit of duct tape can't fix.
I haven't had much of a chance to really test how effective the dust control is yet. But you can definitely feel the air circulating in the shop [1]. The next time I create some serious dust, I'll add to this post how well it performs.
All in all, I'd say a winner. It's not too loud, it's got a good air flow rate and it's solid but light.
Andy
[1] - This is in a 2.5 x 6 x 2.8m shop (WxLxH)
Update
After some time I've had a chance to get more of an opinion about this air filter.
I'm still very happy with it, but I've a few more niggles. I wish I'd bought a filter with an adjustable speed control. In general use it could have been on a slower setting, and then sped up for dustier times. This is a noise related thing as this filter does drone a bit. You tend to forget about it, but occasionally it does get annoying. Since the initial review I've moved into a smaller workshop, so the noise is more noticable, but in a larger shop the noise will probably be less noticable.
Noise aside, as an air filter it works very well.
Here's a picture of it finally mounted.
