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Aluminium is really easy to work with but getting rid of the swarf is a night mare my Shed looks like a bomb has been dropped in it.
My wood lathe has an extraction system on it. My small metal lathe that I mainly use for Acrylics has an extraction system on it. For my main metal lathe I use magnetic wands to remove the swarf and generally tidy up as I go.
I have been doing a lot of work on the Mill in Aluminium and the place is full of swarf. As well as work stuff I have been trying to source a cleaning rod guide for my Ruger precision in 6.5 Creedmoor for the last 18 month with out any luck.
So I decided to machine one my self. So I did with out any issues except for lots of Aluminium swarf.
So how do you Guys clean up using Aluminium on your lathes or Mills..

Hoover

For the conventional machines, Good Numatic shop vacuum, one of the wet and dry ones with a large diameter hose, plus variety of brushes.

For the CNC Mill, which uses total loss, minimum quantity lubrication, (it sprays ethanol at the tool), we just use the airgun to blow it away into the swarf bin. From there we shovel it into the bin for recycling.

waterford103 wrote: ↑Sun Mar 27, 2022 9:12 amHoover

I blocked the tube up on the hoover I probably need a new one.

Any way the shed is a disaster area. But the bore guide turned out well. I polished it using my mop set up and it came out really shiny. I am really pleased with the outcome and it cost me pennies to make. Every thing came out of my scrap bin.

I mentioned the issue I had with Aluminum swarf to a Guy who provides me with very exotic and very expensive pen blanks. He wants any aluminium swarf I can supply him with as long as it has not had coolant fed to it and he will buy it or trade it for custom pen blanks.

A result.