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alternatives to flood coolant

scudzuki

Stainless
Joined
Aug 6, 2008
Location
SouthEastern Pennsylvania
I have a 20 year old Arrow 500 that I use maybe half a dozen times a year in my home workshop.
I've had the same batch of Trim Sol E206 in the sumps for 8 years since I built my detached shop and moved the machine in.
When I filled the sumps I put in a large aquarium air pump running one airstone in each of the 2 sumps with a big machine nut looped onto each line to keep the airstone submerged.
Over the years I've had to add water to replace the evaporate at least once a year. I mixed the replacement water in a bucket with fluid from the sumps. The coolant never got rancid or smelled so I thought it was okay for the few times a year I fired up the machine to make parts for my other hobbies.
I recently drained the sumps and found an 1/8" coating of something with the consistency of grease on the side walls and more on the bottom. The consistency of the goo is grease like, and thankfully it plugged the hole that developed on the bottom of the right sump. Whether the goo is oil separated from the coolant or tramp grease from the way lube system or a combination of both is immaterial; it's a mess and difficult to clean off in the cramped space of my packed to capacity 500 square foot shop. Were I to fix the hole(s), I'd want to do it right, which would not be cheap; stripping and welding then completely refinishing both sumps CORRECTLY is beyond my capabilities. On a side note, I believe the hole in the right sump to be a result of the machine nut I put on the air line to hold the airstone down... whoops.
I'd like to avoid the mistakes of the past, so I think that for my low production needs, either a mist coolant or micro drop lube system makes more sense than fixing the leak(s) in the sumps, then dealing with maintenance and disposal of 40 gallons of flood coolant (on a more frequent timeline) to me. Another benefit is the mist or micro drop system could be moved to my manual lathe or mill if needed.
I've used both micro drop and mist cooling systems in the past. Mist would be cheaper to get into but I'm not really into huffing the fog that it creates and getting a vacuum hood drives the cost and noise factor up considerably.
I've only been able to find micro drop systems made by Trico and they're pretty expensive, but they are much easier on the respiratory system than mist systems in my 20 year old recollection of using both.

Any relevant experience PM members can provide to help me decide which way to go would be helpful.

Thanks.

Joe
 
I've separated my shop from my garage with a 2x4 framed dry wall wall. On the garage side I have a wet/dry shop vac. I run the hose through a 2 1/2" dia. hole in the wall closest to my working area. It's dual purpose. Collects the chips from my drilling and sucks the extra vapors from my mist cooler. And being on other side of wall the noise is minimal. I've found the more expensive mist cooler works best. The cheap ones you need way to much air pressure that pump out excessive amounts of coolant you don't want to waste. Another option would be attached a furnace filter to a box fan.

Sent from my SM-G950U using Tapatalk
 
You could fill the tank with straight cutting oil.
It won't go rancid in our lifetimes...

Or - since you don't run it much, you could just treat it like the boring mill or Bridgeport, and just keep a dip cup and squirt bottle of oil handy, and a mist spray bottle of WD40 as well.


I don't think I want anything to doo with mist.

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Think Snow Eh!
Ox
 
I had to repair nearly a dozen holes rusted thru the bottom of the coolant tank on my ATW, in addition to cleaning off the 10,000 year old dried coolant all over the machine. I wonder what the prev owners were doing with the machine- something classy like a cement mixing tub on the floor under the sump to catch all the drainage, with an aquarium pump up to the workpiece?

The spray off the chuck needs containing but I sure like cutting oil instead...
 
It pisses me off that the OEM's can't be bothered to construct their coolant tanks out of SS!
The labor is all the same, just $200 more for the much better material - come on!


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Think Snow Eh!
Ox
 
It pisses me off that the OEM's can't be bothered to construct their coolant tanks out of SS!
The labor is all the same, just $200 more for the much better material - come on!


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Think Snow Eh!
Ox

My sentiments exactly.
In this case, I'm pretty sure the hole is my fault, though.
There are areas in the sump with exposed steel and there's no rust or corrosion, the E206 and conditions preserved the tanks quite well. Instead there's an irregularly shaped hole about 1/8" in diameter straight through. Some sort of electrolytic action between the nut and tank?

Joe
 
I've got multiple tanks with holes.
I don't keep nuts in mine, at least not on porpoise.

I have even had the bottom of a mineral spirits washer rott out!
Apparently a wee bit of water got in there at some point and found it's way to the bottom and slowly worked on it....

I have a 25K# lathe that I need to pick up some day soon and slip a drip pan under as the tank on that leaks. Sometimes up to 50 gal / day.... what a &^%$! mess!


Now - with that said - it's the messiest machines that turn into the cleanest once I put a pan under them. But slipping a pan under this heifer aint gunna be easy!



