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Anonymous10/14/25, 06:13No.2950757
my work threw out a "labconco 30 inch fumehood". they were rennovating and it was going in the dumpster and i figured i could use it for soldering, or putting my 3d printer in, or sandblasting.
well that was about a year and a half ago and it's just been sitting in my garage.
the problem is i don't have a benchtop to mount it to. it's 30"x30"x48". which conveniently fits perfectly through normal doors.
however if i put a normal sized table under it, it'll no longer fit through doors, which are like 80" tall.
I want to keep the footprint able to fit through a door.
So, my plan is to make some sort of short table with wheels on it that I can jack up when it's where I want it to stay.
I've got 3 ideas for how to do this and I'm hoping you guys could sanity check me on these.
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Anon10/14/25, 06:14No.2950758
My basic plan is to weld up a 4 legged table out of square HSS. probably 16 gauge, 1.5"x1.5".
a lot of jack options seem to be around 20" or so. I'd figure I'd make it at the highest with a worktop at ~34"my current best idea is to steal this guy's design. This is welding table with a hydraulic long-ram jack. This would be too tall, the jacks are like 24" minimum.
But I can use this same concept with an RV scissor jack to adjust the height (20" of range) and then pin the telescoping legs to stay there.
I think this is a pretty good idea. I don't know exactly how I'd mount the jack to it.
https://www.harborfreight.com/2-1-2-half-ton-trailer-stabilizer-jack-96406.html
for mounting the jack, I don't know if bar stock is sufficiently rigid. Maybe i'd need to drill holes in some square tubing and bolt the top and bottom of the jack to it.
I also don't know how much of a pain in the ass it'll be to do the telescoping legs. it seems simple enough but maybe there's a lot of slop, plus the weld beads inside the tube.
and i'd want to put like a plywood sheet on the top of it as a work surface. I don't really know how I'd attach this without bolting through into the tubing which I think will look like shit.
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Anon10/14/25, 06:19No.2950761
pic related is more or less what i'm planning, if this makes sense.
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Anon10/14/25, 08:29No.2950768
Get a heavy duty motorized standing desk frame, the kind with 4 legs.
They have a spindle in each leg driven by geared motors.
Seen them for 250 bucks on ebay rated for 400lbs.
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Anon10/14/25, 11:00No.2950777
At the risk of asking a stupid question; why not just figure out what your optimum height is beforehand and then just build to that height? Do you need to collapse it for storage or something?
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Anon10/14/25, 12:46No.2950791
Unless you're moving it through doors often (in which case, wtf why?) just affix it with something that can be removed. For metal tables that's simple. For wood it's just a case of using threaded metal inserts.
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Anon10/14/25, 19:14No.2950860
i build picel on a 3x5x2" welding table and it was fantastic
channel iron rides on the pipe legs so everything is trapped but can move vertically
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Anon10/14/25, 19:16No.2950862
here is a strictly mechanical version shamelessly stolen from some forum. the slide tubes look like sections of pto shaft so i bet its farmerbiltTM
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Anon10/15/25, 03:17No.2950908
I have no clue about sandblasting but it seems like overkill for 3D printing or soldering. That’s even before making a heavy, variable height table. Just get a cheap fan and be done.
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Anon10/15/25, 17:14No.2950994
>well that was about a year and a half ago
"I bet you're wondering how I got myself in this situation" sitcom vibes.Okay first you need to vent it. So you're permanently installing a vent you're going to attach and detach from. Second you're not actually doing anything you need the hood for if you're 3d printing and if you did (you don't) then you're not going to be fucking moving your printer back and forth you're going to be printing otherwise what is the point of buying the printer. Soldering is just as stupid, if you're going to solder so little that a dedicated hood isn't necessary then a fucking dedicated hood isn't necessary.what you have is a $20,000 fan that doesn't fit, a steel frame and a filter that still needs to be vented.A few options:
1. sell it and use the money to buy a 3d printer
2. strip it and use it for a steel frame workspace repurposing the fan and filter
3. put it back in the dumpster
4. get a bigger shop you fucking poorfagthe whole thing is overdesigned and idiot proof, created for real lab work by fucking idiots in the real world. for you and anything you've listed it's an albatross. you need to get over it, get rid of it and actually do the 3d printing, sandblasting or soldering instead of faffing about with a jackoff table that you'll push into storage and never look at again.
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Anon10/15/25, 18:40No.2951019
Does it even have a built-in blower? I've installed some of these at my prior job and very few include a blower and are nothing more than a cabinet with a sliding glass door. They have to be paired with a blower of a minimum CFM rating and one as large as you are describing would need 400CFM or more to even work with the glass slid up enough to get your arms under it.
For them to be used safely you need a flow-rate gauge at the inlet side and for the hazard level of the materials and fumes there are required minimum flow rates for the door when open to a 4 inch gap.
If it doesn't have a built-in blower your "free" item isn't really useful and you're better off just selling it. A way smaller fume extractor would be more useful and cheaper than a whole fume hood.
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Anon10/15/25, 18:49No.2951022
Maybe you should scrap it for the value of the various metals.