Just IN- Question about rags.

[awozniak]

Lately I have been hearing that the cloth rags we get from our uniform company are supposed to be banned from Machine shops that make chips. Is this true?
I have been looking ont he web for any info I could find. I have been unsucessful at locating anything. Any input from u guys would be helpful.

[kling8]

I have never heard that, and have used those rags at every shop I have worked at..
So I don't think that is true..

[glovebox20]

The shop that I work at also uses the cloth (orange) shop rags. We machine steel, aluminum and other materials using coolant, tapping oils, way oils, etc.. I think it kind of funny cause the "oil waste can" that I throw the old ones in at the end of the day has a cation sticker on it that states "must be emptied every night" but the laundry guy only comes around once every other week.

[universalfab]

Originally Posted by awozniak Lately I have been hearing that the cloth rags we get from our uniform company are supposed to be banned from Machine shops that make chips. Is this true? I have been looking ont he web for any info I could find. I have been unsucessful at locating anything. Any input from u guys would be helpful.

Never heard that, only thing I can think of is the disposal fee is very expensive for coolent and that maybe why they would do it even though that really doesn't make to much sense. Some shops don't let you run coolent through a pump though, they have you stand there squirting your part your machining with a spray bottle of coolent and then wipe everything down. I'm pretty sure you'd use a rag to wipe it down. We use paper towls and lots of them. I don't like using rags for most machining jobs.

[dirdigger]

I worked in a print shop for years they also had a R&D department that made lots of chips, rags get mixed-up, and they make a real mess of an aluminum printing plate.

[underthetire]

I can honestly say that our company would be dealing with it before any other shops. Most everything other shops "have to deal with" as far as safety, environmental, electrical ETC. were mandated first in our type of facility. We still use rags, green ones, from the uniform company. My guess is a laundry company somewhere decided they didn't want to service machine shops, or an owner of a company doesn't like his rag bill.

[DouglasR]

I haven't heard of such a regulation either. But I gave up cloth rags years ago in favor of disposable wipes. Reason was the shop next to me had a fire one night from a pile of oily rags.

[T.L.A.R. eng]

I think the problem came about when the uniform company would re-use the same batch of rags for everyone. The problem came when someone would wipe their hands on a grease rag that had a long curly-que of steel wound into the rag coming from a machine shop. OUCH! Happens more times than one would think.

Cloth rags are really an old idea who's time has come to end. Disposables are probably a better idea all around and can eliminates the problem of cross contamination.

Someone above mentioned what chips in a cloth rag do to soft aluminum, I've seen people use them on painted surfaces with the same ugly effects.

Gary

[DouglasR]

I can see embedded chips causing havoc on surfaces, both human and non. Also, most cloth rags are "washed" in low grade solvents, not necessarily the soap and water we think of, and there can be hell to pay on delicate surfaces.