Chips everywhere need a bin

Seekins · Nov 23, 2009

I am finally up to no good, running like a mad man in a sea of aluminum chips...I sure wish i would have gotten this horizontal long ago. Thing is crazy hungry for aluminum and im not even pushing it. Its going to be in real trouble when my 5/8 milling chuck gets here...

Problem...
I cant seem to run more than about 1/2 hr before i need to empty out the 40gallon chip bucket. Program is 5 hours long and i want to be able to run lights out. I am filling a 4' cube box every shift and dont have a bunch of room for a dumpster, or a forklift to move chip bins away from the machine. Also, something i can put a coolant drain in would be a plus. I am going thru allot of it at the molment, just dumping it with the chips. I have about 6000lbs of chips to make.

What do you guys use for a chip bin on your horizontals?

Perry Harrington · Nov 24, 2009

Get a few of the 4x4 bins from your scrapper and use a pallet jack. My scrapper said they have bins available with a reclaimer petcock you can open to get the coolant out. I'd get creative, might even consider washing down the chips with water to reclaim the coolant, then re-concentrate the solution to get your valuable concoction back.

There's also those chip pucking machines that wring all the chips out and expel nothing but brick of aluminum. With that robodrill added to the mix you will probably need something like that!

Tonytn36 · Nov 24, 2009

The pucker is a really good investment. You should get a higher sales price for your scrap if it's pucked. We bought a big one end of last year.

We have a large in-house Al foundry, thus 99.9% of our machining chips are captured for recycling. The problem arises when you try to reintroduce those chips into the remelt furnace. If they are loose chips, you will lose quite a bit (up to 15% or more) to flash burn, depending on the size of the chips. The pucker machine saves a bunch of Al when it goes into the remelt furnace because it is basically a solid mass. IIRC it was about $70k installed, and it paid for itself in less than 7 months in reclaimed aluminum.
It's packed tight enough that you could just about clamp it in a lathe and machine it. There is less than 0.1% coolant left in the brick (by our own laboratory testing and secondary verification by an outside laboratory). This was a requirement because you do *not* want to put moisture into a 1400+° furnace with 3' of molten aluminum in it.

We use these:
http://www.mcmaster.com/#3793t15/=4n56gi
at the end of the line conveyors, and we added heavy duty polyurethane casters and a push bar handle to them. (The "mobile" chip hoppers shown have steel wheels, which are not allowed on our floors, we must have 'non-marking' wheels on all equipment.)
These are 1-1/2 cu yd capacity.

They offer them in a 2 cu yd capacity also, if you conveyor exit is high enough.

Seekins · Nov 24, 2009

watched a pucking machine work when we visited Hoyt. Very nice way to deal with the chips, they had 20 some machines and a couple guys did nothing but chip control.

No room for one yet, but i will be moving in February and plan to make a spot for one. Unfortunately where im at recycling at the one place within 200 miles just bends you over. If i did it i dont know that i would get any more.

psychomill · Nov 24, 2009

Puck machines are the way to go... Of course, Seekins needs a way to get it from the machine... 40gal is very small when blowing through aluminum. Our bins are about 4-1/2 x 6 x 5-1/2 tall. Of course, all of my conveyors are 6 feet plus at the dump height.

At another shop I was at, we had the machine conveyors dump onto another conveyor that fed a puck machine which dumped it to an outside truck bin for pickup.

At any rate, for sure whatever you can fit is the ideal. If you make a good bit of chips, even talk to your recycler. They usually offer chip bins as Perry mentioned with wheels and petcocks which keeps you from having to build it or maintain it....

Mike Ortega · Nov 24, 2009

Hey Seekins, how bout some pic sof the mess

Joe788 · Nov 24, 2009

Ahhhh, that's a good problem to have for sure!

In the past we used a bunch of these ugly plastic dump carts that came from a plastics manufacturing plant that went broke:

They were pretty ugly though, and kind of a pain to dump. It was inevitable that 1 out of 100 dumps, the cart would tip over sideways while raised up 6 feet on the forklift, and dump all over the ground.

So I broke down and ordered a few of these from hippohopper.com :

The dump carts themselves are nice, but be weary of doing business with hippo hopper. Lead time on my units was supposed to be two weeks. I paid up front, they took 11 weeks to get here, they are the wrong color, and they were all scratched and banged up on the sides. :nutter:

At some point we are going to raise the sides up by another 18 inches so we can go even longer between dumps, but right now we've got other stuff that's more important, so that's a backburner project.

cnc-enthusiast · Jun 17, 2019

We use camel carts exclusively. They create a great workflow environment and save us money on our coolant costs.

Perry Harrington · Jun 18, 2019

Since all 3 of your posts are about Cow Carts, I'm gonna assume you are shilling for digging up a 10yo thread. Not to mention that the weird cart you're hocking has nothing to do with chip control. It looks like a sorting tray that's elevated up high with a bunch of wasted space below.

