I am presently modifying some campervan scissor lifters which requires some drilling in steel flat bar.
I am always fed up with having the swarf and drillings flying all over the bench and floor and getting into my other "stuff".

I just happened to see a random YouTube video of someone cold bending some polycarbonate sheet and a light bulb magically appeared over my head.

Into the scrap bins, found some 200 x 480 of 3mm thick clear sheet, some aluminium bar 15 x 5 mm, two very strong 20mm dia magnets.

I bent the polycarbonate plastic into a hex shape with an opening to suit the clearance diameter of my drill press chuck. (I used a small finger bender, which in a previous life was used for making chassis and small boxes for radio projects - everyone should have one of these handy things).
Bending the plastic is easy; you have to overbend (almost 100%) with heaps of bending effort, as there is springback, but it works, and doesn't crack - amazing!

I used a piece of old Visqueen flexible plastic sheet (as used in concreting etc) and some Velcro to make a rear "door" on my guard.

Attached the magnets to the aluminium bar bent into a shallow Z shape to suit my drill press, and attached the bar to the plastic with some wing nuts, so as to allow variable vertical attachment.

This rough "prototype" magnetically attaches to the drill press main body front, and I have added some paint protection with some very thick cloth adhesive tape.

It works so well.

All the drillings now fall onto the drill press table, then into a very large plastic tub 750x500x100 placed under the table.

I still wear protective glasses, but this device save a heap of cleaning up.

The whirling drillings do not seem to overly scratch the plastic, preserving good visibility.

mike

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