Swarf

Hi. I use metal turnings/shavings in my artwork and need to find a source or sources of it. Would anyone be willing to send me a tub of it if I supplied the tub and packaging? I can take a paypal invoice for the shipping and cost, and price for the metal you want, if I can afford the price lol.

Thanks,

Julian

High value swarf/scrap (copper, bronze, brass) I give to the council recycling depot and they keep it, along with a lot of plumbing scrap, separate from ordinary metal scrap. I like to think that this goes someway to reducing my council tax.

JA

Hi All

Swarf particularly off the lathe is mostly air.... I compact mine into a more compact size in an old steel waste paper bin with slightly tapered sides, so the compacted mass is easy to remove. When the bin is filled I ram the swarf down with stout piece of 50mm tube, moving it around to hit the high spots.... in a minute it is a fraction of the size maybe a couple of inches thick at most. I then put the patties into a plastic grocery bag in the recycling bin once a week. The magnets at the recycling station will do the rest.

Oh.... and wear gloves or use tongs of some sort when handling swarf, Nasty sharp stuff.

Regards
John

"Hi. I use metal turnings/shavings in my artwork and need to find a source or sources of it."

This sounds interesting. I am in Australia, (we send all our iron ore to China) but could you amplify on the uses for swarf- art

* Danny M *

Edited By Danny M2Z on 27/06/2014 17:37:55

Hi Danny,

This sort of thing:

[URL=http://s173.photobucket.com/user/HaggisYann/media/9-sided.jpg.html][IMG]http://i173.photobucket.com/albums/w75/HaggisYann/9-sided.jpg[/IMG][/URL]

That one has titanium turnings, chopped copper wire, BB shot, gold leaf (a little mixed into the resin.

Others I have made are less decorative with more dense turnings etc. They are quite pretty if you like that sort of thing lol.

There are various crystals also.

It has quite a nice energy to it imo.

- Julian

The image doesn't show, so I'm trying another way:

Pretty much the last major project I was involved in at work was swarf disposal. The machine shop produced lots of parts that were broken down to (roughly) 95% Al Alloy, 4.5% St Steel, 0.5% odds and sods. The company bought a $110,000 swarf compactor from Germany. It produced "pucks" about 100mm x 50mm x 50mm, with 90% density of the parent material, and no coolant. The coolant could be recovered, cleaned and reused. So instead of having 8 or 9 skips a week, full of air swarf and coolant, there was one skip every couple of weeks, full of 90% al alloy, clean and ready for recycling.

Its pretty much an industrial scale version of John McNamaras metal rubbish bin described above.

cheers

Bill

I give a small bag of swarf to my Mum each year and I believe she digs it in around her Hydrangeas. Apparently she does it because it helps to keep the colour the way she likes them. I do it because I still do as I'm told!

The rest goes in a bag in the weekly rubbish bin.

Regards,

IanT

For forgotten reasons I have this small (1 1/2" bottle in my workshop... I suppose it has a family resemblance to Julian's crystal!

Neil

May be start a new line in metal instead of sand, silver, golden, brown and blue are easy colours others??

Green from copper. Ian S C

Like David Haynes, my ferrous swarf is put into cleaned food tins, (baked Beans etc), The swarf is pounded down with a length of inch and ahalf (or 38mm) bar - exact size is less important than the weight). When filled to very near the top, the original lid is fitted and the the edges peened over , by working to and fro across diameters, to retain the swarf.

The tin(s) are then put into the Recycling Bin and go when the local council collect every fortnight.

Cuprous swarf, I (and other Society members) save in a plastic bag and take to our local Model Engineering Society, where one of the members takes our contributions to the scrap yard, when enough has been collected, to raise extra funds for the Club.

Old plastic knitting needles are a good starting point for some reclaims. (5L plastic containers of cutting lubricant are dispensed using reused soap dispenser pumps with a long needle drilled through to make a tube long enough to reach to the bottom. Also, by feeding from the bottom, it avoids the rubbish that always seems to appear on the surface of soluble oil solutions).

One day, I'll find a use for the metal ones!

In factories where I have worked, swarf has been mixed with concrete and then cast into long lasting floor tiles.

In my book, there is very little scrap metal, only when too small to hold, or already swarf.

"Not tight, just careful, y'ken"

Howard

Heh, I haven't made enough 'home swarf' to start worrying yet! It's all disappeared up the vacuum cleaner so far.

But any greater build up will probably get taken to work and added to the bins there.

I like the idea of adding it to food tins and drinks cans, that's excellent. Don't forget that 25% of drink cans are still made from steel.

It seems that it is the aluminium that makes the difference with the hydrangeas. **LINK**