We don't take kindly to people who dig up 10yo threads just to hock some wares, it's clear you have some financial interest in seeing them sell these elevated drip trays.

Guest · Jun 18, 2019

Perry Harrington said:
Since all 3 of your posts are about Cow Carts, I'm gonna assume you are shilling for digging up a 10yo thread. Not to mention that the weird cart you're hocking has nothing to do with chip control. It looks like a sorting tray that's elevated up high with a bunch of wasted space below.

We don't take kindly to people who dig up 10yo threads just to hock some wares, it's clear you have some financial interest in seeing them sell these elevated drip trays.

WTF, I wouldn't use one of those for chips if you gave one to me. Shoot the spammer.

G00 Proto · Jun 18, 2019

Holy Necro post. Dredges up a 10 year old post to suggest a cart that wouldn't work for five minutes. Next time I see Seekins I'll pass on your recommendation. He produces 10,000 pounds of chips per month... I'm sure his operators would love emptying out a 5 gallon bucket every couple of minutes

doug925 · Jun 18, 2019

cnc-enthusiast said:
View attachment 259143We use camel carts exclusively. They create a great workflow environment and save us money on our coolant costs.

What the FUK would you do with that little, puny, high C of G, POS, cart????????

I mean if you were running 3/16" brass, on a bench top cnc lathe, maybe.... but then no WAY!
Go hawk your crap ELSEWHERE!

npolanosky · Jun 18, 2019

I saw them at haas demo day here in tampa. Their sales guy dodged all of my questions about the small capacity and light build, and all he would talk about is the savings in coolant. I tried to explain our situation as a small prototype shop, but he interrupted me, grabbed his tablet, pulled up their site, and claimed we would save $660/mo in coolant. When I mentioned that $660 in coolant is actually about a 6-7mo supply for us, he didn't have a good answer and kept on rambling about some other crap on his script. How it is patented, took two years to develop and two years to test, did he mention it was patented, look it comes with a bucket, only $500 each, etc etc.

At the very least they could have made use of the giant hole in the middle for something. Maybe a respectable size drum. I'd fill their flimsy container in 10 minutes.
And two years of development? I could design something better in an evening, considering it's just a sloped table attached to a bucket with some holes poked in the bottom.

His account is brand new, with a supar generic name, and only dug up old threads about chip and coolant management to push camel carts. Smite thee with the ban hammer.

blkaplan · Jun 18, 2019

Is that cart for letting your endmills dry,? [emoji38]

Sent from my Pixel 2 using Tapatalk

david n · Jun 18, 2019

..................

plastikdreams · Jun 18, 2019

cnc-enthusiast said:
View attachment 259143We use camel carts exclusively. They create a great workflow environment and save us money on our coolant costs.

I'm sorry, I prefer camel toe, not carts

Guest · Jun 19, 2019

I always wonder how a product like a camel cart makes it to market. Over priced useless piece of junk. Someone has to lose some cash on this project.

david n · Jun 19, 2019

Well the OP ain't the brightest bulb around.................if'n yer gonna spam, at least give all of the info..............I went to the site and the pic above doesn't show the expensive chip tub that is suppose to go on top of that over priced cart along with the over price catch bucket....................If the whole assembly would have been presented, well, we'd still would rip it......................

Insert · Jun 19, 2019

Dualkit said:
I always wonder how a product like a camel cart makes it to market. Over priced useless piece of junk. Someone has to lose some cash on this project.

Do you really call having a website "making it to market" ????
If you are creating fake user names on forums to peddle your product, you are probably desperate for sales.

Should probably go peddle it on the Tormach forums, its proportionate to their chip output.

Perry Harrington · Jun 19, 2019

david n said:
Well the OP ain't the brightest bulb around.................if'n yer gonna spam, at least give all of the info..............I went to the site and the pic above doesn't show the expensive chip tub that is suppose to go on top of that over priced cart along with the over price catch bucket....................If the whole assembly would have been presented, well, we'd still would rip it......................

The fact is you have a tub for catching chips and a tray and a bucket, all of which takes up the space of a 55gal drum, but holds 6 gal worth of chips and 5 gal of coolant.

Not to mention you have to heft the chip bin off of something a table height on to the ground, instead of using a hand truck to transport the chips.

I used to recover the oil from the bottom of my chip drums by sticking a steel tube down to the bottom and using one of the vacuum fluid transfer gizmos to suck all the oil out into the reservoir. It would be just as easy to get one of those battery powered kerosene/fuel transfer pumps and let it suck the coolant out of a 55gal drum.

Chips everywhere need a bin

Stainless

Titanium

Diamond

Stainless

Titanium

Aluminum

Titanium

Plastic

Titanium

Guest

Guest

Hot Rolled

Titanium

Cast Iron

Cast Iron

Diamond

Diamond

Guest

Guest

Diamond

Hot Rolled

Titanium

Similar threads