VEEM Ltd continues to find innovative and new ways to boost efficiency and decrease our environmental impact by recycling. The use of briquette processing for waste material has hugely benefited recycling efforts and in doing so reduced environmental emissions and costs.
The briquette machine crushes the machining swarf into a high-density briquette, suitable for re-use in the metal melting process. Machining swarf is the left-over cuts produced by the machining process, performed on castings that we make in our foundry. Even though castings are already close to shape, the machining process is carried out to bring the castings to within microns of the design in critical areas.
Typically, loose swarf is difficult to handle in the furnace and create smoke pollution as the cooling fluids used in the machining process are burned off. In addition, the shape of the machining swarf causes inefficiency in the metal melting process. By compressing the swarf in small briquettes (that look like 50c pieces stacked about 30mm high), the cutting fluid is squeezed out and the furnace performs more efficiently, saving energy and substantially reducing hydrocarbon pollution from the smoke.
VEEM is accredited to ISO 14001 Environmental Management Systems so recycling our machining swarf is just a good way to meet our obligations to society. Doing it efficiently is even better.