When UK company Crittall Windows decided it need effective oil mist collectors as part of an initiative to upgrade its manufacturing processes, it approached fellow UK manufacturer, Filtermist.

A year after the initial order for 12 Filtermist units was placed, Production Director Darren Joyce, spoke to MTD CNC about why Crittall invested in Filtermist oil mist extraction and the difference it has made to the air quality inside the factory:
“We’re having a big change in our machinery,” said Darren. “It’s quite a transitional period for us after many years. The older machinery that was very heavy duty …and not really how we need to manufacture nowadays. Changes in customer requirements meant we have moved to more CNC machining centres which enable us to manufacture one-offs much more easily.
“One of the challenges we faced when we moved over to more machining centre-based production, is that steel profiles aren’t like say aluminium or PVC – they take longer to process, there’s a lot of machining that goes on, and a lot of coolant is used. We had a big issue in terms of production of fumes - and particularly oil laden fumes. We rapidly found that the factory was starting to mist up which wasn’t a good environment for our workplace. It was also putting far too much coolant on our bars which are then welded which produces even more fumes!
“We wanted to revise the way we deal with our coolant and our cutting fluids on those machining centres. One of the biggest changes was moving away from paper-type filters which historically have been used on the types of machine that we use, and actually find something which would take the oil out of the air.
“If you take the oil out of the air, when you open the door of the machine you don’t get puffs of oil laden air – you get a cleaner environment and everything else that goes along with it.
“We went to the market and did a lot of investigations, we spoke to a lot of the machinery manufacturers and we came across Filtermist.”
Darren then explained how Filtermist units use centrifugal force to spin the oil out of the air, saying “it sounded too good to be true!”
“But it works!” he continued, “We’ve installed them on all of our CNC machining centres and we’ve modified the machines so we’re now reusing the recycled oil in our flood-based machines as well.
“We’ve also introduced a system that cuts the Filtermist unit off when the machine is inactive for ten minutes. This means we’re not wasting electricity on machines that don’t need to be used.
“Filtermist is a fantastic product that does exactly what it says on the tin.”
“After the installation of these machines, we started seeing the clouds of fumes that were being produced historically disappearing from the factory environment. The health and safety and wellbeing of employees is number one and always has been. The biggest improvement has been the removal of oil from the air around people. It’s not on their clothes, it’s not on their faces, on their hands, it’s not on the workpiece, it’s not on the floors - so it’s a much nicer place for people to work and obviously a much healthier place. We’ve seen that improvement on our air quality checks that we undertake every year so that’s come through in the numbers as well.
“The other improvements we’ve found are economical – we take that oil that we recycle, and we can re-use it on some of the other machines. Coolant and cutting fluids are not cheap. So, all in all we’ve got a nicer environment, a cut-down in our expenses and we’re also seeing energy savings by only using the filters when we need them – it’s a bit of a no-brainer!”
If you’d like to know more about how Filtermist can help your company achieve cleaner air and potential cost-savings, contact your nearest local distributor now.