The answer to this is NO, there will be some smoke from the flu as the burner is being light and getting up to tempature, once the burner is light and the oil feed correctly set there will be no smoke or any fumes in the workshop and basically no smoke from the flu.
These burners are not like the old Sally Ann burners where you just dumped in 5 gallons of oil and light the top of the oil and the chimney was vented into your workshop, also these were dangerous as you could not shut of the fuel.
Basic Principles of Operation. Basic rules of Combustion states that to maintain combustion we need three things present.
(1). Fuel. - .............Our fuel is going to be Sump Oil, hydraulic oil, gear oil etc
(2). Oxygen -......... Provided by the addition of air,
(3). (Heat. -........... Without sufficient heat the fuel will not attain suficient temperature to further gasify the fuel and the process will become "endothermic"'. Which in laymans's language means it will just "go out". We need our reaction to be "exothermic" meaning that it must give off more heat than is necessary to maintain combustion. It is this surplus of heat that will provide draft to ensure a supply of fresh air to our flame and most importantly it will be radiated into the surrounding air to warm our workshops.
Having provided the three things listed above, we need one further condition. Our flame needs to burn cleanly, which will ensure that we do nor polute up the neighbours with smoke and smell. We can achieve this by making sure we have enough oxygen present to ensure complete combustion, AND that it is well mixed with the fuel.
Draft.
Because this heater does not have a forced draft fan, it is most important that we have plenty of draft or airfow, generated by the differential in air column density. This is bought about by the vertical column of air within the heater and flue, being far less than the ambient pressure outside the heater body resulting in a strong airflow from outside, into the heater through the air holes.