Machining plastic and chip control on VF2 or DT1

I am looking into a new machine soon but one issue that is giving me pause is chip control.

I have one production part I machine lots of and it's acrylic - the roughing cycles produce big heavy chips, the finishing makes fine chips. My machines now have two channels that flow out the back into a separator tray on top of the cooling tank.... works OK because I rigged up a liquid level sensor to a buzzer and every 30-45 minutes or so we clean the chips off the screen and dump them into a hopper when they build up.

I've had machines before with roll-out separator trays and they just don't work for this - they overflow and dump coolant all over the floor. Now I have been told that augers are useless for plastic. I've heard the same about conveyors, but my lathes have conveyors and they work OK (although the plastic chips there are long and stringy, not sand-like as they are in the mill).

This may sound silly but if the machine can't evacuate chips without making a mess of my shop, or it gets full of chips and requires an hour a day cleaning it out, it's not gonna work for me.

The machines I am looking at are a VF2 or a DT1. I'm not real clear on how the DT1 chip control system works. I like the fast spindle speeds and tool changes. In addition to the production acrylic work, I do various short production runs in aluminum, 100-1,000pcs at a time, max. The largest parts I do are 12" x 6" fixture plates to hold my smaller parts.

Anyone able to comment on chip control on a VF2 or DT1?

Check out Haas' new conveyer with multiple auger system. Should (key word "should") be what you are after.

Of course, ALL the japanese machines have had this system for years

tc1999 said:

Check out Haas' new conveyer with multiple auger system. Should (key word "should") be what you are after.

Of course, ALL the japanese machines have had this system for years

Click to expand...

I've been told by a few different machine tool salesman that augers are useless for plastic.

I get 2 kinds of chips - big fluffy ones from deep roughing cuts, and sand-like chips from finishing. The big chips float on the coolant, the little ones sink in. Right now, a lot of coolant flow helps the little chips get to the screen where we scrape them off - which, at least is outside the machine.

I've heard that augers won't get these little chips (maybe not the big ones too), so they just pack in and seize the auger, making it more difficult to clean the machine than if you didn't have the auger at all.


The DT1 has two channels that flow out to a trough out back as I understand. If you get the auger system, it goes in these channels. If you don't, I guess the channels are just left open and the chips flow out down to the trough.

Does anyone have pics of the inside/lower cabinet of a DT1 and the chip separator out the back of the machine? It would help a lot. Salesman is helpful and I can go see the machine before buying (and I will), but their office is a 4 hour round trip from my shop, so I'm trying to discover as much as I can before making that trip.

SRT Mike said:

I've been told by a few different machine tool salesman that augers are useless for plastic.

Click to expand...

Salesman...lol I cut tons of plastic on my VF3 with the nearly useless single auger and it does "well" for what it is...which is a single auger. The 4 auger system pushing chips to the conveyer seems like imo it would work excellent. The auger (my single) is very capable of simply pushing the chips to the end of the trough. It does build up a bit in that area though but I can't see the newer better system having that issue. It also builds up in the bed area but again, I can't see that happening on the multi auger style since there are augers pushing chips and not just flat sheet metal.


I have to assume you've seen this....I am not familiar with the DT system.

tc1999 said:

Salesman...lol I cut tons of plastic on my VF3 with the nearly useless single auger and it does "well" for what it is...which is a single auger. The 4 auger system pushing chips to the conveyer seems like imo it would work excellent. The auger (my single) is very capable of simply pushing the chips to the end of the trough. It does build up a bit in that area though but I can't see the newer better system having that issue. It also builds up in the bed area but again, I can't see that happening on the multi auger style since there are augers pushing chips and not just flat sheet metal.


I have to assume you've seen this....I am not familiar with the DT system.

Click to expand...

Yep, I know salesman are often loose with the truth, but in this case I guess they were actually trying to down-sell me, which I wouldn't think they would do if the augers worked well. I've also heard from users who say their augers didn't work in plastic.

I machine polyethylene and polypropylene too, and those are no problem because the chips are larger and stringy so the conveyor gets them fine - it may be something specific to acrylic, and even specific to finishing cuts. When you say you cut plastic, what kind is it? Do you do much acrylic? I've seen videos with giant piles of chips surrounding the auger which is running but not moving them out, and I would think that unless the clearance between the auger and surrounding metal is really close, those sand-like chips won't even be caught by the auger.

I guess I'll go look at a DT-1 and see for myself.

As for the auger-conveyor pic above, I hadn't seen pics like that - very helpful, thanks! I did notice when I priced out a VF2 on Haas' website, they have the "auger/conveyor" option where it states conveyor, but when you click it, it says "side augers move chips to the front auger for evacuation". From your pic, it's clear there are two different systems... the 4 auger one looks to be for larger machines. Do you happen to know the difference? Is one for VF3's and up, or something? I think the front one with the conveyor would work a lot better for plastic than the three auger one.

I posted that mainly for the 4 auger/conveyer as I think that would be what you are after.

I have heard that the augers on the (haas)horizontals are easily overloaded but I seriously can't imagine that system (the pic I posted) would be easily overloaded as it appears to have a ton of area covered regarding moving chips out.

I cut lots of delrin, abs, hdpe, polypro, minimum acrylic though...Like I said, I don't have a problem moving the chips that actually come in contact with the auger...it is the ones that just fall on the plain sheetmetal that I have to deal with. That 4 auger system seems to have it covered. I'm surprised nobody has chimed in that actually has one. This was an option that came available on haas' I believe in 2008...which was a little over a year after I purchased my mill.