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Bob La Londe[_7_] Bob La Londe[_7_] is offline
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Default Big Wad of Steel Wool

I had quit using my shop vac for cleaning up chips on the mill table.
It worked fairly well at first, but it went thru hoses pretty quickly.
They would literally fall apart. I suspect the metal chips abraded away
the inside ridge of the corrugation.

Then one day in my search for a tougher vacuum hose (was considering
ordering some "special" hoses from McMaster) I saw a link that lead to a
"heavy duty" vacuum hose at one of the local box stores. I figured what
the heck, ran over and bought one. It worked great. Its still in
decent shape... but that's partly because I quit using it. It had wads
of chips in it that wouldn't come out.

Today I was cleaning up the table on the Hurco, and I just was getting
tired of blowing out and scooping up chips over and over again and not
making much progress. Some chips you do have to blast out like those in
the T-slots under the vise, but none of the rest should require that.

I rolled over the vac, hooked up the hose, and it was clear the hose was
obstructed. I hooked it up to the output port in both directions, but
it remained obstructed. In shear frustration I slammed it down on the
floor and two huge wads of steel wool shot out on the floor.

Cleanup on the table after that was a "breeze."