Corian dust

[Brian Deakin]

We have a new turner who is starting to turn at our Club The new turner only turn Corian pens

To be fair he does vaccum his lathe and suurounding area and uses a small dust collector and polishes the Corian using and abrasive liquid intended fro Brass

Can anyone please advise is turning Corian in a club acceptable are there any steps or considerations we need to take

[Maurice Mcmurry]

https://www.corian.co.nz/uploads/lit...92018_-_nz.pdf

This is a link to the safety Data Sheet. The dust is rather nasty. I do not think the dust will harm a wood lathe. If I turned it on a lathe with a tool holder, I would be thinking of a way to keep the dust out of the lead screws.

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[Bill Howatt]

If you search, "is corian dust as harmful as wood dust", you may be switching to corian from wood. Both cause respiratory problems but wood is carcinogenic.

[Curt Harms]

The one Corian project I did I had to do fabrication in place. The router shavings stuck to EVERYTHING, it was like there was some sort of electrostatic attraction. It didn't feel like any dust would be abrasive but as Maurice mentions I suppose fine dust could clog machine threads.

[Maurice Mcmurry]

The one Corian project I did I had to do fabrication in place. The router shavings stuck to EVERYTHING, it was like there was some sort of electrostatic attraction. It didn't feel like any dust would be abrasive but as Maurice mentions I suppose fine dust could clog machine threads.

The shavings and dust do indeed get a static electricity charge. It is easy to imagine how powder coating works when you are trying to clean up after working with Corian.

[Mark Hennebury]

53 years ago, I worked in a fiberglass boat building shop, no dust collection at all. Spent two years grinding fiberglass, covered in dust, the air sparkled with billions of minute glass dust particles.
20 years ago I worked in a kitchen counter shop for a year and a half making Corian countertops routing and sanding Corian all day long. Dust up to your eyeballs.
The rest of the time i have worked in woodworking and metalworking and machine rebuilding
Always up to me neck in dust. Every kind of exotic wood dust, metal and paint grinding and sanding, etc.
I had my lungs checked about five years ago, a full work-up,I was told they were absolutely fine." good for another 100,000 miles" according to the doctor.

Personally I wouldn't worry about some guy making Corian pens.

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[Mark Wedel]

If you were to come up with a policy, you probably need to think about what is fair.
Where I used to work, they had a woodshop that people could use. One of the many rules was that only wood was allowed in the shop - no epoxy or other materials (wood glue was allowed I imagine).
So if you were to come up with a policy that corian was not acceptable, is epoxy acceptable? Are other artificial materials OK? And where do you draw the line?
Though it sounds like this person is being quite responsible in their work - realistically, everyone should be wearing dust masks, whether it is wood or corian or something else.

[Brian Deakin]

A huge thank you to everyone for their posts
Often when we encounter new situations (example a turner that only turns Corian )
we can apply our own knowledge and commonsense but posting on this forum enables us to gain the opinions and views of other members which is always helpful