Assembling the Altmill with the PWNCNC 2.2kw water cooled spindle system. I ordered a set of Coolant Clips to tidy up the installation of the Water lines onto the Sienci supplied drag chain. I failed to notice that these were made for the 1f machines when I ordered them. Of course the opening on the clips is barely too narrow for the to fit on the clips on the drag chain when they are opened. It looks to me like I can just take a Dremel tool and shave of a 1/16” or less off one of the dog ears on the cool clips to get them to seat over the drag chain clips when open. Has anyone else done this and have success with it?
And the answer to my question is yes, yes you can! I basically shaved off a 1/32 or so with a utility knife and got a really snug fit. One thing of note, don’t install these and they clamp them shut before you install your cables in the channel because its three times harder to unlock these with the coolant clips installed than with out!
Thank you for sharing your experience with these Dean.
I originally designed these for the Onefinity Elite cable chains which are tiny.
I actually installed all of my ATC tubes and wires into my AltMill cable chains. In the Y’ chain it was a tight fit, and loosened with less wires going into the X chain.
I hadn’t actually tried these clips on their chains.
Can you be more specific on where you shaved off the 1/32? I can make some adjustments to the design for our next batch we’ll print and i can include the updated design in the maker files.
Hey Daniel. No problem. you need to increase the spacing between the ears by .050” so the hooked/snap lock part of the cable chain can slide in between the ears.
Compatibility likely wasn’t checked with the altmill, but adjusting so it’s a 1 product option to fit both onefinity and altmill, and maybe even shapeoko looks to be an easy fix.
Did you have any clearance issues with running them on the inside of the table on the Y axis because you cant run them on the outside of the y axis and have them hang over the edge because the X gantry support bracket would run into them. I did a mock up of them on the Y axis with them turned towards the inside of the table. I think they will be good to go but won’t know until I the machine gets powered up. (hopefully this weekend) to check for clearance issues with the spindle and the cool clips
I have the same problem except with the addition that I got the PWNCNC 2.2 kW water cooled ATC spindle and so I’ve got two air lines that I need to fit through the drag chains as well. I did some measurements and ended up, ordering some slightly larger drag chain, which I hope will work.
This is how I ended up trimming only one side of the ears on the rest of the blocks. It was far more consistent than trying to do it with a utility knife. And less painful too! I, of course sliced the tip of my finger on the second block I tried to trim!
@beakerlink Oh that would be cool! I do have a Bambu X1C. Did you post your file anywhere? Could you share a link if you did? If not Ill message you with my email address. I messed around yesterday in Tinkercad and came up with a block that would work. But its Tinkercad and the stl files it creates absolutely suck! And after you group shapes you cannot soften the edges. One of these days Ill actually sit down and learn Blender! But at the moment I’m busing learning V-carve pro!!
Sorry I didn’t get back to you. Moved my daughter into college this weekend so I have been extremely busy the past three days! Thanks for the file and no, I don’t need airline slots. Ill start printing some blocks soon! Appreciate your help
I am not sure. I designed this for the altmill that my high school robotics team has. I can measure tonight. We didn’t have any interference with the spindle, but I can get you the actual stick out if you would like
do you think there would be enough room for blocks that sit ontop of the chain similar to my design above but lower profile. I think mine are too tall. at 20mm. I think they could easily be shrunk down to 13 or 15mm in height which would make the radius for the chain to come back the other way much easier on the tubing.
