I’m not sure if this would work well or not but it was a thought I had. I get my MR1 hopefully this week but more than likely next week. Here is my hair-brained idea I was thinking about trying when I get it:
What if you had a wet / dry shop vac hooked to the drain(s) with a compressed air and / or coolant manifold ran to strategic places to direct chips to the drains. Kind of a push & pull… Ideally have a way to separate the bulk of the chips from the fluid - I’ve seen others just use filters but perhaps it could be done with a cyclone? I don’t know if that would work though or maybe that’s overkill< but it sounded like a cool idea to me. What do you think?
You are overthinking this. Your machine will come with the center rear drain. The problem is solved. Now, a good shop vac is a big timesaver in cleanup. I use one with a round brush head.
I just mounted my entire mill upside down to the ceiling so all of the chips and coolant fall out of the top opening onto the floor into a large hopper that directs the chips into a multistage centrifuge which separates the chips into 67 different particle sizes and organizes them into separate containers by use of a robotic conveyor system and also pumps the recovered coolant back up to the ceiling mounted mill making one continous loop. Super simple.
They actually have coolant / chip separation devices (without the sorting into different sizes, of course). They are just expensive so was thinking of something like a DIY hyrdocyclone that would allow constant flow and no need for swapping / cleaning of filters. I think it’s fun to automate all kinds of things and to find unique solutions like that, but that’s just me…
I have several coolant nozzle that help flush chips down the linear drains and then a pull out chip tray with a filter mesh for chip collection and filtering the coolant that then drains into the storage tank.
“They have added a rear drain behind the plate, which is about 3/4 in size. As far as I know, the old drains and their location have remained the same. Since adding this rear drain, I haven’t faced any issues.”
Thank you so much for the quick reply! This machine is getting even harder for me to resist. Their Press Brake must look pretty tempting to those with plasma tables,
It works great for me. Just follow the instructions and measure, and then measure again. I would modify the four corner drains as shown with 1/2 or 3/4
PVC. If I could do it again.
MQL / Fogbuster type setups also work really well with this machine. I haven’t seen any real reason to go with full flood coolant. I had flood coolant on a prior hobbyist machine and found it really annoying to deal with, MQL has been much easier to manage.
Watch almost any NYCCNC video on Youtube to see Fogbuster stuff in use. I made my own with pressurized coolant. If I were doing it again I’d try using a low volume pump for the coolant side. There are a lot of free designs out there.
I installed the drains, but if I was doing it again I wouldn’t put any drains in and would have saved my $75.
Currently in assembly. I ran 1/2" CPVC instead and think that should be sufficient. It would have been nice not to have had to change it and a larger center drain would be nice.
I’m sure they will send you the plastic drain. It’s a rectangular drain with a 3/4 bulkhead. I’m sure these guys will chime in. I have even received pictures of it installed from one of the forum guys.
That makes sense… sure. I just received mine a couple weeks ago and did not get a rectangular drain with it. Only the same drain system everyone complains about.
What do you think?
