Haas Mini Mill Cleaning Coolant Tank?

Got Mini Mill couple of months ago and other day checked the coolant tank underneath and damn thing is full of chips!

Anyone have any suggestions on best way to clean it? I was thinking scooping out chips using some sort of strainer scoop so I don't have to drain coolant completely, but would love to hear from other owners on how they deal with it.

Is there any modification to the machine that I could do to stop chips from getting into the coolant tank?

Love the Mini Mill but really dislike that coolant tank is not removable.

Haven't gotten to the cleaning the coolant tank yet.

Gotta wonder how they decided this was a good design idea.


But since we are on the Mini-Mill topic...

Anybody have any insight on how to find a part, screw, bolt, nut, wrench that falls off the table. Can't see, can't feel, can't find anything once it drops....aside from the larger items that jam up the chip auger.
Sweet design! Lots of thought went into that I'm sure...something you don't really think about when going to look at a machine. But soon as I took my first cut on a plastic job reality hit when I saw part go flying...opened door and huh...gone...that's going to be a problem. Few sec of auger, few sec of auger...nothing...squirt hose, few sec of auger. Never found it.

Very happy with Exair Chip Trapper system, fast and through. First use there was a 3" bed of chips so I used wet shop vac to complete then pump coolant back in. I did this three times to flush out every nook and corner. Total time under 2 hours. If done routinely less than twenty minutes.

Old way of pumping into drum than scoop and vac took 3 to 4 hours and fines were still in coolant. Since using routinely - no more clogged coolant nozzles.

BGL said:

Very happy with Exair Chip Trapper system, fast and through.

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That is good suggestion, I have not seen this before. I can see this being useful. Thank you!

You're right on about making your own scooper. We have an ST10, that is just a PITA to clean the coolant tank on.

SIM said:

Gotta wonder how they decided this was a good design idea.

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That's an easy one.

Money.

It was cheap. No mystery to it, at all.

Zahnrad Kopf said:

That's an easy one.

Money.

It was cheap. No mystery to it, at all.

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I am not so sure. Cheap would have been straight walls, less bends with less material. Design covers the trough, things you need fall right down and under never to be seen again...while chips slap themselves to the walls and don't go down.
What they accomplished was no easy feat, I'm sure.

SIM said:

I am not so sure. Cheap would have been straight walls, less bends with less material. Design covers the trough, things you need fall right down and under never to be seen again...while chips slap themselves to the walls and don't go down.
What they accomplished was no easy feat, I'm sure.

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It probably ended up in coolant tank. I had things fall down as well that I have never seen again. I bet I'll find them in coolant tank.

Oh man what a shit job. Spent whole morning cleaning out the tank, scooping most of the stuff out using the large kitchen scoop strainer. There were ton of chips in the tank, at least half of it was full of chips :-( I was using one of those corn cob roughers that create small chips and they all ended up in the tank.

I am going to try to use different roughing tool that creates larger chips in hope to have fewer of them end up in the tank. I'll report later on how well that worked...

I wish I had enough forethought to realize that Mini Mill has this problem, I don't think I would have bought it. Any future mill has to have removable coolant tank for cleaning, especially if you are doing production.