With all equipment, maintenance is an important element to help keep everything working as it should. This ensures that the equipment doesn’t cost more money in the long run due to downtime and falter parts. With dust collectors one of the decisions that need to be made is whether a partial or complete filter cartridge change out is necessary.
When it comes to changing out a filter, doing a partial change out may seem more economic and take up less time. However, by doing so additional downtime will be experienced as well as the replacement of extra filters and high electric bills.
When a partial filter change happens the resistance across all the filters in the dust collector will not be the same. The clean filter will provide less resistance while the remaining dirty filters will be providing more resistance. This causes the airflow to increase above what is required and therefore the new-filter will start to experience immediate depth-loading which will reduce the filter life, as well as cause the collector to run at a higher pressure drop. The partial filter change will impact all the filters and result in additional costs when more filters are purchased.
When a complete filter change out occurs the following benefits are experienced:
- A uniform pressure drop across all the filters inside the dust collector will happen, allowing each filter to be to handle its own proportion of air volume which will minimise the pressure drop. This gives the operator control of the filtration velocity through all the filters.
- Compressed air is saved which extends the life of the filters as they will need to be cleaned less often.
- Airflow will be easily maintained so that the correct AMR is kept and the depth loading of the filter media lessened.
If only one filter is replaced, there is the likelihood that more filters need to be replaced, and by replacing one and not the others, these filters due to the added stress from the partial change out will need to be changed in the next few days or weeks.
When there is a damaged filter, all the filters should be inspected, and their age taken into consideration. The idea of replacing all the filters at the same time needs to be considered so as to reduce unnecessary downtime, decreased production and extra maintenance costs.
