Q: Can you recommend a type of vacuum to clean up powder off the floor in our powder coating room?
A: It is important to choose the proper vacuum cleaning system to collect spilled or oversprayed powder coatings. Powder coating particle size ranges from around than 1.0 micron up to around 100 microns. It’s the smallest particles that can be troublesome for a vacuum system. They either quickly clog the filters or, if the filters are too coarse, they reenter the environment and defeat the purpose of cleaning. Indeed, you want to capture the finest particles and not redistribute them into your powder area — especially when changing colors or potentially incompatible powder chemistries.
You have a couple choices when considering a vacuum system. You can simply tie into your existing dust collection system with flexible hoses, slide gates, and appropriate nozzles. This is a low-cost alternative but limits your cleaning arena to the length of hose and proximity to the powder to be captured.
Another alternative is to purchase a 3-stage industrial grade vacuum cleaner. The three stages enable the unit to pick up increasingly finer particles without clogging the filters. I recommend a HEPA-grade vacuum, which should be capable of capturing particles as fine as 0.3 microns. This will cover the spectrum of powder coatings that are commonly used in industry.