sound reduction

[jeff]

Hey all.. needing some advice. Have an opportunity to expand our business. Producing out of our home now, but have a chance to rent a "much Larger" area. We will be wholesaling and retailing. Problem is.. the front will be a retail area, back.. production/storage. and I have one restaurant neighbor and the other more wholesale. It is commercially zoned. Need more of a quiet production. Walls are 12" cement blocks. and a wall b/w the back and front is also cement blocks with 2 doors.
I have use a PC router.. trying to find spindle.. any other advice?
thanks..

Jeff

[knight_toolworks]

the real noise comes from cutting. if the router is louder then what your cutting then the spindle will help but if your cutting material that really screams it won't matter much. dc can be as loud as anything else.

[jeff]

thanks Steve. Do you think building a wall around the SB.. combined with the 12" concrete can eliminate most of the squealing sounds?

[ken_rychlik]

Having gone from the router, to a spindle, i can say it is about 1/3 quieter overall. I bought an inexpensive chinese spindle and have been happy with it. The spindle can barely be heard running compared to the router screaming, but there are other noises.

Depending on what you are cutting and with what bit, you could have lots of bit noise.

Dust collection can be noisy. Vac hold down can be noisy.

I think upgrading to a spindle will help a lot, but not completely solve your issues.

Mainly trying to produce a product next to a restraunt is always going to give you grief of some kind

The best solution would be having more of an industrial location.

[jeff]

Thanks Ken. One catch is that our business is not all production. We do some light assembly, but a retail location is definitely needed. This location just is very inexpensive, perfect location, and has a front area perfect for retail.. and a warehouse back.. the restaurant is mainly at the front.. with no walls shared toward the back.. also wondering how the 12" block walls would help. If I put sound reducing walls around the tools, do you think that would help.. use a 48x96 SB and just a regular table router.. miter saw.. otherwise, no other "loud" tools needed.. Any thoughts?

[kurt_rose]

Hey Ken. Where did you get the spindle?

[gerryv]

Jeff, I had an industrial bay with those block walls a few years back. There was a lot of noise from next door and when we investigated, it turned out to be coming through mostly from the area above the blocks and below the steel roof where there was two sheets of 1/2 or 5/8 drywall and some significant gaps. You might want to check out your possible location for that.

[ken_rychlik]

Kurt, it bought it on Ebay. 3kw (4hp) delivered for just over $600 with a vfd included.

You have to get your own wiring and it doens't work with the spindle speed control board that shopbot sells, but the router didn't either. I also have several 'bot friends running the same unit.

Send me your email if you want the info.

[jim_rutske]

Jeff, I had the same noise concerns with my bot. Building a wall around certainly helps. I also made 2' x 4' wall attachments that helped absorbed the sound. The wall hangings were homemade and constructed of a layer of leftover house carpet, a layer of sound deadening board (Lowe's), 1/2" Sheetrock, sound deadening board, and again a layer of carpet. The whole "sound sandwich" was liquid nails together and then wrapped in a sawdust colored lightweight cloth and stapled on. I French cleated each board 3/4" away from the walls around the bot (creates an air gap behind the board). It made a HUGE difference in the overall noise and completely eliminated the reverberation from the dust collector. It is weird when you walk past one when the bot is running because there is no sound reflection at all. I am going to make smaller 2' x2' in a couple weeks and hang them vertically from the ceiling.

[billp]

Jeff,
Years ago in a previous life I owned a rehearsal/recording studio ( actually seven different rooms) for musicians in a large warehouse. At that point I also thought that sheer mass could keep sound from "bleeding" into the adjacent studios so I built walls of cinder block filled with sand (a VERY tedious, and probably life shortening process..). The end result was less than satisfactory because I then found that sound can easily be transmitted through floors, ceilings, internal rebar, etc.
I tried numerous methods to minimize the transmission and the best result came from actually building a room within a room so that the initial sound was dampened before hitting the cinder block. Of course the volume is only one issue,and the frequency of the sound can sometimes require even further "localized" dampening, such as baffles, or offset suspended deflectors/absorbers which break up the sound waves a bit. As other people have already pointed out, it's really the cutting process that will generate the most sound/noise ( the difference between the two is that when you're making money noise becomes sound...), so depending on the material(s) you are cutting your transmission factors will vary.
One hint I CAN provide is to cut at the lowest RPM the job will tolerate. A lot of people use high RPM for everything, and it's really not necessary...
I've always wondered what the wreckers thought when they tore down my warehouse to build the SF Giants baseball stadium and they tried to knock down those walls...

[chiloquinruss]

Jeff, just a thought since you said you were also doing some assembly, how about checking the operating hours of your neighbors and trying to arrange your cutting time when they are either not there or less busy. Russ

[knight_toolworks]

the nosiest items I cut are tropical hardwoods like purpleheart and ipe. You can reduce the noise a bit but it still howls like crazy.

[dlcw]

Jeff,

What type of materials are you cutting?

I cut 3/4" plywood with spindle, dust collector and vacuum holddown and I can carry on a conversation with someone about 20' away without a problem. When you have a spindle you can really dial in the speed that makes the cutting part of the noise equation really low. The noisiest part of my whole CNC operation is the vacuum holddown motors. I know I could solve that by putting them in another sound proof room and plumb the thing to the table. But for me, the more complicated something is, the more likely something is going to go wrong. I use the K.I.S.S. principle wherever possible.

Before I got my current machine I was playing with a Buddy with a PC router. I built a room around it and put 2" foam insulation in the walls and that router screams so loud it is real tough to silence it. I found it hard to think even with earplugs and headphones over the earplugs. The frequency of the router is murder on my ears. When I got my Alpha I went with the spindle. GLAD I did!!

[jeff]

Thanks guys.. It's looking like my best bet is to look for more of an industrial location or build a shop outside my home.. Just gonna have to wait for the time being.. Thanks for all the honesty!

Jeff

[feinddj]

Jeff,

If its cheap and you don't mind some work don't give up on the location.

First minimize the noise at the source. spindle is the first thing to do. use the right bit.

Second. sound transmission, isolation is the key. changes in density are perfect. your router makes a lot of noise in the high end range but little in the low end. I had written a long explanation about how to, but try this link. http://soundproofing101.com/soundproofing_3.htm (http://soundproofing101.com/soundproofing_3.htm)pretty basic but you'll get the idea. 5/8 th dry wall adds mass. I use two layers, the silicon tip is pretty good. non parallel walls would help as well. don't forget your ceiling, the same tricks can be used there.

One Caution: CARPET, EGG CRATES AND MOST FOAMS ARE NOT FIRE PROOF. There is sound reduction foam like you see in recording studios that is but its pricey. The fire at the White Snake show in NJ was due to sound proofing that was not fireproof. I saw the simulation linked to the video. If you weren't by the door, you had no chance. time to total involvement was less than 1:47 sec.

(http://soundproofing101.com/soundproofing_3.htm)

[jeff]

Thanks David. I called the zoning commissioner and we are going to do some tests to see how loud it will be. The restaurant is really a small pizza place only 40 feet deep.. my section would be 80feet deep with the bot in the back. I think if the sound does not carry over next door, the more sound proofing I do, the better it will be.. Thanks for all the advice.

[michael_schwartz]

My shop is in a stick framed building next door to a laundromat, with no real soundproofing other than fiberglass insulation in the wall.

I have never had any complaints.