Waylube question

Gents

I am using Blaser Swisslube for coolant. Unfortunately it quite readily mixes with the waylube, so I've decided to switch to Blaser's waylube.
Well... unfortunately again, Blaser no longer makes their own waylube, but the vendor recommended Conoco HydroClear TCS 68 instead.
So, I've got it in.
This thing is completely clear, as opposed to the Mobil Vactra2 or Hangsterfer's Waylube.


Question: Does any of you guys have experience with this wayoil?
Viscosity appears to be identical, so the pumps should not need any adjustment, but what about amount of oil dispensed?

Everytime we have used anything different than Vactra #2 we get stung as parraffin clogs the PDI pumps, valves and grooves on our cnc's....100% of the time. We have even gotten chatter on our axis ways because of the slip stick factor (and film shear strength difference). I dont know why anyone would want to risk it.

That is a bummer. I just switched to Blaser waylube myself for the same reasons. I got my last pail a month or two back. I guess I should have ordered a pallet.

I'll be interested to hear how this goes.

Bad news, the Conoco HydroClear is what I'm running right now, and it mixes with Blaser Blasocut BC 20 SW even worse than the Vactra 2. I was just about ready to order some of Blasers way lube... You had to ruin my day, didn't you!

Wow - that's not my experience at all.

I have ran a local oil mixers way lube in my T-51 for pushing 12 yrs. Only lube issue I have ever had was the one time when I busted a line while changing the X axis motor.

They mix their own oils. Way, Hydro, Cutting .. and in many viscosities as well. I got started with them when buying bulk cutting oil. (500 gal) All available in 55 gal drums.

They are in S/C Mich if interested...

http://www.brineroil.com/


Now I wouldn't say that it mixes well with my Trim Sol, but in all fairness - they ARE opposite sides of the spectrum eh?



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Think Snow Eh!
Ox

Holy Crap! I cause misery even when asking a question!
Maybe I should not be surprized when people get pissed about some of my comments.
Sorry about the bad news.

Anyhow, not having any better choice, I'll just put it into the Mini.
It does not have an oil/coolant separator, so I should know the difference soon enough.

Ingersoll had switched to Conoco oils in about 1994. The maintnance guys claimed it wwas better than the mobil oils but I dont have any details. I dont know what coolant they used .
It always takes me more time at the conoco distributor than the mobil place because the guys want to talk and help you get the right stuff. better salesmen maybe?

I have just had a bad experience in our shop with using a way lube other than mobil. A local blender to the milwaukee area, who I was buying from had some issues. The tackifier he was using separated and basically in all of my metering units it turned to tar. I found this out by looking in the bottom of 5 gal. pail of the lubricant that I had and the identical tar was in the bottom of it as was in my meters. So as of right now I am having to change all the meter units on my surface grinders and some of our mills. We are as well mixing marvel mystery oil in with our way lube to help clear things out. The mystery oil has some detergents in it which help clean the systems out.

Here is the latest on Mobil as they constantly keep changing the additives to their way oil and this is why I switched from them in the first place. Pretty much any distributor will agree to this as they get sick of mobil doing this as well.

Vactra 2 and Vactra 4-After the tackifier was taken out of them about 10 years ago or so they have now put a tackifier back in, but it is chemical based to help the oil stick tot he ways. For most CNC machining centers Vactra 2 will do, this is what all of our Mori Seiki's call for.

Vacouline 1409 and 1419-For cast iron to cast iron way ways, old large machine tools. The tackifier in this is the old parrafin(I believe) based which is for heavy duty situations.

Just use caution on the oil you use and saving a buck may not save you a buck in the long run. In addition to changing metering units in my machines I have 1 surface grinder where the lube totally plugged up one of the table ways and now it has to be rescraped.

Use exactly what the mfg. reccommends and even ask questions from time to time.

As far as way lube mixing or not mixing with your coolant-get a skimmer to take any of the tramp oil out of your coolant tank. We have skimmers on all of our CNC machines.

cash said:

As far as way lube mixing or not mixing with your coolant-get a skimmer to take any of the tramp oil out of your coolant tank. We have skimmers on all of our CNC machines.

