Don't Wear Sleeves vs. Burns From Hot Chips

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David2011

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We all know to not wear long sleeves around machinery so posts saying not to wear sleeves are not necessary or helpful.

Sitting here with mostly tiny burns and a few not as small all over my forearms I'm contemplating some sort of protection from hot chips. They're the result of flattening the sides of some badly abused hydraulic press plates. I used a 1-1/4" indexable end mill and naturally it threw blue hot chips a full 360°. By the calculator, the spindle speed was correct and the feed rate was slower than necessary to get a nice finish and keep the chips small. The finish was excellent. I've never machined anything wearing long sleeves but this just wasn't fun. I'm thinking about trying some heat resistant skin tight sleeves with thumb holes. These plates were fairly large; 2" thick x 4" wide x 12" long so putting shields around them wouldn't have been practical.

Has anyone tried the stretchy sleeves for burn protection? What were your results?
 
We were given sleeves but never wore them . We also wore long sleeve arc flash shirts , even when machining . It's the gloves you have to worry about most of the time . The object is to break the chips and stand clear .
 
Recommend speeds tend to be a "speed limit" more so than an absolute requirement. Blue chips on the table aren't really a problem, blue chips off of the tool kinda is pushing too far...

I don't have a problem with long sleeves when running machines. Obviously judgement applies, you don't want baggy dangly stuff, but I've got a thick sweatshirt that lives in the shop. It is NOT baggy in any way.

The job shops and hydraulic shops that I visit at work, standard attire is either long sleeve rental uniforms or sweatshirts when it's cold, you don't see arms until it's plenty warm outside. And you don't see cuffs that are not buttoned.

"No Sleeves" is not necessarily a bad policy, and depending on your usual choice of outerwear, it might be a very good policy to draw a line in the sand somewhere, but properly fit sleeves are not high on my list of things to lose sleep over. Sure, you "could" try to reach around the back of the vise and try to pick up something on the other side of the table while the mill's running, but really, are you going to?
You could rig up a switch across the room, you could set up every cut and start it from twenty feet away with a "no fingers near the machines" rule.

I think you're on the right track. Keep your smarts on, when you consider any particular solution (Like I said, mine is a simple sweat shirt, chosen carefully because of it's appropriate fit), and determine what the implications of your solutions are. Can it take what you want to throw at it? is it properly fit so there's not "bags" hanging places that could get into things inadvertently? There you go...
 
I use Lexan guards and if necessary a lightweight scrub jacket with elastic sleeves:


IMG_8505.jpeg

With my small machines the guards are necessary because the hand wheels are in the line of spewing hot sharp chips that I don’t like bouncing off the backs of my hands.
 
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@Jake M is the absolute voice of sanity here.

A lot of the safety practice we talk about on here is spot on and absolutely essential, but there can be some dogma too.

Some of that dogma is due to times moving on (no such thing as skin tight, very thin, tears-more-easily-than-the-skin-underneath nitrile gloves back in the day), some of it is proper for workshops where there will be untrained young apprentices or high school age kids.

As hobbyists though, the onus is on us to work out the underlying principles of the well-known safety rules and how they apply to our environments.

Tight sleeves (on something like a thick cotton long sleeved T shirt) seem unlikely to snag it catch on machine tools. ;)
 
Thanks for the thoughtful responses!

Jake, I can see the chips turn blue after they leave the workpiece. Learned to watch that a long time ago. The inserts on my indexable end mills are the featureless flat faced TPG style. They seem to run better at near the calculated speed although I did reduce the speed by about 1/3 after enough burns. I love having a VFD on the mill's spindle motor.

I'm old enough to have been retired for a while now. The older I get the more cautious I am about getting close to spinning objects. I might clear something from behind the vise with a long handled brush but whether it's metal or wood cutting, I make myself leave both hands motionless on the edge or controls of a machine until the spinning stops.

SouthernChap, I agree; not truly skin tight but I'm looking at sleeves that are at least clingy like socks. I'm not nearly as likely to use the sleeves on the lathe. I can usually get it to send most of the chips downward or adjust the speed and feed to control the chips.
 
Another thought:

I've never had a fly cutter. Do they tend to make finer chips that don't travel as far as carbide insert end mills? It looks like the spindle speed for HSS in a fly cutter would be around 75 rpm (low carbon steel) so I would guess that chips wouldn't fly too far.
 
David2011 said:
Another thought:

I've never had a fly cutter. Do they tend to make finer chips that don't travel as far as carbide insert end mills? It looks like the spindle speed for HSS in a fly cutter would be around 75 rpm (low carbon steel) so I would guess that chips wouldn't fly too far.
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A fly cutter will let you better direct the chips and they likely wont be as hot. I can usually get the chips on an endmill to go "Somewhere else", the rest of the time I deal with chips hitting me.

Any sleeve you wear will likely have nylon in it and removing nylon melted into your skin is not fun.

Hey, I posted this without telling you not to wear sleeves......Ah ****.
 
Well honestly I never heard not to wear sleeves. I was told not to wear LOOSE or unbuttoned sleeves.

I wear a jacket in the shop when it’s cold. And I put up a lot of cardboard or lexan temporary guarding when the machine is going to be flinging stuff everywhere.
 
RaisedByWolves said:
A fly cutter will let you better direct the chips and they likely wont be as hot. I can usually get the chips on an endmill to go "Somewhere else", the rest of the time I deal with chips hitting me.

Any sleeve you wear will likely have nylon in it and removing nylon melted into your skin is not fun.

Hey, I posted this without telling you not to wear sleeves......Ah ****.
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I was looking at Kevlar sleeves or FRP clothing. I have had the melted nylon experience, not related to machining. NOT FUN!
 
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