We are weekend warriors so we wanted to drain the water table after each use. Got tired of the OEM drain solution - the word “lame” comes to mind. Wanted flush drains that actually drained all the way and wanted to use standard plumbing for good flow and simple design.
We found these stainless bar sink drains at Lowe’s. About $12 or so.
The drains are a little over 3" in diameter. And have enough depth that we can use some filter media to keep all the ship-wreck rusty steel out of our drain.
To get a flush fit we needed to dimple the sheet metal. I’ve seen a few folks using standard dimple dies and a few using shop-made ones. Those seemed more derived from sheet metal reinforcement adapted to the thickness of the OEM drains. For the bar drains we only needed a minimal flat recess like what you’d expect on a sink…cuz it’s a sink drain.
Did a little design work in F360 and came up with a dimple die I could machine on our lathe.
Drain pipe ready to go. And as easy as it was to install, with some fiddling it will come right off as well - likely we’ll have some stuff collect in there over time.
Ball valve installed.
We’ll fab up some sort of bracket to hold this end secure. But we’re ready to run a line through the garage air vent into a leach line outside.
Looks like you’re in Phoenix. I’m in NW Peoria. You are welcome to borrow the dimple die. It is a little hard on the existing paint…we did a little die grinding to remove flakes and then went nuts on primer to seal everything up. Would have preferred a stainless steel pan…oh well.
By closing the ball valve we can fill the table. Open the valve and the table drains in about 5 minutes. You can see the leach line - a nice gentle flow that doesn’t erode the soil. We’ll fab up some new covers for the air vent that incorporate a compressed air fitting to feed the pop-up paint booth.
As one person mused - the internet will have 22,431 opinions on how to run a CNC plasma water table. But here goes 22,432…I don’t want a bunch of standing water humidifying my shop all week. We do mostly weekend stuff and that doesn’t justify having water sit in the table rusting all the metal all week long…no bueno. Now we could run Sterling or Green or PlasmaFreeze or whatever chemicals. But disposal is a consideration. With our setup we fill, we cut we empty. No muss, no fuss. With some filtration we’re just dumping water out. Fast, easy and simple.
Prepped the outside vent covers. This will make room for the drain pluming and an airline. We’ll add a custom vent cap on the outside to keep the rain out. Really liking the Hypertherm and fine cut.
We also redid our logo for fun (this is a small 4.5" x 12" version). Think we still have some parameters to work out but the resolution looks pretty good overall.
The new covers don’t have the louvered openings…and with all the gizmos in there (we’ll add the air line) we wanted a better way to keep rain out. Ready to start making money with this thing.
I’m with ya ToolBoy . Didn’t have a Dimple but the drains leave very little water. I copied your choice of materials and popped it together Saturday during table maintenance on my Pro. Awesome drain design from Scorched Earth!
Glad you like it! We sure do. Those drains also make it very convenient to install filters. We cut out slightly oversized filters out of Scotch-Brite. Cheap, easy and work really well to keep excess sludge out of your drains. Just pop them in and they stay put even when you are filling up through the drains. Good balance between filtration and good flow.
As for the dimples - easy enough for us to have done it but I wouldn’t do it over again. The bottom of the table on the XR is not flat enough to drain completely (distortion from welding most likely). We are using a wet/dry vac to mop up the remaining cup or two of water and gunk after a production run. The drains certainly make this super easy (especially because they drain all 4 pans) but the thin flange on the drain doesn’t really matter.
More than happy to share. However, we had to do some manual tweaks on the lathe to ensure we had proper clearance - a little trial and error. The drawing is a good starting point but not accurate to the final dimensions.
