So our shop owner has decided that dealing with the smoke from our 5x10 plasma cutting via opening the doors & turning on the fans is a no go (about time, though his reasoning had to do with his heating bill)
He has decided that we are to build a water table, the tank itself, and slats and supports etc are all drawn up and being fabricated at the present time, that is the easy part (though he drew up the tank a bit big - 425ish gallons seems excessive, 3500 lbs later)
Now I am in the process of trying to figure out the right pump for "bladder"/circulation/drainage, as I imagine trying to cut the holes for these items After the fact (when the tank is full of water) would be quite stupid, I have settled on a 1" drain on the bottom, and 2 pcs 3/4" pipe nipples for the circulation/"bladder" function.
I figure I can have a 55 gallon drum (allowing for about 1.5 inches of adjustment) sitting next to the table and get my ball-valve/gravity doing the initial drain into the bladder(drum), come to think of it I may want to use a round shut-off for the drain out of the table.
Now the tricky question, what kind of flow should I be looking for as far as my pump is concerned, the idea is that the water should be circulating constantly draining out at the same rate that the pump puts it back into the tank, supposedly this is to alleviate the hazards of cutting aluminum over the water table.
I have read that this is unneccessary some places, and that it is of the utmost importance other places or that you should place an additive in the water for aluminum cuts and even that you should never under any circumstances run aluminum on a water table
Therefore my questions are as follows:
1. Are we overthinking this and the bladder/pump really only needed for drainage/water level control
2. If circulation IS necessary & therefore we do really need to invest in the circulation aspect, what kind of pump size/flow should I be investing in?
there is no end to the various flows and sizes that I could get and if I need circulation I guess I want to cycle the full tank at LEAST once an hour (800 GPH) or would that be too much? (I can easily get a water level indicator shuttoff so that flow out matches flow in if I need the circulation)
if I dont need the circulation then the question is easy, get the pump that matches what I need for maintenance/cleaning
thank you in advance for your responses
~Andrew