Chips getting into my toolchanger; solutions?

Doing some aggressive milling of aluminum, long running production job. There are pockets in the part, and the way the high pressure coolant hits some of them, it sends chips right up into the toolchanger on my DuraVertical. It's been running okay for over a week, but I just had 4 parts come out (fixture holds 4 pcs) and some of my blends went to shit. Inspection of every tool revealed a couple holders as having chips on the flanges (dual contact), throwing things out of kilter. 99% certain that the chips came from the issue mentioned above. The solution, it seems, is to rig up some sort of door that I tie into the control. I know it adds cycle time, but I'm already pushing 4 hours per run. What's a couple more minutes....

The quick solution is to just pre-call to an empty pocket and let that take the brunt of the chip spray. I've made that change to the program, running my 4th batch of parts now. So far, so good. If that doesn't work out, I'd like to have a "Plan B"

Anyone ever done this? Fools errand?


I will say, that is one of the attractive features of the Doosan mills, in that they DO have a door.
I did run some YCM NXV machines at my last job that had brushes installed at the tool opening. Those seemed to do a decent job, although we were never running serious levels of production on them...

Coolant spray on the tool pot.

Does the spindle have air blast out when changing? If not perhaps it could be rigged. Like an air gun aimed at the tool change position controlled by a misc M function called witht he tool change.
I wonder if shielding could be rigged that did not involve an actual door. Just thinking how effective a 6 inch square piece of plexi on the back two screws of a Kurt is at keeping me from getting coolant soaked when doing setup ops on my CNC knee mill.

I would rig up some broom bristles in the way of the tool pocket. We have them on our Haas VMC's and they do a good job. Although they are not dual contact spindles...

AARONT said:

I would rig up some broom bristles in the way of the tool pocket. We have them on our Haas VMC's and they do a good job. Although they are not dual contact spindles...

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Mazak uses this too. Mcmaster sells this stuff

Can you rig a solenoid to actuate an air knife at the opening when the tool changing
takes place ? Tools going both in & out to the storage area get cleaned.
Exair makes some straight line ones, put one on each side. Maybe 6" long.