The Air in LeanWerks’ CNC Machine Shop Is Cleaner than the Air Outside

Committed to Clean and Lean Manufacturing, Our Facility Utilizes the Industry’s Most Advanced Clean-Air Filtration Technology

Through LeanWerks’ “Cleanest Air Anywhere” initiative, we have engineered our facility from the inside out to be one of the most clean and sustainable CNC machine shops within Utah and the greater United States.

Why the Machining Industry Needs Cleaner Air

CNC machining is a precise, high-speed and high-temperature process. As a result, it requires the use of high-performance industrial equipment that inevitably leads to the production of pollutant byproducts.

The Source of Machine Shop Pollutants

CNC machining services rely on the precision geometry and hard material properties of cutting tools to carefully remove material from workpieces (typically metal).  The process uses water soluble oils to cool and lubricate the point of contact between the cutting tool and workpiece – where metal is being sheared from the workpiece at thousands of revolutions per minute. The CNC machining process naturally creates airborne steam, mist, and particulate emissions that exit the machining centers, float through the air, and deposit a fine coat of oily grime on everything in the vicinity. The airborne mist and particulate can be hazardous to health in high doses or concentrations. Most machine shops utilize fans and light duty machine filters to mitigate the issue – and/or distribute dust masks for the machinists to wear as protection against excessive inhalation of the airborne muck.

Other sources of shop air pollution include particulates generated from abrasive grinding on work pieces to remove burrs. Burr removal through abrasive processes is common and can be hazardous to health. Particles from the work piece and the abrasive agent enter the air and can be fine enough to go deep into human lungs, leading to potential long-term safety concerns for machinists.

LeanWerks’ Two-Step Approach to a Clean Air Solution:

1. Address the Source of Pollution

• The first step is to ensure the effective filtration of exhaust from machining centers. We use 3nine Oil Mist Eliminators which are about 3 – 8 times the cost of typical machine air filtration systems, but filter 99.999% of mist, smoke, and particulates from machine exhaust and require much less maintenance to continue functioning optimally due to their patented Disc Stack and Clean in Place (CIP) technology.
• Simultaneously, our clean-air technology captures particulate exhaust at the source of abrasive deburring. We use nine Xtreme Air downdraft tables throughout the shop to minimize particulate emissions, capable of processing air at 1,250 cubic feet per minute (CFM) w/ 250 feet per minute (FPM) velocities.

2. Scrub the Ambient Air

• The second step to a cleaner CNC machine shop is to scrub the ambient air. This crucial process removes any pollution that escapes our source collection, is generated from other inside sources, or comes into the building from outside.
• We use seven Industrial Maid T3500 ambient air cleaners that filter the entire volume of air in the shop every 10 minutes.
• Industrial Maid T3500 Air Cleaners
  • 2.5 HP motor, 3,500 CFM.
  • Multiple pleated pre-filters and bag filters.
  • Belt-drive blower with four-way exhaust louver.

Engineering a Cleaner, More Sustainable CNC Machine Shop

We are proud to say that the air in LeanWerks’ machine shop is literally cleaner than the air that you breathe outside. This is a result of our focused efforts to deliver some of the cleanest, most sustainable and efficient CNC machining solutions that the domestic manufacturing industry has to offer.