How do you keep your receiver "safe"?

[Jerm188]

How do y'all keep your receiver safe from wood dust, webs, etc?

I am unable to put my receiver in any of my cabinets and don't want it near the floor. I do have a spot in one cabinet near the floor, but it's under my miter saw and I feel like I'm asking to destroy it if I put it there. What are good ways to keep it safe, allow air flow so it doesn't overheat, and keep it "out in the open" to adjust dials?

Thoughts?

 

[NUTTSGT]

I don't have a receiver but I do have a "bookshelf" stereo. Wood dust has never been an issue for mine. I've contemplated buying a receiver to replace it though. I'd either buy a decent used one or a cheaper new one so as to not spend big bucks on something for the garage.

 

[StupidSheet]

I put mine on a shelf out in the open. How expensive is your receiver that you're worried about it? Just take an air hose and blow the dust off once in awhile. I've had one in my garage for years and don't blow it off and never have a problem.

 

[Labradorian]

How do y'all keep your receiver safe from wood dust, webs, etc?

I am unable to put my receiver in any of my cabinets and don't want it near the floor. I do have a spot in one cabinet near the floor, but it's under my miter saw and I feel like I'm asking to destroy it if I put it there. What are good ways to keep it safe, allow air flow so it doesn't overheat, and keep it "out in the open" to adjust dials?

Thoughts?

you could always place a cloth over the vents that will alow air flow but catch the dust.........but you would have to shake out the cloth/material out once it dirty. only takes a sec. beats getting all that dust inside the receiver. just a thought.

 

[72Anthony]

I used an older Onkyo receiver that was about 15 years old so I wasn't too worried if it died. I mounted it up high on a shelf so it wasn't in a direct path of dust. It survived about 5 summers in a Houston garage.

I ended up selling it at a garage sale when I sold the house. At nearly 20 years old, the volume knob had a little static when adjusting, but was otherwise OK.

 

[Jere]

Keep the top covered at least, that's where most dust settles. I have been keeping mine on a shelf directly under another shelf and that has done well. I have been thinking about making a quick cheap pegboard enclosed for it lately.

 

[Lippyp]

No receiver but my amp is on a shelf, every so often I run the shop vac over the holes on the top to **** out the dust and I kep it covered with a high tech solution when not in use (an old plastic bag!) Plan eventually is to build a cupboard for it and the DAB receiver thats on my shopping list. It's all ebay used stuff anyway so no great loss if it blows up.

 

[bad_idea]

My receiver has suffered from a dust problem. Grinding dust. I now have an issue w/ interference. If the bench it is on is bumped it makes this deafening buzzing noise. Thump the radio a handful of times and it clears up for a while. I have taken it apart before and blown it out, helped for a while. Need to take it apart again. That being said, I am all ears on how to protect the receiver.

 

[kbs2244]

I have a hand towel draped over the top.

 

[67carl]

Wonder if you could take some of those pleated paper HVAC filters, build a wood box frame and use the filters as the walls and ceiling? Get fancy and rig up a small fan to pull air through.

 

[stonesfan68]

I installed mine on a high shelf. It has survived 6 summers in Houston. The humidity is killing it now, not dust.


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[jannan]

Under your mitre saw?? You better clean the inside of the receiver each time you use the saw. The dust could cause a fire. Some of the components get pretty hot. I've measured resistors at 160 deg. I use window screen to help keep the dust out of mine, but its in a high cabinet and not subjected to a lot of dust.

 

[olytdi]

I finally installed my 1980s Kenwood component system in my shop this weekend. Speakers cabinets are huge (15" woofers) and I suspended them 12 ft up in two corners. The five components all are stacked on shelves in a cabinet. I'll build doors for the front so that it can be completely covered or alternatively rig-up a front curtain of some sort. Leaning toward doors at the moment...

Awesome to have crystal clean sound in the building now and it streams beautifully from a little netbook. But I cannot turn it up past 2 on the volume or I'll risk neighborly revolt! Insanely loud!

 

[Steevo]

Mine is in a cabinet above the workbench, with the computer:

I can't work without my tunes . . .

