Hi adh2000:
You wrote:
"Why do you think EDM oil is safer than transformer oil?"
You make a good point, and of course the answer is "I cannot make the claim with any certainty whatsoever".
However, there is a liability issue here too, (as well as an economic one).
Transformer oil is not supposed to be subjected to constant arcing as part of its function.
So it's been formulated with other objectives in mind as johansen points out, and decomposing it by subjecting it to continuous arcing and the
risk of the decomposition products being toxic are forseeable, even if we don't know they actually occur.
So if you hire someone to run your machine and you've filled it with a non-approved dielectric and your employee is harmed and he sues, you are royally fucked.
Likely he will not even have to prove the oil caused harm...the onus will likely be on you to prove it did not.
Suppose you have a fire and the fire is determined to have originated at the sinker.
How likely is it, do you suppose, that your insurance will pay out your claim and that of the neighbour who's place you also burned down as soon as the insurance company finds out the dielectric in your worktank was not approved for the purpose you used it for?
For better or worse, this is the world we live in, so the risk is high and the reward is small.
Never mind the fact that the economic risk is high too.
Suppose the transformer oil doesn't work out, and you have to clean out the machine and replace it with proper dielectric.
Just the time it takes to thoroughly clean the system is going to cost more than the price of the oil, never mind you bought unusable oil, and then you had to buy solvent to wash it out, buy the proper oil and dispose of the scrap oil and the contaminated solvent.
If you struggle along with inferior oil and your machine burns 25% slower because of it, that has a cost too.
Don't forget, the EDM dielectric is formulated specifically for the things you are asking it to do, and those things are completely different than what you ask a transformer oil to do, so the chances are very high your machine's performance will suffer...how much is anyone's guess but it's expensive to find out.
Last, synthetic dielectric oils for sinker EDM have been around for a while now; at least 20 years.
In that time they've been used for die sinking in a gazillion shops and have a pretty long history of use.
It's a reasonable bet, in this much more litigious climate, that they would be less willing and able to just sweep the whole problem under the rug like Monsanto did from the 1930's to the 1970's with PCB's in transformers and fluorescent light ballasts.
So no, I can't claim EDM oil is safe and transformer oil is not, but I think the balance of probabilities works in favour of avoiding the experiment.
Cheers
Marcus
Implant Mechanix • Design & Innovation > HOME
www.vancouverwireedm.com