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Cash


That is the wholy grail concept of this thread. I cannot skim, because roughly 50% of the oil is emulsified in the coolant.
Honestly, not a real issue as to the actual effectiveness of the coolant, but it gets to be a PITA to remove the leftover film from either the part or the machine components.
I was just hoping for a simple solution by changing wayoil, as coolant change is out of the question. Blaser works incredibly well for everything I do, does not stink, does not irritate my skin ( tough to date only the wife's been able to do that ), does not rust components, does not bother paint or seals and lubricates better than the others I or some of the locals have tried.

SeymourDumore said:

I cannot skim, because roughly 50% of the oil is emulsified in the coolant.

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Seymour.

If emulsifying is the problem. You might want to take a look at the Castrol Magna Glide range. I never hear Castrol mentioned on this site as a player in industrial lubes in the US. Its fairly common down here 50% of my customers will be Mobil, 40% Castrol and the rest Fuchs or local blenders.

Back in the mid / late 80’s, the company I did my apprenticeship with where building 3 axis horizontal cells to go on FMS production lines. Mainly for Ford. These where a box section hardened way with Moglice injected liners in the saddles.

A couple of months into production, the slides all come to a screaming halt, over a period of a month or two. Ford also had 20 odd German Heller BEA-2 machines in cells with similar slides. Same thing happened to them. The Germans had to come back out, and we spent weeks of night & day down there backing off gibs and scrapping retainers to free the slides up. This was fairly early days for Moglice slides. These were all running Vactra 2 which was the Ford standard.

The best advice at that time from our Engineers, Fords Engineers, Moglice’s Engineers, & what we heard from Heller it was the Vacta’s ability to emulsify with the coolant. The Moglice would absorb the coolant and expand. On a zero clearance system like, they seized up. And that wasn’t just Mobile’s Vactra, most of the other manufacturers conventional slide oils did the same thing.

The solution was Castrols Magna Glide. 25 years ago I recall that being called Magnaglide DBX 68. Currently its just called Magnaglide D68. Its specifically formulated for plastic slide way systems because it doesn’t emulsify with coolant, and cause those expansion problems.

Its also suited to conventional metal / metal slides. I have customers that use it because they have Moglice machines and run it in every thing else including ball rail slides with out any problems

Link here to a local (Aus) site, where it talks about the formulation, and the de-emulsifying properties.
http://dcproducts.com.au/documents/Magnaglide_D-tds.pdf

I tried looking it up on the US Castrol site. I cant seem to find it. This would be just the plain equivalent to a Vactra / Vaculine. Not even sure if its available over there. All though I doubt that.
http://www.castrol.com/castrol/productdetailmin.do?categoryId=82958756&contentId=6005315

The thing about this stuff is it’s demulsifying. When you pull a gib or a retainer that’s running that lube. The lube oil is still intact. Maybe in globules, but it never mix’s with the coolant. If the wipers are shot, puddles of coolant but also puddles of the oil.

If you do the same thing on a Vactra / Conventional oil slide you always find a milky slurry of oil, water, soluble oil, all mixed together.

I’m not saying this is your solution, just something to consider.

Regards Phil.

I'll second castrol. I use castrol slide oil and soluble coolant in all our machines, the oil just sits nicely on top of the coolant waiting to be skimmed off.

Gregor

I don't know anything about Conoco's way lube, but I use their soluble oil coolant and would strongly recommend anyone who's currently using Mobilmet or any of the other standard soluble oils (not the premiums like Blaser or Hangsterfers) give it a try.

I'd used Mobilmet 122 for a long time, mostly out of convenience since I could pick it up at an oil distriburor's place a block down the street. When petroleum prices jumped way up a while back, I found the Mobilmet was up to about $85 for a 5 gal bucket. Checked around town and found another oil peddler stocked the Conoco at about $60, so I thought I'd try a bucket, since I figured it couldn't have a greater tendency to start stinking than the Mobil had.

I wouldn't go back to the Mobil now even if I had to pay more for the Conoco. It'll outlast the Mobil by 2 or 3 to 1 in the same machines where I used the Mobil before. In a 2R5 Van Norman manual mill I use now and then, I'd quit using any coolant because the Mobil would stink if it sat unused for a couple weeks, and there's no tramp oil at all getting into the sump. Tried the Conoco in it after seeing it was working out well in the CNC stuff, and it can sit for 2 or 3 months unused and the coolant is still fresh as can be.

