Air cooling/SWARF removal

[cropwell]

Arc Euro near Leicester 090-080-10500 Any good ?

350mm Coolant Hose - Flat Spout - Plastic Tap - 1/4"BSP

£4.90

[Jonathan]

using a vacuum cleaner to remove chips...
My view is against any shrouding round the cutter as I like to see what's going on.

Unfortunately those two statements don't really belong together. The flow rate from a standard household vacuum cleaner is very low compared to even a small proper dust extractor - roughly 10 times less. I tried a couple of vacuum cleaners and they were completely useless as the tool threw the the chips out at such a high speed that the vacuum could not catch them. The only way to get it to work was to add a shroud to intercept the chips, giving them time to be caught. Still it's not a good solution, so I got one of these, which was cheaper at the time:

http://compare.ebay.co.uk/like/18042...bar&adtype=pla

I was intending to make a cyclone for it, but since I almost exclusively cut aluminium it only really gets used when I surface the MDF bed it's hardly worth it. I leave it to surface the bed on it's own as I don't trust it to filter the fine MDF dust properly.

[John S]

At the shows we run a vacuum pump piped up as a compressor to blow air onto the tool with a drop of cutting fluid bled in as we are usually cutting steel or alloy.
These run continuous from 10am until 5:00 pm and even though they get quite warm they don't give ant trouble.

Add to this they are 3 phase units rewired in delta with a capacitor across the dead phase so we can run them on single phase.

[cropwell]

In the days when I had money, I had the Clarke two bag dust extractor, but never found it much use. The problems were different for me then. I was woodworking using a sawbench and I wanted to keep the workshop (garage) dust down.
Now I have a small CNC setup in my den and it is on a bench with shielding all round. I have posted a couple of pics in my "Hi Y'all" thread. Chasing the tool with a vac keeps dust down and pulls a lot of the swarf into it. After the job any further mess is confined to the bench. Bear in mind that what I do will be small scale and mainly acrylic, aluminium or circuitboard, with the occasional jig cut out of that mixture of wood dust and glue, MDF.
The fridge compressor is yet an idea I have to try out, and I want to experiment with cutter cooling and directing the swarf towards the back of my bench where it can be easily cleaned up.

[JAZZCNC]

Bear in mind that I have an A4 machine and am only cutting small parts...

I am thinking about trying a fridge compressor to provide a continuous stream of air to the tool and using a vacuum cleaner to remove chips. I am mainly going to machine acrylics and I know I have a lot to learn about, but with thermoplastic materials I understand that build-up on the tool will ruin work very quickly and easily.

Fridge compressor will work better if you can send to a small storage tank so it's got a slight head start but should work fine.
Like I said to Micheal who is also cutting mostly acrylics you don't need much air to clear chips from recutting, which is what you mostly want to avoid for both cutter life and finish quality. The nozzle size is key here like M_C says, I find the flexi Loc-line type pipe/nozzle that you find most Engineering suppliers offer that the nozzles are to large and mostly designed for coolant. My cheap and dirty solution is to use car brake pipe and solder main jet from motorcycle on end, it's simple and easy but accurate jet and controlable. (or simpler still just nip end with pliers, just can be a bit random on direction!!)

The Vac is a Wickes workshop vac and I am thinking of making a holster with a microswitch in it to switch it of when the nozzle is put in it.

My view is against any shrouding round the cutter as I like to see what's going on.

This would work good and if you used the M codes M8/9 for coolant turning outputs on/off controlling relay turning vac on/off the microswitch could be put in line with relay so it only comes on when pipes in it's holster. . . . Theres other ways but this would be easiest.!!

I'm the same with wanting to see cutter but to have that and still clear the crap you need plenty of Vacuum with a large pipe sucking up everything not nailed down.!!
The shroud helps slow power vacs but comes with the price of lower visabilty.!! I've seen some good shrouds made with clear acrylic but I'm sure it's only short lived affair before they get frosted by the shot blast affect.?

My solution is to just blast every thing out the way and hope my 6" pipe grabs most of it.!!