Abstract: A propeller with pivoting blades is provided as a cleaning tool (1) for the work area of metal cutting machines, where the angle of adjustment for the pivoting blades is such that an air jet is generated supporting the propeller blades (15) in folding open. The propeller blade (15) is arranged in a tool changer stacker instead of a common tool or on a tool spindle and serves to automatically clean the work area by a blowing process.

Abstract: A chip removal method and apparatus for a sign engraving machine. The method involves engraving a sign blank in such a manner that chips fall from a cutting region on the sign blank into an enclosure, and swirling the chips in the enclosure so that the chips exhaust through an opening in the periphery of the enclosure and eventually pass through a chute into a receptacle. The apparatus is a guide member located parallel to an outer envelope of the volume that can be occupied by a rotating cutting head of the engraver. The guide member has a surface for contacting the sign blank. The contact surface has an access opening at its center to allow chips to enter the guide member from a cutting region on the sign blank. The guide member tapers away from the cutting region and has an exhaust opening and chute for exhausting the chips. The guide member is used with a rotating cutting head that propels chips circumferentially and allows them to be exhausted through the chute.

Abstract: An antiscattering device for the collection of waste material (dust, shavings) produced in the course of drilling, milling and similar operations, to be fitted in the most appropriate way on machine tools and basically made up of a bellows shaped bell (e.g. frustum-conical), provided, if required, with an axially elastic vacuum cleaner or extractor--which can be fitted on the machine tools themselves. This bell is permanently or temporarily secured to the frames of machine tools (e.g. manually, on a drill), coaxially to the drill bit while its base, provided with a seal ring, rests on the surface of the material to be drilled, thereby creating, with its shell, a receptacle where the waste material collects.