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I guess this guy isn’t happy with his Datron mill!

My close engineering friends looked very hard at Datron to make moulds for small plastic parts with optically clear surfaces. One interesting thing at the time was the observation that it was extremely loud, so while it's theoretically an office mill, you couldn't run it in an actual office. In retrospect you have to think anything that loud might not be that smooth. Eight spindles in five years is impressive. My friends ended up getting a VM-2, which apparently has been quite satisfactory for the work required.
 
A very slick way to badmouth Datron. Astronomically priced so it doesn't sell, incurring no fees. Tough for Datron to force an ad takedown, since it's a "legitimate " attempt to sell it and lots of eyes see it.

Good on them!
 
Glad this came up; I was just starting to consider Datron for unattended production of small parts, what with their 143 tool magazine and robot tending they're advertising. But there's no way I want to risk that kind of spindle trouble; the Haas CM-1's will happily chooch at 50,000 RPM all day every day without problems; their biggest fault is that there is literally no chip removal system, and they have to be manually cleaned out every 12 hours. Maybe it's time to get a custom engineered chip conveyor or something; recommendations would be welcome.
 
Does it come with removeable chip pans? If not, I'd have some fab'd up. That could be a quick and cheap way to remove the chips.
It's got a chip pan, into which coolant and chips directly fall, with kind of sluice gates that seem intended to pass coolant but not chips into the lower coolant tank. Coolant and chips both pass indiscriminately, so I've added filter media, and since that slows down coolant flow I've enlarged the gates. If I can find a full chip conveyor or auger solution for a reasonable price I'll go with that; I've already asked a local company if they can come up with something. If not, I have a plan for a new chip bin with a perf-plate floor to make use of the whole area of the filter material, and then another perf-plate tray above that, just for larger chips, that can be easily pulled out and dumped. If I end up going this route and it woks out I'll share the plans.
 
Does it come with removeable chip pans? If not, I'd have some fab'd up. That could be a quick and cheap way to remove the chips.
That was my first thought as well.

Does the CM-1 have a big opening in the back of the bottom cabinet like the OL-1/CL-1 does? Wonder if it'd be possible to get some kind of a chute in the back of there. Sounds like drainage and filtering out the swarf is the main issue though and I suspect your idea for a new chip bin is probably going to be the simplest and best option. How about adding in a second externally powered coolant pump that pushes it through a filter and straight back into the tank so it is continuously filtering the coolant?
 
That was my first thought as well.

Does the CM-1 have a big opening in the back of the bottom cabinet like the OL-1/CL-1 does? Wonder if it'd be possible to get some kind of a chute in the back of there. Sounds like drainage and filtering out the swarf is the main issue though and I suspect your idea for a new chip bin is probably going to be the simplest and best option. How about adding in a second externally powered coolant pump that pushes it through a filter and straight back into the tank so it is continuously filtering the coolant?
Yep, there's a path from the front to the back, about a foot tall and two feet wide.
 
And I doubt that they can sue him. All he is doing is honestly trying to sell it.

Perhaps Datron will buy it back at a negotiated price just to get that ad down.



A very slick way to badmouth Datron. Astronomically priced so it doesn't sell, incurring no fees. Tough for Datron to force an ad takedown, since it's a "legitimate " attempt to sell it and lots of eyes see it.

Good on them!
 








 
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