From the workbench of the esteemed Horati0nosebl0wer

I’m back to doing some comparison on filter media for my airbrush. I have finished up with my filter that I’ve had in my Benchvent setup. Ive purchased media Micromark recently at a significant discount. There are issues that I need to address now.

The filters I purchased with the Benchvent system are great and work well. Materially they are constructed inside a frame of regular cardboard with some bird wire inserts stapled for stability. The media for filtration is spraybooth fibreglass for the purpose of painting at scale. The downside is the filters are pricey for the average user. The math looks like there is a steep hobby tax when looking at the main material costs considering box frames, wire and media. Labor is normally your biggest cost and if it’s all automated and run in large volume that should be significantly lower.

Overall, at a present cost of $139.95 for 6 filters and then $59 shipping(Dec ’24) I have reason to pause for this consumable product.

Considering other cardboard box filters ordered to custom size using paper media at an assumed MERV 11 rating the price drops to $96.25 from other manufacturers. This again is for a set of 6 that ship for $10 (Dec ’24). The drawback is variance in size and the ability of the media to catch spray in the air.

I purchased some material from Micromark for a size similar to my air filter seeing prices I thought were pretty good. They have 1st stage media as pads for $5.95 (x5) or rolls for more and 2nd/3rd stage filter media at $16.95. After picking up the pads and some media, I found it was just fiberglass and woven charcoal media and no cardboard. Their units are all direct exhaust from the bottom and not upright like my own. Its a pain to learn the lesson here of a good price but I can share the info so others are informed.

My final thought was to make my own and, despite prices going down markedly, the effort of storing media not in use and the effort of making my filters really outweighs the benefit of price.

All in all I believe custom sized paper filters will be my go to and just glue some prefilter or polyester batting used in sowing to the fronts. It should work well to allow me more filter changes at about the same cost as the premium stuff.