Tormach recently launched the Chip Conveyor Kit accessory for its 1500MX CNC Mill. What is its function?
At its core, what this kit adds is a conveyor belt system to remove the excess cuttings out of the machine for disposal. That’s the key part of it. It’s to help get the cuttings away from the machine.
Can you give a few examples of how it does that?
It’s a drop-in add-on for the flood coolant kit on the mill. It replaces the two chip baskets an operator would have to empty with this conveyor belt system. It’s a programmable system. It allows the user to either run it continuously or to allow it to run at different periods of starting and stopping, which then would allow functions like allowing the coolant to drain off the chips before the chips end up in a waste barrel.
What made this new accessory necessary?
The primary benefit of adding a chip conveyor to your machine is the ability to run longer cycles without needing to stop and clean out the machine.
It frees up your operator to focus on making parts and not have to worry about buildup in the machine.
Other benefits are: You get less loss of coolant. This is when using the programmable start and stop function. It can give time for the coolant to drain back off into the tank before it dumps into a recycle container.
Because it’s doing that, it also is making sure the coolant has a nice, clean, free path to get back into the tank. When we’re cutting, we want to make sure that coolant fills back up so we’re not starving the machine. Oftentimes when you get chip buildup, it creates dams in the flood coolant system and then the coolant is struggling to get back in. It allows for a cleaner system overall. Your machine stays cleaner, and the coolant stays cleaner in the tank, which generally gives you longer tool life and better surface finishes on your parts.
What kind of jobs is the CNC mill used for, and can it be used for gear production?
The 1500MX CNC Mill is used everywhere, from one-off prototypes to high-volume production work and everything in between. We see it in small job shops; it’s in garages; it’s in big manufacturing and aerospace; it’s all over in the market.
It does support simultaneous 4th-axis milling. If you’re getting into gear production and things of that nature, we do have those tools available to do that in a fairly industry-standard way.
How will the Chip Conveyor Kit make performing these jobs a little easier?
The operator is going to be spending more time focusing on making parts and less time on cleaning the machine.
The biggest impact right there is: “Hey, if I’m making more parts and I’m making better parts, I’m making more money as opposed to having to stop.” Especially if you have to stop and wait for all these chips to drain off and dry off — that’s wasted time.
What’s been the industry response to the Chip Conveyor Kit so far?
It took us a little bit longer to release than we had originally planned. We’ve been showing it to people since May of last year. We had it at the Automate show, and we had it at IMTS. We’ve been showing the use of this product for quite a while, but we wanted to refine it a little and get it a little better before we released it to the public. We actually released it officially on February 21.
But what’s interesting — and one of the nicest parts about this — is, since we’ve had this out in the field, we effectively did very in-depth testing on this to make sure it’s working well, but we also got a lot of feedback from people who saw it at shows. People are excited about this one, because, like I said, it’s such a convenience factor. On top of that, the price point is one of the lowest in the market. It’s very attainable, very affordable, for a Tormach owner to add this to their system. And what’s more, there have been people reaching out who don’t own Tormach machines who are interested in adding this to their machines.
Anything else you’d like to mention that we didn’t talk about?
It’s the first time we’ve had anything like this. The 1500MX, just in general, represents a fundamental shift for us from machines that were perceived as being more hobby machines, but, technically, every machine we make is an industrial machine. They are attainable by a wide variety of people, so a lot of people who are hobbyists have bought Tormach machines in the past.
But the 1500MX has been a game-changer. It changed every level of what we offer and the quality and the performance. And we’ve added functions like a through-spindle coolant system and a mist collector, and now we’ve added this Chip Conveyor system. These are accessories we’ve never offered in the past. It’s our goal to provide a much more industrial-based machine that can be used in more automated environments.
We want people to be able to make more parts faster, better, and in an automated way, so there’s a real efficiency benefit across the board for folks. That’s been our focus as we’re delivering new products from here on out.
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