Keeping the gear clean

[.RC.]

I often see pictures of peoples workshop and their lathes and milling machines all clean and with the ways and tables to polished they would pass a health inspection for food preparation equipment and the floors gleaming that much you could eat off them..

How do they do it???? I do a bit of work with the lathe and less so with the mill...I do not keep them spotless but keep the ways clean, I turn steel with a bit of rust and scale on it and once you add some oil it is terribly hard to keep the gear clean as it finds it's way into every nook any cranny...

The mill is worse as it's cuttings are usually stuck in the tee slots and all over the vice plus they are tiny slivers of steel that if they get hit with compressed air end up over the entire shed as well as being impaled into your body...They all evetually migrate into the deep recesses at the end of the table and are near impossible to clean out of..

So what is the best way to get cuttings off the mill and into the rubbish bin and how those people keep their sheds so clean or do they only look at their gear and never use it????

[derekm]

A good vacuum cleaner that can deal with swarf, coolant and oil and get in to T slots. I actually use a small domestic Dyson vacuum cleaner that was retired from the house because of a broken switch and hose connection (replaced with another Dyson). Some steel tube and epoxy fixed the connection and the thing is now switch on and off from the wall.

The bagless cyclone design deals with swarf and coolant very well indeed and it has enough suck to pull ISO 100VG way oil off the mill. The fine nozzle attachment fits down the t-slots gap and cleans them. It sucks up droplets of coolant and dries the metal quite well. Its now my primary way of cleaning up swarf and mess. Not the purpose Mr Dyson intended but it works for me.

No connection with Dyson or any outlet selling them.

[macona]

Heres the secret. They clean before the pictures. Then it goes back to normal within a couple days!

[oldtiffie]

Scrubbers

Get a local "scrubber" in as that will soon change your ways!!.

[chief]

As stated the vacuum cleaner works well,use a small brush and scribe for the hard to reach places. To keep things rust free and looking new I throw bags of dessicant in all my toolbox drawers, I also hose down all my tools
with a spray can of penetrating oil, I just open the drawer and spray everything. I haven't bought a micrometer since 1982 and could pass mine off on EBAY as NOS.
Not that it matters at home but in the business world I have gotten work that should have gone to a more experienced machinist simply because I kept my shop/tools/machine clean and neat, first impression matter.
I was taught that you work faster and it's more enjoyable if you can readily find what you need instead of spending 30 minutes digging for a ball end mill.
Lastly, keeping things put away means more room to store all the important STUFF I bring home, I am a crusader and historian, if it were not for me and others like me future generations would only have pictures of '48 studabaker carburetors, broken BSA clutch cables,and burned out electric motors to look at instead of being able to touch the real thing, nothing is more rewarding than seeing the questioning look on the uninformed face followed by the the age old question, " what in the F##k is that".

[SGW]

I've grown to hate those people.

My shop always seems to be a mess, even when I haven't done anything. I think it's infested by gremlins who come out at night and trash the place, especially just after I've cleaned it up.

But, for cleaning....
I use a shop vac for smaller chips. I find I have to pick up the long stringy chips first, by hand or with brush and dustpan, so they won't clog the hose.

A car snow brush works well; the bristles are coarse enough so the chips don't embed in the brush too badly.

Paper towels pushed along T-slots with a stick clean out the stuff that's too stuck in place for the vac to get.

I find it helps to clean up at least partially as I go along, so the mess doesn't get totally out of control.

[lane]

Send the wife out to clean twice a week .Works for me.