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Think Snow Eh!
Ox
 
I've got multiple tanks with holes.
I don't keep nuts in mine, at least not on porpoise.

I have even had the bottom of a mineral spirits washer rott out!
Apparently a wee bit of water got in there at some point and found it's way to the bottom and slowly worked on it....

I have a 25K# lathe that I need to pick up some day soon and slip a drip pan under as the tank on that leaks. Sometimes up to 50 gal / day.... what a &^%$! mess!


Now - with that said - it's the messiest machines that turn into the cleanest once I put a pan under them. But slipping a pan under this heifer aint gunna be easy!



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Think Snow Eh!
Ox

You've always got the best stories, Ox.

Joe
 
I've got multiple tanks with holes.
I don't keep nuts in mine, at least not on porpoise.

I have even had the bottom of a mineral spirits washer rott out!
Apparently a wee bit of water got in there at some point and found it's way to the bottom and slowly worked on it....

I have a 25K# lathe that I need to pick up some day soon and slip a drip pan under as the tank on that leaks. Sometimes up to 50 gal / day.... what a &^%$! mess!


Now - with that said - it's the messiest machines that turn into the cleanest once I put a pan under them. But slipping a pan under this heifer aint gunna be easy!



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Think Snow Eh!
Ox

And, it's your inspiration that lets me text message people with words like yer and gunna. Keeps them on their toes.
 
But slipping a pan under this heifer aint gunna be easy!

"A" pan, as in one monolithic, single unit. Hell no.

"Several" modular ones? MUCH easier.

Bend-up sheet metal, get 'em placed, drop a U-channel atop the adjacent top edges so nuthin' goes down between. Channel need not be metal.

Some sections stay dry. Some get slowly filled. Some get LOTS of liquid and tramp chips?

So what?

Police 'em out according to the need.

Fluid ain't all over the floor any longer.
 
Last edited:
It pisses me off that the OEM's can't be bothered to construct their coolant tanks out of SS!
The labor is all the same, just $200 more for the much better material - come on!
Ml

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Think Snow Eh!
Ox

My thoughts exactly !
 
There are areas in the sump with exposed steel and there's no rust or corrosion, the E206 and conditions preserved the tanks quite well. Instead there's an irregularly shaped hole about 1/8" in diameter straight through. Some sort of electrolytic action between the nut and tank?

Joe

Can you sandwich a pair of rubber washers (worshers :) ) between steel washers with a bolt through that hole, if you make it a little bigger? I recently fixed a poly barrel on a heated washer that way, took 4 rubber washers total, because the poly wouldn't hold any glue I knew of. Or use a carriagebolt and one rubber washer. If the hole is really small, try one of those fixit screws they sell at farm stores for water tanks. I used one on an air compressor. On RV holding tanks they stick a wellnut in the hole and tighten it up.
 
Can you sandwich a pair of rubber washers (worshers :) ) between steel washers with a bolt through that hole, if you make it a little bigger? I recently fixed a poly barrel on a heated washer that way, took 4 rubber washers total, because the poly wouldn't hold any glue I knew of. Or use a carriagebolt and one rubber washer. If the hole is really small, try one of those fixit screws they sell at farm stores for water tanks. I used one on an air compressor. On RV holding tanks they stick a wellnut in the hole and tighten it up.

Yes I could, but I don't want the hassle of maintaining and ultimately disposing of and replacing flood coolant anymore.

Thanks
Joe
 
Acculubes work well on lower powered cuts. All depends on what you want to do, if you want to hall ass like that thing is capable of you probably need flood. if your only doing manual Bridgeport kinda power (think sub 3hp cuts) - style cutting, then the micro drop type solutions work well.

if your carveing 1lb pieces out of 30lb blocks, then its a diffrent story.

I have been no flood here for over a decade now, i very much like it that way, the mess is still messy, but its dry and easy to sweep up.
 
I use a Trico micro-drop on my partially-enclosed Fadal. It works fine for most of my work, using HSM-style toolpaths in mostly 1018 and 6061. I adjust the coolant/air mix rich for alu and way lean, almost pure air blast, for steel. I don't do a lot of heavy roughing or slotting. I'm doing mostly very short run/prototype stuff and not trying to run my tools as fast as possible, in which case I could see flood coolant being more useful.


I do wish I had gotten the two-nozzle, solenoid controlled version. Repositioning the nozzle everytime you change to a longer or shorter tool gets old and with one nozzle there is also the potential of having "shadows" in a part where the coolant spray is blocked.
 
I built my own MQL style system years ago, works great and I don't have to clean up a sump. Most of the liquid evaporates off the chips and I wipe a tiny bit off the parts when they come out of the vise. I put instructions on how I built it on Dropbox:

Dropbox - MQL sprayer.pdf
 








 
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