Yet another coolant story

I’ve been unhappy with the splashing of coolant from PCNC770 onto the floor but I didn’t want to add a full enclosure as others have done. Also the original single coolant nozzle didn’t wash away the chips depending on the angle of the cut path. I added a coolant manifold (the upper blue U in the photos) to pipe coolant to up to three nozzles (only two currently installed). Flow to each nozzle is controlled by a ball valve. The lower blue U supports a “hula skirt” of vinyl that catches much of the splashing. The skirt can be raised/lowered and secured with half-cotters on the stainless rods to accommodate various lengths of tooling. The skirt’s “belt” (crescent moon shaped unpainted aluminum with red layout dye in the photos) is attached by rare earth magnets and is aligned on Delrin® posts so it can be easily removed for tool changes or when cutting dry.

In all, it seems to be a significant improvement.

Looks very NICE

I second that.

Good job!

Quote:

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Originally Posted by kstrauss

I’ve been unhappy with the splashing of coolant from PCNC770 onto the floor but I didn’t want to add a full enclosure as others have done. Also the original single coolant nozzle didn’t wash away the chips depending on the angle of the cut path. I added a coolant manifold (the upper blue U in the photos) to pipe coolant to up to three nozzles (only two currently installed). Flow to each nozzle is controlled by a ball valve. The lower blue U supports a “hula skirt” of vinyl that catches much of the splashing. The skirt can be raised/lowered and secured with half-cotters on the stainless rods to accommodate various lengths of tooling. The skirt’s “belt” (crescent moon shaped unpainted aluminum with red layout dye in the photos) is attached by rare earth magnets and is aligned on Delrin® posts so it can be easily removed for tool changes or when cutting dry.

In all, it seems to be a significant improvement.

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This setup is very professional looking! Sure puts my shower curtain around the head to shame........
I didnt want a full enclosure either and my shower curtain works but doesnt look like much.....

Great solution.

Don

Mind posting your solid model or drawings?

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I'm a CNC beginner still without fancy CAD/CAM software. The manifold and skirt pieces were drawn using Vectric Cut2D while the other pieces were made on a manual lathe without real drawings. I can post the Vectric files if that would help.

A few construction details may be of interest if you want to duplicate things. The images below show the front and back of the manifold. To save material the halves were nested and cut from 1/2-inch 6061 aluminum. The two halves were then joined with 4-40 SHCS and Permatex gasket compound to form a hollow unit. I discarded the Tormach coolant bracket and attached my manifold using the original 6mm tapped holes in the head casting. To use the original hose I turned a short adapter from brass hex stock that has male 1/4-inch NPT on one end and male 1/2-inch BSPT on the end. The valves are 1/4-inch ball valves from Home Depot. The other image is a closeup of the skirt support showing the magnet holders and the Delrin alignment pins. The shroud is plastic carpet runner from Home Depot.

That's great. Thank you for the extra pics. I really like your idea . Thank you for sharing.

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Kstrauss great job A ! :)