Can the Chip Vac Handle My Application?

I received the above question from a customer the other day. He was wanting to clean up the mess produced on a large, machining center at the end of a shift. There is quite a bit of material that still needs to be picked up, so he was naturally concerned about the abilities of the Chip Vac. Here’s a couple of photos of the chip size and the application area to be cleaned.

Notice, the chips are reasonably well broken up. They do not tend to ‘clump’ together which makes for easy passage through the 1-1/2″ hose of the Chip Vac. Since the Chip Vac has no electric motor or impellers that can wear out, this material flows freely into a steel, open top drum through the special lid designed for the product.

The work area in this case is rather large with the chips spread out over a wide space. Being able to move the Chip Vac around on a drum dolly works quite well to facilitate cleaning of the whole area easily.

With the above mentioned features in mind, my answer to the customer was a 100% confident, yes the Chip Vac can handle your application to clean up the machining center. No problem!

A follow up question then came and the customer asked about the Chip Vac’s ability to handle liquids. The Chip Vac can vacuum up wet chips and smaller volumes of liquid (say up to 5 gallons) without difficulty. If your project does involve vacuuming up a large volume of liquid that does contain chips, perhaps another of our products called the Chip Trapper would be a better choice for your application.

Neal Raker
Application Engineer
nealraker@exair.com

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