Chip remover for machines which perform cutting operations, especially on metal workpieces

In a chip remover for machines which perform a machining operation, especially on metal workpieces, such as strip edging machines, and by means of which the chips produced by the machine are carried away from the area surrounding the chip-producing tool to assure an unhampered machining operation, wherein the chip remover includes a stretched helix rotating about its longitudinal axis with successive turns spaced apart at a distance from one another, said helix having a driven end and a free end, said free end extending into the area of emergence of chips from the chip-producing tool of the machine, the improvement wherein said helix is hollow and is surrounded externally by a non-rotating guide tube with an open end and an open-ended slot which is substantially narrower than the width of said tube and extends in the lengthwise direction of said tube, said free end of said helix projecting freely from said open end of said tube, and wherein said slot extends in the longitudinal direction of said tube from said open end to the opposite, tool-remote part of said tube, and then continues from said longitudinal direction in a partly circumferential direction along said tube and in the direction of rotation of said helix with a pitch contrary to the pitch of said helix.