I am filling a 5 gallon bucket of chips every 2 days in my shop. That’s vacuum
I got them up after the cutting, I was thinking that the large trash bin, I’ll make one out of aluminum, should help some. I like the flood coolant idea, I may work on some ideas with the design. The base should allow for a good setup option
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Wow, you’re clearly doing a lot more cutting than I am. I’ve cut maybe just over a single gallon of chips in the entire time I’ve owned my machine!
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I had a similar problem, but with fish poo rather than chips.
I found that the food-grade stainless steel mesh you can get from eBay survives immersion for years without problems, I use an angled ramp of mesh on the inflow water to the sump tank with the coolant, erm, fish tank water, injected at an angle down the surface of the mesh ramp, this pushes the fish dookie to the bottom of the mesh ramp and keeps the water flowing even after building up substantial piles of plant food.
I’m sure there’s a homebrew coolant separator in there somewhere.
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I cut a lot of pre-production and some production parts on my Pro. The only wood I cut is mdf for vacuum forming masters or making master plugs for carbon/fiberglass parts.
I like this approach, I have been researching options for a while, want something simple but solid if I do it. My DIY Fogbuster on my Pro works so well, that the only benefit I am thinking for flood would be the chip management? I know it would help cutting performance, but is it mostly about chip evacuation?
My hope is that flood coolant:
- Is better at cooling. Water has ~30x the thermal conductivity and a much higher heat capacity than air, so it should be about a million times better at removing heat from the cut, especially with the additives in a machining coolant emulsion.
- Is better at chip evacuation. Water is heavier than air, so should be better at carrying chips out of tight spaces (e.g. drilling).
- Is better at not getting in the air. I don’t like industrial chemicals going into my lungs.
- Doesn’t need a compressor. Compressors are loud, pumps are quiet.
- Somewhat dampens cutting sounds. If all the cutting happens underwater, maybe the water will absorb some of the cutting sound.
What I’m not really sure about is surface finish and lubrication but I suspect flood to be at least as good as MQL.
SOLD! I will be working on some solutions,
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You could use something like this as a first stage filter for what @LiamN was suggesting:
Then under that have a fine stainless steel mesh to catch the really little bits.
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Yep, that’s a pre-built version which wouldn’t need supports,
These are the folks I bought my fish filter mesh from, there’s lots of different sizes, the search term for eBay appears to be ‘woven wire mesh stainless’
It is sold as ‘30 mesh’ etc. (which seems to be wires per approx 20mm) and seems to be commonly available in sizes from 10mm spacing down to 30micron or smaller.
I find that after a while the mesh starts to clog up a bit, grows a biofilm and needs a serious cleaning. When it’s just full, I wash it under a tap, when it’s a bit clogged I stick it in some hot water and de-limescaler overnight and it comes back good as new.
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If what you’re cutting is aluminum, a good MQL system will likely perform a well as flood coolant and be a lot less messy in this case. I have 2 cheap misters on my HDM and chip evacuation is not even close to an issue. With a single flute, misters with good pressure, and isopropyl alcohol, I haven’t had any clogged endmills and chips fly, even out of slotting operations.
Flood is vastly superior in steels, titanium, and the like, but I think the simplicity and performance in this case, MQL is best for aluminum. So personally, from my experience, get a good Fogbuster.
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If you’re using single-flute, chip evacuation is basically just not a problem for you, so the MQL is really just doing lubrication and chip clearance.
But Carbide 3D machines are rigidity-limited, so if you’re using a single-flute endmill, you’re giving up ~75% of your total MRR in soft materials. A 4-flute endmill will give you 4x the MRR while maintaining similar cutting forces. The main reason not to use such an endmill is the difficulty of stopping those tiny flutes from getting clogged and that’s where chip evacuation from flood coolant might come in.
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Lucas, that was exactly my thought with flood, on my Pro I have to run Single Flute due to rigidity, but its looking like the HDM will allow me to push it more! Can’t wait!
I’ve also found that single flute at high speed with Isopropanol works well, I use my regular dust extractor and vent it outside.
Where this does fall down is when running bigger cutters such as a 3 flute 10mm which give a really excellent floor and wall finish but rub and heat up the workpiece pretty quickly causing finish issues and vibration, a proper deluge of coolant would likely assist with that.
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I agree… but with a caveat specific to the HDM… and that’s the 200 IPM cap. A 1/4"-3/8" single flute for roughing is really balanced to that. Then swap in a 3 flute for finishing. I have used 1/2" 2-4 flute for surfacing and the finish is nice. At that point clogging flutes is not an issue if you’re removing 0.050" at most.
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I don’t think a 200ipm cap is much of a problem at all. Taking my favourite Hartner 6mm 3-flute endmill as an example, recommended feed per tooth is 40µm, so recommended feed at the HDM’s 24k is 2880mm/min, or 113in/min. From a quick look around this is a pretty standard recommendation.
To hit 200ipm you’d have to be running at 70µm feed per tooth, which I think is pretty crazy on anything but a single-flute endmill when we’re talking about these sizes.
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I appreciate the knowledge update. 
I fully admit I have tons to learn.
It might be a constraint if you really went for high feed machining where you run special cutter geometry in low depth of cut but very high feed rates. I don’t think that’s really a realistic goal on a machine at this price point though.
I was roughing at 3.12 cubic inches per minute this weekend with a 1/2 2F @ 20,000rpm and 156ipm full width and 0.040" axial.
Keep in mind that with flood, you are going to need to cover both your X and Y axis pretty well.
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If you keep telling me how much faster your machine is I might either decide that I don’t like you very much or have to go and see Luke about a UK delivery. 
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