Mill/Drill Flood Coolant Enclosure

I thought I would present my plans for my enclosure for my mill for people to give ideas and suggestions before I begin the build in case you can think of anything changes or suggestions that slipped my mind. Below are a few shots for my mill. It is a microkinetics CNC express mill, yes it is mill/drill and you may ask why I would spend so much time and money on making an enclosure, well thats because it is what I have, I teach metalwork at a high school shop and it is out only mill and what I had to work with when I came to the school. It has been pretty good to me since I worked out the kinks, and other than a 5 inch Z axis limit on the CNC part and some backlash I cannot get rid of, it works.

So my enclosure has gone through a number of changes and modifications over the past few months. This is the final version, inspired by two indaviduals that I want to acknolege before I show my pictures.

My enclusre is based and inspired by Guldberg's design

The base was going to be the same until I saw mikemaats baseMikemaats base and loved the idea of storage for more than just a coolant tank, in fact I intend to put my electronics and vaccum below. Thanks guys.


So I plan to build the enclosure in two stages, the first the base and pan with sheet metal covers completed, painted and mill sitting on it so I can use it asap. I will then build the walls of the enclosure minus sheet metal and bolt them on (they are removable for maintenence). I cannot afford sheet metal this year for the walls so I will use plastic sheeting for the time being to make it work.


All drawings made in Rhino 4.0

Materials are:
Frame: 1x1 Tube
Base Frame: 2x2" Tube
Sheet metal - 16ga
Pan 1/8"
Windows - 3/16 acrylic sheet
Doors - sliding

Oh and I could not get the pictures to display, I used the insert image option above but they would not work so I posted the link instead.



Front View


Top View


View of Base


Drain