In today’s episode of the Dust Safety Science podcast, Evan Thompson, Applications Engineer at Nordfab Ducting based out of Winston-Salem, North Carolina, goes over common ducting challenges and their solutions.
While dust collection systems and other types of equipment have been extensively covered on the podcast, we haven’t gone into much detail on installation issues. In this episode, Evan explains the following:
- What the ducting design installation process should look like
- Common challenges that come up during installation, use, and maintenance
- Nordfab’s Quick-Fit Visual Tool for easy 3D duct design
What Does the Ducting Design Installation Process Look Like?
Evan explained that different industries, such as metal, wood, and agriculture, have their own unique challenges that require special applications.
“We spend a lot of time looking at the application of what is happening, both on the pick-up side of the dust extraction and also on the collection side, and trying to figure out a good solution for in-between,” he says.
He confirmed that there is a lot of need for new ductwork design and installation in facilities where new construction is happening. These facilities may be anything from a large engineering firm to a high school with a wood and a metal shop.
“There are a lot of people who want to make changes in their facility. That can be a facilities management person or end-user who says, “This isn’t working, right. I’ve got piles of dust sitting around. I know I shouldn’t have this. What do we do?” And then it’s starting to figure out what we can do. Can we add on? Can you change your system? A lot of times it’s working with dealers.
Sometimes it’s working directly with the end-user because there are a lot of good folks out there who know the whole process as well and are really helpful in that.”
Common Ductwork Challenges
He confirmed that in a lot of cases, ductwork is an afterthought, as it is usually the last step in the installation process.
“There are a lot of challenges involved with that. Someone’s already spent their budget on their collector and they’ve spent their budget on their new CNC router or whatever other type of device. Now they just need to get a “connect” and need help getting there.”
There are also safety challenges with large pieces of ductwork, especially when navigating through facilities. Nordfab addresses these difficulties with its adjustable, or quick fit, ductwork. It has a clamp-together style that makes it easy to adjust.
“In traditional ductwork, you’re going to be working with 10-foot pieces of duct and everything is going to either be a bolt-together or a weld-together connection. Nordfab ductwork has a clamp, and a level of what we call a “sleeve”. It allows you to go ahead and quickly put up and adjust ductwork without having to get all those connections figured out ahead of time, so the installation goes a lot quicker. That’s one of the things that we see is a big advantage – you have a smaller installation crew, you have a much faster installation, and you have a lot of adjustment after the fact – which is really a big benefit.”
Evan said that installation is always tricky because there are a lot of different regulations surrounding different hanging methods, different load capacities of the ductwork. Planning ahead is essential to a proper installation.
“Whatever tool you use to design with, I think it’s important that you have figured out your sizing correctly. That’s the number one issue that I see – sizing and balancing of your ductwork because sizing and balancing of it goes a long way towards the efficiency of both your collection points and your collector itself, and that’s going to affect performance from the moment you start a system up until it’s been running for five years. I can buy a bunch of ductwork and put it together, but do I understand the impact of what happens when I’m changing transport velocities along the way? Do I understand my actual CFM requirements? So really, pre-planning and looking at your equipment before you get started is part of that design.”
One common issue is dust or particulate matter settling in the ductwork. This can be overcome by designing the correct size at the beginning, but once it happens, it presents a challenge because the system now has extra weight that hasn’t been planned for. It also creates fire hazards.
“With our system, we’ve got that clamp together – it’s a little bit like a Lego connection almost. You can pull that apart and actually take a look at your ductwork very easily [and clean it].”
Wearability can also pose issues.
“Elbows are a great example,” Evan says. “If you’ve got a very abrasive product, the thing that’s always going to wear out in your system more than any is an elbow. Being able to quickly replace those is something that people don’t think about and plan for.”
Lack of flexibility is another challenge often seen in facilities.
“People want to move their equipment around. They’re saying, “I’ve got a better way of doing this. I need to move my work cells around.” Having the flexibility to move and change ductwork is always a challenge. Tying to make sure that you can actually reassemble it in a way that makes sense for your system is one of those areas that’s a big challenge for just about anyone.”
Nordfab’s Quick Fit Visual Tool
Nordfab’s Quick Fit Visual, QFV, is a tool made available to the company’s dealers free of charge. It allows them to do ductwork, layout and design in a web browser in 3D. They do some simple line drawing and automatically size and calculate stack pressure values for their ductwork layouts.
“It’s a really powerful tool to make the layout in a visual way,” Evan says. “All the different things that you need to think about are in one place. As of right now, it’s available only for our dealers, but we’d like to expand that capability so that end-users can potentially use it in their design.”
Conclusion
Evan confirmed that Nordfab will continue to develop solutions that make ductwork easier and safer to install, maintain, and adjust. Reports from the field help create blueprint for future improvement.
“[They’re] a really good opportunity to come in and analyze what’s not working, and make changes to improve the health and safety of the people working in those facilities.”
If you would like to discuss further, leave your thoughts in the comments section below. You can also reach Evan Thomson directly:
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/evancthomson/
Website: https://www.nordfab.com/
Email: [email protected]
If you have questions about the contents of this or any other podcast episode, you can go to our ‘Questions from the Community’ page and submit a text message or video recording. We will then bring someone on to answer these questions in a future episode.
Resources mentioned
Dust Safety Science
Combustible Dust Incident Database
Dust Safety Science Podcast
Questions from the Community
Dust Safety Academy
Dust Safety Professionals
Dust Safety Share
Companies
Nordfab Ducting
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