On 09/11/2019 19:38, Bob La Londe wrote:
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.Â* 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.Â* I figured
what the heck, ran over and bought one.Â* It worked great.Â* Its still
in decent shape... but that's partly because I quit using it.Â* 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.Â* 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.Â* I hooked it up to the output port in both directions,
but it remained obstructed.Â* 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."



I can't help thinking this is a quality issue, I have an Aquavac Bulldog
wet/dry shop vac that is about 26 years old now and on it's original
hose and brushes and I've vacuumed the mill and lathes many times over
the years and the hose is still good even though I have had many
blockages as you describe. It gets used also for extraction on my small
sand blast booth so may run for 1/2 an hour to an hour at a time, must
check the brushes again soon. A local appliance spares place said they
stopped making them as they lasted too long.