The two biggest issues were dust and lack of light. The dust would come out of almost every join and leave a haze in the shed, as well as ruining visibility in the cabinet. The flouro light provided made hardly any difference - I could see better by squinting my eyes.
I went on the interweb and found heaps of YouTube videos for modifying and got my ideas from there.
First, I fitted rivnuts (nutserts, whatever) to allow quicker removal & installation of the window when it needs replacing. Otherwise you need ape long arms to hold the nuts on the inside as well as the hassle of dropping them into the sand below.
I then pulled the whole cabinet apart and when I put it back together I put sealant in every seam to make it airtight. I also added extra foam strip to the door opening as it wasn’t sealing well.
While it was apart, I painted all of the inside upper section with cheap gloss white paint for better visibility, and modified the air inlet to make it the outlet by closing off the top section of the baffle.
For the air inlet, which was originally the outlet, I folded up a baffle and riveted it on. The idea is that this controls the flow of dust across the cabinet better.
You can also see above the two cheap 150W floodlights I installed.
I bought a cyclone dust separator off eBay, a plastic 20 litre bucket with a sealing lid, some pool hose and pvc tube and fittings. With a bit of fabrication, I came up with this, connected to my old vacuum cleaner.
The reason for the cyclone is to minimise the amount of dust that gets through to the vacuum cleaner and clogging up the filter too often.
Then installed a double power point for the lights and vacuum cleaner.
Last was a high tech airflow controller flap. This was made from the bit of plastic left over from drilling a hole in the bucket lid.
With the flap fully open it sucks quite well
and with the flap at maximum restriction it makes the gloves get an erection
I know the cabinet’s sealing well because when I tried blocking off the inlet completely, the metal sides and window started sucking in and the vacuum cleaner worked up to a high pitched scream.
I also added some cheap castors for rolling it around the shed
I’m really pleased with the outcome. I can now easily see what I’m doing and there’s no dust at all on the outside. After about 10 minutes of blasting, I checked the bucket to find about 3/4 of a cup of dust and there was nothing in the vacuum cleaner and the filter was still clean.
Now, back to car stuff
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I’ll need to pop in when I’m up that way to have a look.
