I want to add some hardware to a vacuum pump, mainly a bleed and a pressure gauge. I might as well put filters on it, especially on the bleed.
What mesh/micron size pourous metal foam filter would work to protect the pump but not clog? I think two would be a good number to use, a fine and coarse one.
A filter in the vacuum is difficult because it would represent quite some flow resistance and often has a large surface area. So it would be a slow thing.
So I would better have the filter at the air side. There are commercial fine filters for compressed air. Two stages sounds like a good idea, though the troublesome dust is likely still that part that passes the coarse stage anyway and than slowly degrades the fine stage. With not that much air needed (compared to the compressed air needed for paint spraying) to fill the vacuum chamber I would expect the filter to last very long.
I meant to have the filter in the vacuum bleed (vacuum level decrease) valve. It should not require high flow but I will do the math on the filters I have in mind with pressure drop. I was just wondering what would work well to protect the actual pump from damage so I know what pressure drops to calculate for different inserts
I can clean what its connected to, but if I want some particular pressure for a long period of time, it would be good that the bleed air is filtered because that will suck in alot of atmospheric crap (not a nicely cleaned chamber).