SWARF REMOVAL IS STILL A PROBLEM

IT IS NOT so very long ago when a skilled or semi‐skilled operator controlled an individual machine tool and, among his other duties, had the responsibility of removing the swarf produced by the particular machine operation. Facilities were rudimentary and involved manual labour. With today's automatic and transfer machines the operator may have to supervise a number of units, cutting rates have greatly increased and manual swarf removal, even if possible, could not possibly cope with swarf production. It has been obvious for some time that the recognised difficulties can never be overcome while the responsibility for swarf removal is split between machine maker and machine user or by the many rule‐of‐thumb methods still in use. In fact the complete solution will not be found within the machine tool industry for so much additional equipment is required and engineers from other disciplines will have to co‐operate.