Neither of these distributors specializes in machining related stuff, and the Mobil distributor doesn't have anyone who could tell you the difference between way lube and jet fuel. But the Conoco distributor's counter man gave me a starting concentration recommendation, cautioned against trying to pour water into concentrate, etc and told me if I had any problems or questions they'd hook me up with a rep who had in-depth knowledge of all their machining related products.

I'd probably switch to Blaser for coolants, but the local distributor doesn't stock any 5 gal buckets, so by the time shipping is added in, its about $150 for 5 gal of the BC20SW. He stocks a full line in 55 gal drums, but it seems like he could pick up a lot of smaller shops by stocking some 5 gal buckets too, since the shipping on those ultimately amounts to about $5/gal when they have to come from the factory one at a time.

We used to use Blaser coolant.
That was until the UK sole dealer couldn't be bothered to investigate why one of our machines coolant went yuck.
Then to add to insults they got greedy and kept on putting the price up.

We have contacts in mainland Europe that pay 30% less than what they charge in the UK, we could even buy it retail price in Italy, pay for it to be put on a pallet and sent over here to the UK and we would still save money.

We now use Master Chemical Trim E905 it dosn't stain areospace aluminium, dosn't go yuck and no skin or smell complaints from my staff. Their rep also comes in every 6 weeks and tests and logs our coolant readings automatically without us even have to ask.

We use a basic standard ISO 68 waylube which costs us under £200/45gal/200L and never had problems with compatability with E905 or machine issues.

machtool said:

Seymour.

The solution was Castrols Magna Glide. 25 years ago I recall that being called Magnaglide DBX 68. Currently its just called Magnaglide D68. Its specifically formulated for plastic slide way systems because it doesn’t emulsify with coolant, and cause those expansion problems.

Its also suited to conventional metal / metal slides. I have customers that use it because they have Moglice machines and run it in every thing else including ball rail slides with out any problems

Link here to a local (Aus) site, where it talks about the formulation, and the de-emulsifying properties.
http://dcproducts.com.au/documents/Magnaglide_D-tds.pdf




The thing about this stuff is it’s demulsifying. When you pull a gib or a retainer that’s running that lube. The lube oil is still intact. Maybe in globules, but it never mix’s with the coolant. If the wipers are shot, puddles of coolant but also puddles of the oil.

Regards Phil.

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Phil,

I am just running out of waylube (Shell Tonna S68) in my Feeler FV-800 VMC. It has box-way Z-axis and preloaded THK Linear Ball guides for X- and Y axis. The OEM recommends the use of Mobil Vactra #2, Shell Tonna T68 and some more similar oils.

I have decided NOT to use any of the Vactra / Vaculine. The Oils I am considering are Shell Tonna S68 (which is the new improved version of the former Tonna T68) and Castrol Magnaglide D68 (which is an enhanced version for ways treated with plastic and it is water repelling). According to the Swedish Castrol office this is the Magnaglide version that gets the highest + marks from the industry as it is really smooth, has the best adhesion to the ways and withstands coolant splash real good.

The "Magnaglide DBX 68" (actually BDX 68 in my catalog) that you referred to above, is actually emulgating with water according to their specs. That is definitely a no-no for me.

After speaking with both the Shell and Castrol engineers, I get the feeling that Castrol Magnaglide D68 would have just a little more edge over Shell Tonna S68 due to its refined smoothness etc.

Correct me if I am wrong. That's Why I write here about it in the first place.

Prices in Sweden:
Castrol Magnaglide D68 cost 125 USD / 20L.
Shell Tonna S68 cost 93 USD / 20L.

Sure, there is a price difference, but if the Magnaglide really is better I don't mind.

I am also trying to select a good coolant for medium to heavy machining in most metals such as Alu., Mild Steel, Tool steel, SS, Yellow metals.

