I built an air cleaner before. My comments from that experience are:
- If you need to buy a new squrril cage fan to construct an air cleaner, you probably better off buying an air cleaner instead of building it because the new squrril cage fan will eat up all the money saving from building an air cleaner. Therefore, this is important to get a free or very low cost squrril cage fan instead of buying it. Otherwise, this project won't make any economic sense.
- If you want to cut down the noise coming from the air cleaner, you may want to use heavy and bulky material to construct the air cleaner, such as MDF. This will make the air cleaner very heavy. And you may not want to hang that heavy object over your head. This means you may need to put it on bench top or on the floor.
- If you are going to put it on bench top or on the floor, you may find that it will take up your valuable shop space. This is especially a problem if the workshop is small. In this case, you may want to convert it into a multiple-functions unit instead of just doing air cleaning in order to get the most use of the same space. You may make it into a sanding table, or a stand for other tool, or an outfeed table as suggested by another newsgroup member. I didn't make mine to be multiple-functions, and now I regret :(
Hope your project a success.
Jay Chan