Thanks to some very good fortune, we are looking at the likelihood of going from spraying 50 doors per day to spraying 200-300 doors per day (ie, plenty of business). We are in the planning stages now of installing a flatline before these major projects hit the production line.

We spray conversion varnish.

Anyhow, we're currently using SandMan downdraft sanding tables. Obviously we're going to need a helluvalot more sanding tables to do this well.

Asking around to see what other options are out there--- we definitely need to go to great lengths to keep dust to a minimum and help keep the spray room as safe/healthy as possible to work in.

Would you guys look into buying several more of the same (3x6') downdraft tables, or are there other options that are more appropriate for larger volumes?

you need to invest in cartridge style sanding booths for this type of production

good luck
herb j

check out denray.
have a large selection.

Gents, thank you--- I have bookmarked the Denray offerings and will be reaching out to them soon

Just curious, why cartridge sanding tables. I was never a fan of the cost or difficulty of cleaning cartridges.

first off, you have two choices, a three stage filtration or cartridge filters which are self cleaning, they back pulse via a timer board located in the control panel of the sanding booth. it is a production style booth, the three stage filtration booth, you need to blow out the filters with compressed air which is very messy and prone to blowing holes in the filters which is very likely to happen. that is the very short answer to your question. inital cost difference is about a 40% upcharge to go to the cartridge style booth.

good luck
herb j

Having to blow out dust on our current tables is quite bothersome, these use a cloth prefilter laying over some 2" Merv13 HVAC filters.

We have an old Grizzly dust collector set up specifically for this, we don't want the floury dust going up into our central dust collector and clogging up the baghouse.

We have a wide belts blowing dust into the baghouse every day. Some DA dust is not going to make a difference. We also have the duct piece Sandman sells that holds the filter when you blow it out. It takes a couple minutes, is not mess and we have never blown a hole in the filter. I am sure the cartridge unit is nice but the filters need to be manually blown out eventually. And they need to be replaced.

Based on quotes I got the purchase price is more than 40% more, not that that is not enough.

How much are the filters to replace?

How long is your contract for? If this is going to go on for an extended amount of time you need to automate, get a spray line and a sander that sands before first coat and then after each coat as needed.

Some guys were showing off some of this equipment this week at the woodworking show, the one spray line I saw was only 36 ft long, 5 mins and the doors come out the end ready to stack, or send them through the sander if it is only the first coat.
Buying all these sanding tables and sanding by hand is for the birds.

Scott you are correct about automated vs hand sanding. Such things are not necessarily off the table but we have a number of constraints we're dealing with that will stilt our decision one way or the other. Space, cost, etc.