[Geof]

When I first started with CNC machines, couple of lathes couple of mills, I found that everything in the shop was getting a thin film of something oily on it. We use a water mix coolant and I figured this was from the coolant mist that escaped from the machines. With the lathe sometimes you could see mist coming out of the gaps around the door and on the mills we had the same warm mist inside when they were opened.

I installed a central mist collector system with ducts to all the machines. It sucks all the mist through big filter bags that collect the coolant residue and returns the air to the shop. We have now expanded to sixteen machines all on the system and don't have any oily residue on anything. It was not cheap; the fan and filter unit was about $3500 and getting all the duct installed eventually brought the total close to $15,000 but it was worth it.

One thing I did notice on a personal level immediately after getting the system up and running on the first machines was that everybody stopped coughing as much. We had not noticed we were doing it more beause the first four machines were installed over a sixteen month period so there was not a sudden build up of mist. Now if the guys forget to turn the system on in the morning you notice it within half an hour.