I just wanted to check in with the people in the community cutting steel, aluminum etc and find out who is and isn’t using bellows and how I can avoid getting chips all over my ballscrew and linear rails(not as important but still nice to not cover) without breaking the bank?
I’ve thought about this too. Any type of bellow, accordion type of way cover will limit the range of motion. Y axis you might get away with a flexible rubber cover that splits as the carriage passes between 2 sheets of rubber /\ . X & Z would be a little trickier.
I think the best / easiest solution would be to prevent the chips from getting that far. Something like the dust collection / sweepy that blocks & directs the chips downward. It would need to be flexible if it contacts the part, and avoid interference with the motion of the machine.
On a few jobs I placed temporary walls made of bent cardboard around the cutting area. For shallower cuts you could probably use the sweepy. Not sure if vacuum would interfere with coolant??
Not using coolant currently, I have the air blast though and its sending chips to Narnia, I guess I could cut a hole in the sweepy shoe that doesn’t have any bristles and make something customish. Other option is I have plans for some very affordable only functional with aluminum chips type bellows as the chips should lose their heat due to low thermal mass before being able to melt holes in it.
Fastening them to the machine and guiding them will be the hard part.
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