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I’m building an 18mm thick plywood cabinet to house my 1000mm X-Carve, with 50mm thick acoustic foam and double glazed perspex windows. The cabinet connects to my shop vac/cyclone bucket combo in the room next door. I thought I was very clever cutting down all that noise, until I realised that the router on the CNC is going to produce a lot of heat with the door closed, and while I could blast a fan into the box to cool it, that will let some of the sound out, defeating the purpose.
Do any of you smart people have any ideas for cooling this closed system in a way that won’t break the bank? Obviously water cooling is out of the question for this reason. I’ve been Googling for hours (not a euphemism), and I can’t find an answer.
WHat about running with the fan, But use a length of flexible dust collector hose on the inlet and outlet of the enclosure? You could even attach the free end to a box on the floor to act as a muffler and rig up some sort of filter for ultra fine dust.
The dust hose, with it’s internal ridges would dampen the sound acting like a muffler while conducting air to and from the housing. If the free ends are at floor level, it would minimize it even further.
I’m venting in through a soundproof baffle, so air comes through, but it negotiates a tube lined with soundproofing foam that goes around a lot of corners before ending up inside the cabinet. I was worried because the dust extraction will happen through a dust shoe at collet level, but the heat of the tool will rise to the roof of the cabinet. I wasn’t sure if the airflow would counteract that.
You’ve obviously put a lot of time and money into this project. I feel your pain. Last year I looked into doing what you’re trying to do, and as a sound engineer I thought it was feasible. I designed a box that would have dropped the noise of the router around 80%. In the end it was never built because of the high cost, and for long jobs the heat build up wouldn’t have been acceptable. So I went back to the drawing board and rethought how to approach the problem. I am convinced that the best way to kill the noise and not worry about the heat issue is to simply get a water cooled spindle (the best way to kill noise is not to create it). What little noise remains could easily be controlled with a cabinet. Best of luck with your project. Cooling is always a tough nut to crack where soundproofing is used. If I had to do it I would use a Peltier cooler. It would add no noise and no fans or venting would be needed.
Buy a 120mm pc fan and buy a thermostat controller they are like 10$ on ebay. It let’s you set the temperature you want these cabinet at and it activates a relay when the temperature in your cabinet exceeds your set temperature. That way the fan isn’t on all the time only when the cabinet gets hot. I use this same system for my closed cabinet where I house my pc aND xcontroller.
If sound is an issue you could always make some sort of zigzag pattern out of mdfto baffle the noise.
