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Vmc smoke damage. Savable?

Jesse_92683

Plastic
Joined
Sep 5, 2018
So there was a fire In my shop and although the fire was on the other side of the shop, my vmc got some smoke damage (see pictures). Do you guys think I can save this machine? I opened the cabinet and looked at the wires that run to the spindle and it doesn’t look like the heat got to the machine but how would I clean the smoke off (already pressure washed the machine with no luck.


Any help would be great!

Jesse
 
I don't see the pictures. So just guessing extent of damage. One concern is that smoke can be quite acidic. This of course can lead to corrosion that will continue to occur indefinitely. This would probably first show in electrical connectors that become intermittent or non functioning. The rate of corrosion would probably be determined by humidity level.

I am not so concerned about the areas you can clean which are aesthetic issues but the areas you can not clean.

You did not indicate what materials burned. Different materials will have different contaminates.

I used to test rocket engines burning solid propellant which left a very corrosive smoke on the walls of the test cell. The cleaning seemed to activate the acid. The initial cleaning needed to be done in small areas because if the cleaning solvents (usually alcohol) were not immediately removed after application (less than a minute) the the staining would be permanent.
 
The biggest problem I see other than heat damaged insulation or calibration is that the smoke would allow tracking to occur. Tracking is the breakdown in electrical insulation do to carbonaceous material between points of opposite polarity. This may not occur immediately but could over time. In contactor design we go to great efforts of isolate points of opposite polarity by use of ribs, smoke traps and other designs of trade.

Tom
 
Just like a car that went under water. Even drying it out, it will be forever dying on the inside..

Get rid of it, the death in the air will slowly eat at you too.
 
I saw a 1 week old $10K photocopier that had smoke damage, there was dark tar-like deposits all over the internal sheet metal, optics and electronics. Over time, the deposits corroded everything. If I recall correctly we combined it with a new machine that was dropped in shipping and had it's diecast chassis broken to make one complete copier.
 
"I saw a 1 week old $10K photocopier that had smoke damage, there was dark tar-like deposits all over the internal sheet metal, optics and electronics. Over time, the deposits corroded everything. If I recall correctly we combined it with a new machine that was dropped in shipping and had it's diecast chassis broken to make one complete copier. "

You coulda just put it in the copier and made another one.
 
The people next to me had a fire......the leased photocopier wasnt damaged....so the woman pushed it out a first floor window just to make sure it didnt become a zombie......or maybe it was the insurance.
 
The people next to me had a fire......the leased photocopier wasnt damaged....so the woman pushed it out a first floor window just to make sure it didnt become a zombie......or maybe it was the insurance.

All those aluminized front surface mirrors get destroyed over the next few months after a fire, either from water or from powder extinguishers causing corrosion, even the lens antireflection coatings suffer. The only machines that had it worse were from chemical shops or pool shops.
 
Would love to but found out that I’m underinsured... I had 3 CNC mills in there and I reached my insurance limit without even putting down the machines
 
I’ll try to get the pictures up soon (never posted a pic on here before) so you an see what it looks like. The mills were in another room that was not in the fire but a open door let the smoke in it before the firemen put the fire out...
 








 
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