Picking Up Swarf

There are a variety of ways to pick up little metal bits around the shop. For many cases, one of these

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works great. I add a small band clamp where the yellow rod goes into the black base - there is a screw there and the clamp holds it all together so if you wap the black part against something to dislodge the swarf, it keeps it from breaking so easily.

HOWEVER, if I am cleaning swarf with cutting fluid (band saw) or oil (lathe or mill), then liquid mixed with the chips can make cleanup harder and more of a mess. For that, I came up with using a small prescription bottle and a magnet.

Attachment 45565 Attachment 45566 note that the magnet is just laying in the bottle.

Then there was how to deal with the messy liquids, so I added an old nitrile glove over the bottle as a (and I never thought I would put these words together) swarf condom.

Here are a bunch of examples:

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The nice thing is that you can easily get the blob of swarf to release from the magnetic field by pulling the swarf condom away from the bottle a little bit. And then, once you have finished cleaning, toss the glove. I found that I would have a number of gloves that weren't that messy and could be used for swarf condom duty, so I save them and they get a second use.