[Steve Seebold]

I cut a 32 Oz. plastic Gatorade bottle in half, and use it as a scoop.
I also use the cheap 50 cent chip brushes from Home Depot.
A lot of Machinists and Machine Shop owners frown on using compressed air to clean machines with.
They claim chips will get blown into places they aren't welcome, like under the table, into crannies, and into electrical control panels.
I don't know if it's fact or an old wives tale, but I usually try to avoid using compressed air, and blowing chips around.

I put a regulator on the airline at the machine and I turned the pressure down to 40PSI. That works well for me and doesn't blow stuff all over the garage.

To scoop chips out, I have a cat litter scoop and I will shovel chips into a deep sink I have on wheels with a 5 gallon bucket under it. I'll let that sit over night then dump the coolant back into the machine

[pickled]

I spray everything down with Amsoil silicon spray before I start extended runs. I will use chip brushes and a scoop to do a little continuous clean-up as the burden piles up. The next morning I scrape/brush and Shop Vac up the remainder. Nothing really high tech here.

[pickled]

My set up is looking pretty sad and low-tech compared to that beast of a chip cleansing solution that you have assembled there Don. I hope that you never get that thing up to 88 MPH :-).

88 mph bttf Delorean - YouTube

[EvolveES]

We made out own tormach enclosure but the bottom is very similar to the one tormach sells. I usually scrape out the T-slots first and then blow the small pieces down toward the tray. then use a dust pan to scrape all the chips into two piles, one on each side of the mill and pile them as high as possible. Then dry all of the table surfaces and spindle with a towel. Then i let the piles drain out overnight and the next morning shovel out the dry piles with a dustpan the next morning. We have a large show vac too if we want to vacuum out all of the tiny chips, but we seldom do that. I found the piling and draining overnight saves the most coolant, every morning the piles are nearly dry.

[JohnToner]

Mike, I'm just not very tech-savvy. It's a wonder I didn't email them to the man-in-the-moon! I didn't know how to post them, even had to have my step-son email them to me so I could just fwd them.

[Don Clement]

My set up is looking pretty sad and low-tech compared to that beast of a chip cleansing solution that you have assembled there Don.

Hardly high tech. More like I don't like wasting money buying expensive filters for the shop vac. In fact I think it's a racket like all the other greedy vacuum companies till Dyson showed filters are unnecessary. Yeah I have a Dyson vac for the house also and never have to buy filters again- shop or house. My bare bones Dust Deputy was $39 about the cost of 1.5 shop vac filters. Works for me. YMMV

Don

[popspipes]

Hardly high tech. More like I don't like wasting money buying expensive filters for the shop vac. In fact I think it's a racket like all the other greedy vacuum companies till Dyson showed filters are unnecessary. Yeah I have a Dyson vac for the house also and never have to buy filters again- shop or house. My bare bones Dust Deputy was $39 about the cost of 1.5 shop vac filters. Works for me. YMMV

Don

That is a good idea Don!
I hit a few stores looking for one yesterday, Menards has the best price just under 40 dollars but no one has them in stock, so I will have to order one. I usually scoop up the chips, the vacuum the rest if I am changing to a different material.
Thanks for posting.

[popspipes]

Mike, I'm just not very tech-savvy. It's a wonder I didn't email them to the man-in-the-moon! I didn't know how to post them, even had to have my step-son email them to me so I could just fwd them.

Sometimes its not easy for me either, I had it figured out pretty well a few years back then they changed things on me. I like to send them as attachments and I had a resizer that was simple, not so today ha!

[sparrow]

Not a $40 vacuum but I made a geat setup for under $250 that holds a lot of chips, has a ton of pull with a 4.0hp motor and uses no filters.
I'm not sure if the picture attached but here is a video showing how it's made and how it works.
https://youtu.be/lP3RyHbaTeU

[X35 Design]

I built one of these type things into a old 55 gallon drum for a wood/foam router I am building at work and it surprised me how well it worked, and it essentially cost nothing but some time and a couple PVC fittings to put it together:

It works great for sawdust, so with metal chips I think it would be perfect, as there are little to no fine particles. You could probably skip the baffle for metal chips I'd bet and it would be nearly as good.

J. Phil Thien's Cyclone Separator Lid w/ the Thien Cyclone Separator Baffle



For mine, I just used all PVC fittings from Lowe's that I could fit the vacuum hose ends into tightly.

I'm going to build one for my own shop based on how well this one worked.