The magnetic pickup tool that I recently made (http://mearcat.blogspot.com/2017/05/diy-magnetic-pickup-tool.html) was useful but very quickly revealed it's downfall... it hadn't been used by my young daughter. She likes to help me clean up the swarf and grinding dust in the workshop, and a thin plastic bag wrapped over the magnets simply isn't sufficient when you have a 3 year old dragging it around the floor. The result was holes in the plastic bag and the magnets (hot-glued on) getting knocked off the tool. When *I* used it, it's main downfall was that I can't get into the many tight areas of the lathe due to the large diameter of the head.
Professional pickup tools are readily available however I didn't want to spend over $80 on a hand pick up tool. I figured that the same tool can be made at home from scrap material and all I had to buy was some suitable neodymium magnets off eBay.
My DIY hand pickup tool was made from a 300mm length of 20mm electrical conduit with an end plug in one end (the pick up end). A rod with some magnets attached is inserted in the other end. To use it, the tool is waved over the swarf to pick it up and to dispose of the particles, it's held over a bin and the rod pulled up. The collar on the outside of the conduit stops the swarf being pulled all the way up the conduit when you pull on the rod. The white pieces in the photos (collar, plug & knob) were made on the lathe from melted HDPE milk bottles (search YouTube on how-tos, it's a great source of free plastic stock).
A quick brush over the lathe bed proved to be successful and made it much easier to pickup swarf on and around the bed than the first iteration of the pickup tool.
In total it cost me about $6 for the neodymium magnets on eBay, and everything else was scrap material I had on hand in the workshop. It was everything I'd hoped it would be - cheap, easy to use, very effective around the lathe, and kid-proof (so far...)
Professional pickup tools are readily available however I didn't want to spend over $80 on a hand pick up tool. I figured that the same tool can be made at home from scrap material and all I had to buy was some suitable neodymium magnets off eBay.
My DIY hand pickup tool was made from a 300mm length of 20mm electrical conduit with an end plug in one end (the pick up end). A rod with some magnets attached is inserted in the other end. To use it, the tool is waved over the swarf to pick it up and to dispose of the particles, it's held over a bin and the rod pulled up. The collar on the outside of the conduit stops the swarf being pulled all the way up the conduit when you pull on the rod. The white pieces in the photos (collar, plug & knob) were made on the lathe from melted HDPE milk bottles (search YouTube on how-tos, it's a great source of free plastic stock).
A quick brush over the lathe bed proved to be successful and made it much easier to pickup swarf on and around the bed than the first iteration of the pickup tool.
In total it cost me about $6 for the neodymium magnets on eBay, and everything else was scrap material I had on hand in the workshop. It was everything I'd hoped it would be - cheap, easy to use, very effective around the lathe, and kid-proof (so far...)
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