 

[fury9]

I built a plywood box l__l shape and mounted it under my workbench. I drilled a bunch of 1"holes in the bottom for ventilation.

 

[Greatbear]

Mine sits on a high shelf along with other components. It has a very open top, so I cut a melamine shelf board with the same dimensions, attached four 1/2" rubber feet at the corners to allow for ventilation and set that on top. This keeps debris from falling inside, and the receiver stays cool. It still gets a bit dusty, but nothing like the items on top or next to it. The rest of the dear has no vents on the top. The gear gets cleaned every few years. I bought it around '92 just for the garage, and it's still going strong with nearly daily use in temps from below zero to over 100F. Not bad for a 150 buck Kenwood.

 

[littleponderosa]

I put an old tore up milk crate to use and it sits on the desk from the old family garage.
Run a shop vac over it a couple of times a year, no issues with the dust. Gotta window that sits about 15' away, sunlight thru the glass has ruined the remote control sensor however. Should have paid closer attention the the directions, warning about excessive sunlight could toast the sensor.
What a *****, kinda like the old tv days - gotta get up to change anything. HAHA
Bill

 

[kfsinc]

I have my Marantz 2230 sitting under a plastic monitor stand. The receiver is 17" wide and the stand is about 18" ID. Fits well with about an inch space between the top of the receiver and the stand, plenty of airflow. Sides are enclosed, and the back is open. No dust problem, but it's in the garage not the wood shop. Mine kind of looks like this one (without the monitor on top). Very easy to make also.

 

[JT-3]

I think the old receivers were made to outlast everything. Even inside a garage or bar.

New receivers, I dunno. Plastic.

 

[Lippyp]

This thread has prompted me last night to start designing something to turn the shelf mine is on into a covered in cabinet with a door. Been doing a lot of woodwork this week and its as dusty as hell.

 

[dirttracker18]

Put it in a cabinet that is well sealed. Make a cut out in the door and put a furnace filter over the hole. If you don't like the asthetics you could put the cut out and filter on top.

Seen it done a few times and it stays clean inside.

 

[Notgrownup]

Get some cheese cloth, use the remote.

 

[justme-]

guys - air flow and cloth to cover the vents do not go well together. any cloth tight enough to stop the dust (especially wood dust fines) will kill airflow and you run a serious risk of overheating the electronics. a pleated air filter like a car filter style will be even worse. 90% of those have passive cooling - convective. anything that obstructs it will have a significant effect. Put it in a cabinet away from the tools if you really need that high fidelity. We used to have a cheap old bookshelf speaker driven by a car radio powered by a bench power supply. radio and speaker were from the 70's.

Grinding dust would be the worst for any electronics since it would likely be metallic and silica.

 

[Lassen Forge]

2 ends of the spectrum...

In my shop, my el-cheapy chinese boombox stereo sits on a shelf mext to my main workbench along a wall. It gets hit with the air gun when I remember to do it, or not. I's been there 3-4 years now and works without a problem. I am thinking of replacing it with an old Kenwood component receiver / CD player / Tape deck I was given... and running speakers... just too busy to do it now. It will go where the old one came from.

What we used to do at one of the dustiest jobsites on the planet (the Burning Man event on the Black Rock alkali playa in Nevada) was build a sealed plexiglas box, it ran positive pressure through a HEPA filter... the control surfaces for the gear (both audio and video peojectors) were sealed to a cutout in the box. The power was supplied to the inside of the box with a switch on the outside - you flip the switch, the power comes on to the fan and to the receiver's plug as well, so you always had clean cooling air. The box was positive pressure, so the air not only flowed out of the exhaust vent (used an accordian filter for that) but the controls as well.

When we first built it our airflow wasn't enough - anything in the box overheated. We ended up using a rack of high volume computer fans on one side (drawing through the HEPA filter) as just one or 2 wasn't enough (IIRC the one we built for our audio gear had 6, and the projector one had 10).

OK, it was, for the most part, and for what we do here, overkill, but out there, unprotected electronics in use have a lifespan measured not in years, but hours - the heat is opressive, and the dust is corrosive, alkali, and conductive.