Thought I'd share with you all my latest machine modification. Without boring you with the thought process behind why I wanted to do this, I decided some form of mist collection would be good to have. After a brief bit of head scratching and a whole lot of desire to not spend thousands of dollars on an off the shelf unit that I would have to modify to fit the machine anyway, I came up with what you see in the attached pictures. The filter is a 20x20x2" aluminum filter for oil/water mist and the fan is nothing more than a $20 hardware box fan for those hot summer days. Add a big hole in between the two and viola, mist collector. The airflow it creates is actually quite impressive and (so far) the only permanent modification to the machine is the giant hole I had to cut in the rear access panel. Should I later decide this was a bad idea I will have to somehow patch that hole or replace the panel but neither option should be all that terrible. My only real disappointment is my total lack of color matching. The original intent was to weld coupling nuts to the panel that would be used to clamp the filter in place. Unfortunately, that didn't go well so everything is just bolted on but the welding attempt, as well as the cutting, caused just a bit of damage to the paint, hence the need for a new coat of rattle color.

The next challenge is power. Because the power into the machine doesn't have a neutral leg, getting 110 to the fan becomes a bit more difficult. However, because I recently upgraded to servos, my controls cabinet now has a large empty space where the stepper drives used to be. That gives me room to add a 220-110 transformer to provide power. That will feed the switched side of an off-delay relay which will get it's signal from the coolant pump. When the pump powers on, the fan relay will kick on to start pulling air. When the pump shuts down, the relay will keep the fan running for whatever time period I determine to be appropriate before shutting the fan back down. All the electrical components are ordered and should arrive by the middle of this week so hopefully by the end of the weekend it will all be installed and cleanly wired in.

Total cost when this is done, including all parts and shipping should be about $250