pic: PSA: Watch your metal shavings

[Richard Wallace]

Originally Posted by Al Skierkiewicz

...Drilling is not the only operation, deburring creates as much or more and using compressed air makes matters worse. Use a vacuum when possible. Compressed air drives the metal into open frame motors, bearings, gears and electronics. Any of which will cause some form of failure.

Slightly off-topic, but this reminds me of the machine shop supervisor I worked with in college. He did not allow any use of compressed air to blow chips (a practice I have since observed in many shops) on the grounds that you can't control where a blown chip will land. This supervisor rigidly enforced a policy of vacuuming all chips between cutting operations, and stopping work 30 minutes before shop-closing time to thoroughly vacuum the areas around all the machines.

Of course, this guy worked for the School of Electrical Engineering (now ECE) at Georgia Tech, and many of his jobs were for research in electronics and optics, so maybe he was a little more sensitive about chips than your average mechanical person.