How To Clean Chip Conveyor Haas

Vickery Monal1942 · Sunday, November 14, 2021

How do you clean the inside of a chip conveyor?

How do you clean the inside of a chip conveyor?

I was going through my newly purchased 10 year old CNC lathe and cleaning it up. First used machine so first one I have had to degrime.
Was told to pay particular attention to the coolant tank area. Make sure it's completely clean and use a biocide, Lysol or some such to kill the bacteria in all the nooks and crannies or it can poison my new coolant. Plus I have no idea what they were cutting with it.

I got the tank pretty clean and can do a better job with a bit more attention. My worry is the chip conveyor. It's an LNS Turbo, not sure which model, haven't looked closely. Looks like a standard linked metal belt. No frills.

The inside when I peer through the little slots in the side where the coolant comes out is dirty. Not super nasty sludge but definitely old coolant and some grime build up. Some chips in there too, but not as worried about them.

I have no way to get this thing outside to pressure wash or anything and see no way to easily get inside it to clean. Has to be cleaned basically right in front of the machine.

So are these cleanable inside? Does the belt like easily remove? Will the sludge poison my new coolant?

I will not waste my time trying to get behind every tack welded bracket to clean if that thing is going to drop a pound of sludge the first time I start running new coolant through it.

Thanks for any help guys.

Paul B.
There should be hinge pins that you can remove to "unroll" the belt.
I usually just roll up a few shop rags and run the conveyor in reverse. Try to lay them full width across the belt just dont shove too many in there at a time so the belt gets jammed. Then you can find the link pin and pull the belt so you can pressure wash it. Would be a good time to check that the rollers are still good and check for any wear on the rollers/belt track.
Thanks guys. Great information. Will get on it.
+1 for Pressure Wash! We can usually get them almost spotless.
Originally Posted by jaxian

How do you clean the inside of a chip conveyor?

Reluctantly
My chip conveyor clean itself whenever I run a bunch of 1018.
Those big wads of stringy shit always gets dragged back through, it's like a fucking brillo pad...
If it's a real pain get your coolant supplier to give you some system cleaner and run it through with the chip conveyor running for a few hours. The first time I did this I was surprised how much crap actually gets wedged in all the hoses and in the tank that you don't notice. Then drain it all out and hopefully it has loosened up most of the rubbish and you can just get it out in the chip bin or with draining the system cleaner concentrate.
Halfway through cleaning the chip conveyor by myself. Nobody fully prepared me for how heavy that belt was, how hard it would be to remove from the conveyor housing then wrestling it onto a cart. Then dragging it out where I could pressure wash it. Which was across very uneven ground with it trying to hop off with every bump.
I swear every surface was greased, it has a mind of it's own and seems to jump off the side of carts, slide every which way and generally smear me with foul smelling gunk in the process. I am sure I heard it mocking me. Damn thing is possessed. Somewhere there is a journeyman machinist angel laughing his ass off watching me try to do this by myself. I feel like I have been wrestling a pissed off 150lb badger. But after all this hassle that is going to be one goddamn clean badger when I am done.

This post was merely an excuse to take a short break before going out and getting back to scrubbing the conveyor housing. I mentioned this all to my father and he said it "builds character". Everyone gets a laugh...
Wonder which coolants could be run thru a pressure washer. I've never tried that, but if you did it as part of the overall cleaning process, you could remove all the contaminated stuff at once and start fresh. Small electric pressure washers are pretty cheap/expendable.
Chip
Do yourself a favor and fill the coolant tank with water and leave it sit overnight to test for leaks. We bought a used Mazak a couple years ago, cleaned and filled the coolant tank the next morning the shop was full of coolant. Some times the crude is all that stopping a few leaks.
Originally Posted by Captdave

Do yourself a favor and fill the coolant tank with water and leave it sit overnight to test for leaks. We bought a used Mazak a couple years ago, cleaned and filled the coolant tank the next morning the shop was full of coolant. Some times the crude is all that stopping a few leaks.

Now I am wholly horrified at something that I hadn't even known could go wrong. This is like searching a slight sprain on WebMD, ten minutes later you are making funeral plans.
It might be the longest way to do it, but they are quite straight forward to strip and remove the belt completely thus giving you access for a full clean up.
I'm guessing by the age of the machine each panel is secured with a long pin which has been crimped on one end?
Originally Posted by Jaxian

Now I am wholly horrified at something that I hadn't even known could go wrong. This is like searching a slight sprain on WebMD, ten minutes later you are making funeral plans.

Oh its not that bad but cleaning up 50 gallons of coolant isn't fun either. They just welded a few patches where needed, then good to go. But learned an important lesson, fill with water and leave outside over night!
Originally Posted by Jaxian

Halfway through cleaning the chip conveyor by myself. Nobody fully prepared me for how heavy that belt was, how hard it would be to remove from the conveyor housing then wrestling it onto a cart. Then dragging it out where I could pressure wash it. Which was across very uneven ground with it trying to hop off with every bump.

I swear every surface was greased, it has a mind of it's own and seems to jump off the side of carts, slide every which way and generally smear me with foul smelling gunk in the process. I am sure I heard it mocking me. Damn thing is possessed. Somewhere there is a journeyman machinist angel laughing his ass off watching me try to do this by myself. I feel like I have been wrestling a pissed off 150lb badger. But after all this hassle that is going to be one goddamn clean badger when I am done.

This post was merely an excuse to take a short break before going out and getting back to scrubbing the conveyor housing. I mentioned this all to my father and he said it "builds character". Everyone gets a laugh...

Why do I imagine getting it back into the conveyor is going to be much more trouble?
Personally I wouldn't waste the time or effort to clean the conveyor and here is why. A couple of years ago we bought a new CNC bandsaw and of course it wasn't long before it got over filled with coolant and ran all over the floor. We all know how nasty the floor gets around a band saw but after getting the shop vac out to suck it up the area where the coolant had been was amazingly clean and free of all that grime that sticks to the floor.
Now when we mop the floor we only use coolant that has been recycled several times and is destin for the band saw anyways. Leave it sit on the floor for 30 minutes and then vacuum up. Whole lot cheaper the Zep cleaning stuff and does an awesome job.

We are mostly an aluminum shop so we pull the conveyors about every 6 months to clean out all the chips that end up in the bottom of the tank and I have been surprised how clean the conveyor are.