Placed my order today and now I want to get the shop ready for it.
How loud is this going to be, doing a typical wood engraving?
It will be in the basement, right under the kitchen. Will I be sad about how much noise it makes? What works for soundproofing?
The rafters are exposed in the basement, so if I put fiberglass insulation up in there will that work? Or should I build an enclosure lined with “pink foam” insulation?
What do you do for noise management, or is it so loud that after a while you don’t even notice it?
Hi Chris - welcome to the forums! I find the the entire machine is as noisy as a ‘normal’ shop vac or a regular carpet/floor vacuum. I’ve rarely found a situation where the router while cutting was ever louder than my shop vac. If you have a fancy quiet vac, that might not be the case. So if vacuuming the floors causes ‘too much’ noise then you will need some noise blocker. Typical home foam insulation (the think pink or blue stuff) helps, or you can invest in noise abatement dry wall (which would be expensive). The normal ‘foam’ you see in sound proofed rooms is only for reflective noise reduction, it won’t block noise.
Home Depot sells 4x8 sheets of sound board Store SKU #257322. It is not as good as lead sheeting but it will help some and won’t need a 2nd on the house to afford it.
The noise the cutting makes is very dependent on the type of cut. 3D carves are generally dead quiet as not much material is being taken off per pass. Slot or profile cuts can be loud as all get out somewhat dependent on the wood species. But you can pretty much depend on some of your cuts being very noisy. True if you are running a shop vac in the open that will most likely be the loudest. Mine is actually upstairs in my office off from the main house. On the very loud cuts, I just leave the office and close the door. Just on the other side, I can listen in for bad things should they happen.
Good points from @EdwoodCrafting - with my office door shut you can hear the machine on the second floor and barely hear the cut - just enough to know if something has gone horribly wrong. When I’m in the office I use hearing protection - I can sense the quality of the cut based on the sound the machine is making. I find maple and exotic hardwoods (wedge, padauk, etc.) to be some of the noisiest wood to cut - high pitched whine drives me nuts. Cherry and walnut are much more ‘pleasurable’
Thank you for the observations. So, the stepper motors moving around don’t make so much noise, it is the actual bit-on-wood that is the main source. I’m guessing that the first passes to hog out material will be the noisiest, then the final, detailed passes (which take a long time) are not so noisy. It makes sense to be near the machine at the beginning to react to catastrophic failures, and then let it sit and purr overnight.
I agree with most of the posts that the vacuum is the loudest part of the whole operation. What I found out with my vac and it’s a rigid wet dry vac that if I connect a hose on the port that blows out that it reduces The noise by about 10 to 15 decibels which is a lot. Turn on your vacuum go upstairs listen in the kitchen and see if the vacuum with the hose connected is quite enough… The second noisiest of the whole operation will be the router and a different types of wood that you are cutting through. I don’t think you’ll need any type of enclosure other than for looks.
Awesome Machine
For a basement, I’d be inclined to insulate those joists, and hang sheetrock. Maybe even a double-layer. They make hangers that create a gap between the sheet rock and the joist so that it doesn’t transmit lower frequencies directly to the joist. They are often used to sound-proof a home theater setup.
My wife would never allow the 1F in the basement - I’m banished to the shop ( or man-cave as she calls it), which is basically an external garage.
I was actually thinking about connecting a hose as well to try and reduce sound but I ended up getting one of those rigid diffusers. I’ll see if that makes a difference later today. If not, then I might be getting another hose.
I bought a machine in January and found myself in a similar situation. The only place in my basement available was directly beneath my wife’s 1st floor work from home desk. After contemplating enclosures i decided to build 2 full walls and ceiling to box in the foundation corner. 2x4 studs with 5/8 drywall both sides on a cement footer for walls, same for ceiling while trying to keep it as isolated as possible from the existing joists. Filled the gaps at ends of walls/foundation and ceiling/foundation with lots of type s mortar, and encased 2 lengths of 2” pvc pipe thru the wall for shop vac exhaust and fresh air intake. Insulated with rock wool insulation, sealed all of the gaps with silicone as I built my way from the inside out. Built a door out of the same. Put all of my remaining insulation above the booth ceiling between the existing joists. Foam tape seal around the inside of the door, and the room is pretty much airtight. Variable speed router control on the shop vac let’s me cut it down to 50% power, which is still well above the 50cfm required for my dust deputy to separate out the dust effectively. The vac is now only slightly louder than a hairdryer. According to some random decibel meter app, a 90 decibel sound inside the room with the door closed registers at about 65 decibels outside the room in my basement, and merely 38 decibels at my wife’s desk only 8-10 feet above the machine. I have a 1.5kw 65mm liquid cooled spindle and vfd here, so I’m not concerned about the noise at all. I’m going to actually pipe the shop vac exhaust out of the window so it might even get a little quieter when I do that. I build the room as wide as a 48” piece of drywall to minimize the amount of material I’d need, and the machine will fit just right in there. I envisioned a drag chain or 2 in there but I may have to see exactly how much room I have. Just waiting for the machine to get here…
I have it in my garage. The garage is masonry with fiberglass garage door. I have added fiberglass panels to the garage door. With the garage door closed, just outside, it just sounds like a standard vacuum cleaner running (CNC and Vac on). It cant be heard passed my driveway. The shopvac is the loudest component for sure.
Wow, very impressive. I already have a spot in the basement that is similar to this. I’ll pad the ceiling with fiberglass and suspend panels to hold it in place. I’ll put the table on rubber pads to isolate vibration from the floor.
From what I understand, fiberglass insulation is not nearly as effective at reducing sound as the rock wool insulation. I used rock wool “safe n sound” brand. It’s also not itchy and cuts very well with a serrated knife
I’m very curious if anyone else has suggestions or ideas about noise suppression.
The 1F and router are not bad noise-wise and pale in comparison to the noise generated by my Rockler 650 CFM dust collector - which claims to be 80-85 dB but feels more like a small jet engine.
I can run my shop vac with the 1F but it just can’t keep up with the spray of dust. I’m planning on building a multi-layered box for the DC, it’s practically unusable as-is.
I have been getting that impression from the feedback to this question. I’m considering putting the shop vac under the table, in its own soundproofed enclosure, then enclose the entire table and machine in a second layer. I’ll get a simple way to measure dbs upstairs and see how much progress each step makes.
