Recently we were at a thread rolling company and volunteered to clean one of their machine sumps.Thread rolling doesn’t produce any metal chips, but it does produce a greasy, cake-mix type of sludge. This machine was using a water-soluble coolant and there was a heavy build up of sludge in the bottom of the sump. Currently the customer cleans the machine by pumping off the fluid, then shoveling out the sludge. This took hours of back breaking labor, not to mention the machine was down the whole time.
We used an electric SE15 Sump Shark to vacuum the sump and when we opened the filter, it was packed with sludge. We finished the job and the machine was up and running in under 45 minutes. This shop will not only have labor savings and reduced machine downtime, but now they can reuse their coolant. – Paul Elmer