Once I had the machine home, I really wanted to be able to use flood coolant rather than a mist or spraying from a bottle.This was my first mod to the machine, and meant that I could really push the coolant in there. I find the flood coolant is as useful for blasting the chips clear of the cutting area as for keeping the cutter cool.
The coolant enclosure underhangs the front of the table by about 225mm and the underhang slopes down by just over 25mm from right to left so that the coolant naturally drains to one side. The original table drains are retained and the new one on the enclosure all run back to an external coolant tank.
The front centre panel lifts out for access to the work area.
Construction is Aluminium with 5mm polycarbonate for all the vision panels. The upper frame is all extruded channel material and very quick and handy to use.
The rubber curtain at the back is really handy as it contains most of the coolant heading that way. For setups with longer tooling or higher work pieces, I have a second piece of the rubber available to be put in place as required.
At this stage, I did away with the interlock switch from the old guard system and I could in theory run the machine with the front panel out of place, but why would I, It just winds up with swarf and coolant everywhere.
I guess with thinking it out and then putting it together, it was probably a couple of days of work but spread out over maybe 6 weeks or so.
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