[Speedslug]

Your tubing may be giving you a false sense of the volume of air you are moving into and out of your studio.


Soft tubing has a wrinkled surface and the wrinkles can reduce the amount of air flow by almost 60 % so your fan is essentially pulling air in through a soda straw and working very hard to do that.

Turbulence is a matter of smoothing the flow of air. If it is coming around from directly behind you it is going to have eddies and side currents flicking the flame back and forth.

After looking at your pictures in your photo album I can see that you are trying to get your make up air to make some seriously sharp bends right in the area where your torch is burning.

My first thought is to setup a 2 x 10 inch board across the back edge of your sheet metal work area. this will create a baffle that will force your air flow off to both sides but it might still not be tall enough to reduce the flame flutter your getting.

Next thought would be to split the single vent and move it to the sides of the bench against either wall. Better yet, just move the one vent you have to one side at the wall and add a second tube and vent at the other wall. ( Those insulated crinkle type ducts really cut the air movement through them by huge amounts) You can use the round to rectangular floor grate kits instead of the round diffuser and stack a short 4 inch shelf over the vent to continue using the bench space.

One other thought would be to back the torch up from the exhaust duct work by a foot or so as well.

Right now you have a wicked tornado coming up through the round diffuser in the bench surface and whipping around trying to get into the exhaust vent and it is moving too fast to make that turn.

Good luck with this a remember that turbulence is caused by not having a smooth and gentle path flow through.