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Coolant vs. Lubrication

  • Thread starter atetsade
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atetsade

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hello forum, machinists, techies

I'm starting to question coolants and lubrication properties and what not.

is one coolant,compared to another, going to improve tool life and surface finish so much that it becomes interesting from a production point of view? I don't want to have to switch coolants during changeover.

also, our work is so simple. it is just bar work, all rolled stock no castings.

I personally would rather use a water based coolant because of the fact that it seems cleaner. however, a nice light synthetic called Duracool H from Benz Oil might be cleaner than Ph unbalanced water rotting in the tank.

we're going to be cutting everything from brass to stressproof, stainless steel and aluminum and mild steel. lots of tapping threads, screw machine part kinds of stuff.

any suggestions or opinions on coolant/lubrication would be appreciated. I'm arming myself to the teeth with this information before the machine arrives because we have 100 gallons of oily solvent that someone wants to use. NO.
 
any time you can od turn dry I would do it, coolant always makes a mess. The drilling and tapping need it though. I use a water soluble sythetic. Castrol Clearedge 6519. Blue in color, dilutes 1:20 so a drum lasts a while. does not leave a sticky residue and has good tank life.
 
let me ask you a question, WILLEO6709. if one tool gets pushed back and the next one needs to go in a hole that isn't there, and the tool holder for the boring bar gets shoved back into the turret, bent, burned up, and cycled into this sort of operation about 15 times, is a water soluable basis such as this going to protect my machine tool?
 
The answer is no, but do you think any coolant/oil will help in that scenario? In that situation you will get axis foldback errors when the servo has no more, unless your machine has thrust/hp limits on each tool. Thats just my opinion, I could be wrong.
Leo
 
heh

random question popped into my head there.

I DON'T know. One of my operators likes coolant over oil. the way I see it is, if synthetic oil is going to have high tank life and high use-durability, I prefer it. not only that, a very light oil is probably going to save taps.

all day every day running with minimal changeover is the nature of this business. or at least, it has been that way long enough to anticipate. this lathe will probably make 5000 pc orders out of barstock.

so. probably nothing beats water as a coolant. everyone uses water for everything. I'd be very happy with water in my machine, but what cutting operations are aided by lubrication? the only thing I can think of is tapping. I'm also curious about form-tapping, I might want to use a form tap on that machine.

anyway, thanks for the Castrol formula number, I will definately price it out and see if I can talk to a techie. --Erik
 
I like TRIMSOL soluble coolant, it works really well for cutting any material, not sure of the grade but I can find out for you. As far as form tapping goes it works really good for alu. but if I have to tap 300 stainless I will turn off the coolant and use Moly-dee cutting oil with either form taps or cutting taps. I don't like synthetic coolants due to a few bad experiences with it, either bad skin reactions or it took the paint off the machine or caused the plastic and rubber parts to crack or wrinkle up.
 
Thanks for your advice.

I think we're going to go with a lightweight synthetic oil. our machine will be running parts off of a bar, unattended, and will be tapping in about 50% of the jobs.

I'll make sure to ask them about the rubber and paint and skin reaction. thanks, and sorry to ask stupid questions.
wink.gif
 








 
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