Vacuum rather than coolant?

My thought is to feed the project with a vortex cold air gun. It attaches to compressed air and supplies air as cold as zero degrees Fahrenheit.

One company I worked for bought one for some lathework that had to be kept cool, but could not take coolant.

If you should decide to go this route, use dry air for the feed. Otherwise, moisture will condense and freeze in the discharge nozzle and cause the gun to shoot tiny ice balls around the room.

"They are working with a material that is hazardous but not flammable. "

Hmm, that leaves out plutonium. Uranium?

D

Asbestos, Caffiene, coal dust....

You guys are making it really complex. :)

Regards, Joe Agro, Jr. (800) 871-5022 (908) 542-0244 Automatic / Pneumatic Drills:

Spindle Drills: V8013-R

One place I repaired a few machines at machined nothing but synthetic graphite. A rather hazardous substance to the machines at least (conductive and abrasive). They had one hell of a big dust collection and separation system, reported to have sucked up a 1" micrometer that someone put down too close to one of the nozzles, had about a 20' vertical lift to the ceiling too. It was a while ago so I have no idea who made the system, but if you check around for a company machining graphite molds for aerospace stuff they should have some leads.

Pete C.

Don't know anything specific, but there are pneumatic powered shop vacuums that generate absurd suction and flow. Far more than electric vacuum cleaners do. Should make enough wind that it can cool things off. You might go look up a few manufacturers and call them about your idea.

I used to modify wire wrap connectors for a customer. The base material looked for all the world as if it had asbestos fibers in its composition, although I don't know that it did. This was long ago, in the '70's. One of the operations was to fly cut both sides of the connectors after they'd been sawed from a larger one. I modified a commercial vacuum fitting by machining a radius in keeping with the spindle of the mill, so it would partially surround the fly cutter at the point of cut. It was then mounted in a quickly made plastic mounting that clamped on the quill of the mill. By running a large shop vac without a filter (much better air movement), placing it outside the shop, it picked up virtually all of the dust coming off the cutter, dumping it outside. I still have the setup, although it rarely gets used now. You could do something similar, maybe incorporating a cyclonic separator.

Harold

Check out these guys:

They make a product called a "line-vac" that is a vac generator... used to convey small parts. I've used them to eject parts from a piece of automation. Pretty impressive flow...

all you have to do is hook up a solenoid valve to it and provide a signal.

could work...

How much suction is going to be required? How big of a collector is going to be needed? There are units available that range from filling a couple of garbage cans, to filling something that needs to be taken out by semi.

You may want to start here:

I'm sure they have all sizes.

If you are anywhere around Minneapolis, I may have a used unit that may fit your needs, but you'd need 3ph power.

Relz

"Joe AutoDrill" wrote in message news:tlrBf.1278$Yi5.1238@trndny02... | Building a system for a customer... They are working with a material that | is hazardous but not flammable. They are looking to provide suction at the | tool rather than the typical coolant and want to do something a bit more | professional than a simple wet vac system. Anything you folks know of like | this? We would provide either a pneumatic or electrical signal to cycle the | suction. | | Regards, | Joe Agro, Jr.

I recall Boeing's R&D working on a chip vacuum for their "small" and hand drill motors. They tried like crazy, but the chips jammed and clogged like crazy. There needed to be a chip breaker that wouldn't clog, and a transport system that would remove the chips without clogging and going to hell so easily. They gave up, and just insisted that we vacuum up when done. If your customer's materials don't create any long chips, a short sleeve, spring loaded to the surface of the material, sized slightly larger than the drill bit to prevent clogging but allow cuttings to roll out, and a vacuum body just above that will draw the chips away from the cutting surface where they can be drawn away. You'll need a high vacuum to avoid clogging and keep the vacuum working all around the drill bit, but obviously not a high flow. This I seem to recall was the idea with Boeing's thinking, but aluminum and sharp drill bits creates hardened continuous chips, and their chip breakers weren't up to the task.

ASHRAE has a pretty useful HVAC handbook that covers air velocity requirements for effective dust, chip capture etc. Also covers useful info on duct pressure drop calculation, transport of material in ducts, design of hoods, tool shrouds, and dust capture for work areas. Couple of hundred pages with lots of examples. Probably runs 25-30 bucks. Maybe Amazon has a preview you can look at to decide if it's what you want, or you can find a copy at a library.