Thread: cyclones
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Carl Carl is offline
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"Bob La Londe" wrote in message ...

On 11/25/2019 5:08 AM, Pete Keillor wrote:
Of course aluminum chips in air are going to come out orders of
magnitude easier, so it probably won't be an issue at any size you can
use. You've handled a 45 gal can half full of Al swarf? Not too
heavy? Anyway, hope it works well.

Pete Keillor


Half full (no liquid) I can just barely lift it to the dumpster. 3/4 full
and I use the tractor and fish the barrel out afterwards.


Just curious, do you recycle your aluminum swarf? Here outside Baltimore
there are a few scrap companies that buy machine shop waste. The one we
used gave us a couple of laundry baskets (or maybe mail carts), carts with
canvas bags maybe 3'x5' and 3' deep, and we would call when one was full.
They would come with a box truck with a crane and scale, weigh them as they
loaded them, then pay us for our aluminum and stainless steel and drop off
empty carts for next time. If we had chunks or saw cutoffs or other
nonferrous metals we kept that separate and got a better price for them.
They also paid for soda cans so we crushed and saved those, too. I don't
know the current pricing but 5-10 years ago a cart of aluminum lathe and
mill chips was over $200, maybe over $300. Basically free money since we
had to dump the chips somewhere after cleaning out a machine anyway, and the
carts were closer than the dumpster :-).

--
Regards,
Carl Ijames