The Germiston bay-gear supplier now offers mobile and wall-mounted extraction arms that take fume at the arc, with self-cleaning filters and a W3 option for stainless work.
GERMISTON – FabMaster Workshop, the Germiston supplier of benches, clamping, torch bays and other fabrication bay gear, has added the FumeArm welding fume extractor to its range. The units are aimed at trailer builders, steelwork contractors, mining and municipal maintenance shops and catering equipment makers who weld every day and still rely on open doors and a roof fan to clear the air.
The FumeArm is a local exhaust unit. A self-supporting arm, 3 m or 4 m long, holds a 160 mm capture hood wherever the welder parks it, and the fan pulls about 1 100 m³/h through the hood. Fume passes a spark pre-separator and then pleated filter cartridges, and the cleaned air goes back out of the cabinet. The mobile version runs on 230 V and rolls on castors to big jobs that can’t be moved, while wall-mounted arms on 400 V suit fixed bays where one welder works the same bench all shift.
Welding fume was classed as a cause of cancer in people by the International Agency for Research on Cancer in 2017. Mild steel wire adds manganese, stainless brings hexavalent chromium and nickel, and galvanised gate and railing work gives off zinc oxide, the cause of metal fume fever. The Regulations for Hazardous Chemical Agents, 2021 under the Occupational Health and Safety Act expect exposure to be controlled at the source where that is possible.
“Most yards that tell us their extraction doesn’t work have the hood parked a metre from the job,” said FabMaster Workshop’s bay layout lead. “Airflow drops off fast with distance. Get the hood within 200 to 300 mm of the arc, a bit behind the weld so the smoke rises into it, and move it every time you move along the seam. That habit does more than a bigger fan.”
On the standard units the cartridges are pulse-cleaned automatically with compressed air at 5 to 6 bar when the fan stops at the end of a shift, and the dust drops into a closed bin. A gauge on the front shows when the cartridges are due for replacement. For stainless and high-alloy work FabMaster fits cartridges tested to the W3 welding fume class. The company says the unit is for welding fume only, and grinding belongs on a separate spark-contained grinding deck.
FabMaster Workshop also covers power cuts in its setup advice. The fan does not restart by itself, so the rule is that nobody strikes an arc until the extractor is running again. Yards that run welders off a generator during long outages should allow for the mobile unit’s roughly 1.1 kW running load and its start current when sizing the genset.
For four or more fixed bays side by side, the company says a central ducted system with one fan often costs less to run than separate units, and it quotes on both. Customers are asked for a rough bay sketch, the processes and metals they weld, the reach needed from the mounting point and the power available at each bay.
Image caption: A workshop supervisor checks the position of a fume extraction hood over a welding bench, in a steel fabrication workshop in Germiston.
About FabMaster Workshop
FabMaster Workshop (https://fabmaster.co.za/) designs and supplies fabrication bay gear for South African fab yards, including heavy welding benches, clamp rails, torch bays, modular jigs, grinding decks, layout tables, PPE stations and training bay packs, all tested on its Sunnyrock fab floor in Germiston. It works with structural, trailer, mining, municipal, solar and catering fabricators and TVET training workshops across the country. It is part of the same South African trade network as equipment supplier am.co.za. FabMaster Workshop is operated by Astros Marketing (Pty) Ltd, 2 Makro Place, Sunnyrock 1401.
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Author: Poppy PA from Astros Marketing (Pty) Ltd on behalf of FabMaster Workshop.
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