I have selected these different soluble oil candidates to chose from:

Cimcool: Cimperial 821 (Special for Europe I guess)

Shell: Sitala 3401.01

Castrol: Hysol XF

Master Chemical Corp: will decide on their candidate tomorrow after speaking to the Swedish rep. But the possible types are Trim E190, Trim E 705, Trim E 708, Trim E 805, Trim E 905 and Trim E 925.

Blaser: I have excluded that brand since I would have to buy their special 1000 USD mixer in order to mix the oil with the water.

I will also buy a refractometer and a way-oil skimmer to look after my sump.

Comments, prices etc. will follow.


Does anyone know of any issues when using the above way-oils together with any of these coolants?

/Peter

Hi,

One week later (after checking with a couple of users) I made up my mind and bought a 20L pail of Castrol Magnaglide D68 way oil ( 163 USD incl. VAT) and a 20L pail of Master Chemical TRIM E925 coolant (212 USD incl. VAT). I also bought a Master Chemical Refractometer (304 USD incl. VAT) . The users of this coolant says that they have been through a lot of different coolants during the years and finally found this one that performs excellently on most metals and eliminates skin problems encountered with other brands. One of them says that they use Castrol's Magna BD68 (107 USD incl. VAT for a 20L pail) with it and that it separates perfectly. They skim it off the surface each night.

Note! I am not related to any sales organisation of these products. The above is only my own impressions and purchases so far. The future will tell. At least I did check by calling a few reference users.

Way lube (Castrol's flag ship, especially designed for plastic film coated box ways and roumered to have "just a tad" better stick-slip properties than the Magna BD 68, anyone correct me if I am wrong). Nevertheless I will use it with my metal-only vertical box ways and linear X- and Y ways.



Coolant (TRIM E925 may be a "Europe only" flavour)



Refractometer

CNC Viking said:

Castrol Magnaglide D68 way oil ( 163 USD incl. VAT) and a 20L pail of Master Chemical TRIM E925 coolant (212 USD incl. VAT). I also bought a Master Chemical Refractometer (304 USD incl. VAT)

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Holy Geez!

It's either the VAT is 100% or the EU prices are 50% above the US equivalents!

Christ, I think my refractometer is somewhere $150, a 5 al pail of Blaser Swisslube ( arguable one of the more expensive kind) is $120, and a 5gal pail of Conoco is somehere around $90. That is actually quite comparable to the Mobil or Hangsterfer's wayoil price.

And by the way, what is that mixer requirement for the Blaser?
Could be true, but I was never told about it???

Tonna 68

Somebody mentioned Shell Tona 68. I used that stuff about 15 years ago, you could not even find it in your tank because it mixed so well with the coolant. Been using Vactra ever since and I have no idea why someone would pay that much or the same refractometer I bough long ago for just over $100.
Be sure to run fish tank air pumps on all of your coolant tanks along with regular skimming.
We run Blazer 2000 cf, it is good on aluminum but not great on stainless but I really do not need the bug killer.
California is now making you remove your waste oil every 90 days, guess I am going to generate more wast oil to keep up!

LandM-1

Well, thats Europe in a nutshell.

Our VAT is 25% and all manufacturers are sc***ing us left, right and center. It's kinda "take it or leave it" mentality and they all seems to gang up on it.

And then these coolants are "middle price" items. Cimcool and Blaser wants more.

Re. mixer for Blaser: That is what the local agent told me anyway.

Re. Shell Tonna 68: Have not heard that about Tonna 68 before. Which coolant were you using?

I heard the price differences for europe vs US, for goods in general, had to do with the number of middle men who want a cut. Importer, Distributor, Retailer. In the US, a lot of stuff goes direct from manufacturer to seller.

Regarding $304 refractometers. You can buy 10, 18, or 32brix refractometers for around $35. Refractometers are pretty standard stuff used for everything from aquariums to wine making. The range may vary and sometimes the scale calibration (in which case you need a conversion table). www.virtualvillage.com is one source. Make sure you get one with automatic temperature compensation (ATC). Haven't tried one. Easy enough to check the calibration using various dillutions of coolant. Note that all the other crud that gets in the coolant throws the readings off whatever refractometer you use. For around $300 you can get electronic digital ones. The Hanna Checker PH probe is around $40; I have used that, but not for coolant.