DavidScott
Diamond
- Joined
- Jul 11, 2012
- Location
- Washington
This thread is in response to Dksoba's request for more information about my coolant system from one of my responses in another thread. I think it is worth creating it's own thread so here goes. I made up my own coolant system when I got my Kitamura about 4 years ago. I have a small shop and the coolant tank just didn't fit with that mill in my shop, plus it weighs 500 lbs and holds 80 gallons. The mill had been using straight oil so I would be tossing the first batch or two of coolant early as the oil was getting washed out, plus I am a small home based shop that spends up to 80% of my time working with stone so the machine would be sitting for weeks on end so I wanted a coolant system that used the minimum amount of coolant possible to make replacing it as easy as possible when needed.
The first photo shows the trough used to catch the coolant out of the machine and direct it into the first tank. Big plus over the stock tank is I can stand closer to the machine when changing parts. Nice because the table doesn't come overly close to the door on this mill.
The second photo shows the first tank. It is epoxy coated plywood and was made for my stone coolant system years ago, just being repurposed. I did add a plastic cap through the bottom so the pump sits lower and will pump this tank dry. The chips are caught in a paint strainer to reduce the fines getting to the bag filter.
This is the heart of it all. A 7" diameter x 20" long 5 micron bag filter, draining into a 10 gallon tub with a bubbler and skimmer. It all tucks under the mill nicely with the plywood back flush with the side of the enclosure. Bubbler and skimmer run 15 minutes every 6 hours. The skimmer separator tank needs to have two compartments to do a better job of separating the oil. I am thinking of using a larger diameter tank and just add a divider down the center. Coolant is 7 months old in this photo. I think most of the problem with it is it tries to mix with the way oil instead of rejecting it.
This shows the bubbler and sealless pump. My main concern with the pump was the flow rate, it has to be pretty slow.
This is what the bag looks like when it needs to be changed. It just doesn't flow enough to keep up. Nothing makes it into the final coolant tank. I go with a 5 micron bag because a coarser bag doesn't last any longer so might as well filter down as fine as possible. Bags are $5 and last for months.
Some of these ideas and parts came from me having to make a larger scale coolant filtration system for my stone work. I have to filter the water to sub-micron levels and a lot of the "chips" are under 10 microns. Coolant flow at the spindle is around 5 gpm with two 1/4" locline hoses and 1/4" nozzles. The minimum amount of coolant I need for full flow is 4 gallons with a good filter, I have about 7 gallons in the system in these photos. I do not have any problems with the coolant getting hot while running production for weeks on end, in fact, I don't notice any change in temperature from the beginning to the end of a day running aluminum. Only having to deal with 7 gallons when swapping coolant makes my life a lot easier. I use a concrete mixing tub to evaporate the water off leaving around a pint of ooze to dispose of.
It would be easy to scale this up some if you wanted to but this works just fine. I have gone through many changes solving all of the little problems so everything looks pretty rough. I just never worried about how it looked since I never knew if it would work or not. Next up is a mini chip auger.
The first photo shows the trough used to catch the coolant out of the machine and direct it into the first tank. Big plus over the stock tank is I can stand closer to the machine when changing parts. Nice because the table doesn't come overly close to the door on this mill.
The second photo shows the first tank. It is epoxy coated plywood and was made for my stone coolant system years ago, just being repurposed. I did add a plastic cap through the bottom so the pump sits lower and will pump this tank dry. The chips are caught in a paint strainer to reduce the fines getting to the bag filter.
This is the heart of it all. A 7" diameter x 20" long 5 micron bag filter, draining into a 10 gallon tub with a bubbler and skimmer. It all tucks under the mill nicely with the plywood back flush with the side of the enclosure. Bubbler and skimmer run 15 minutes every 6 hours. The skimmer separator tank needs to have two compartments to do a better job of separating the oil. I am thinking of using a larger diameter tank and just add a divider down the center. Coolant is 7 months old in this photo. I think most of the problem with it is it tries to mix with the way oil instead of rejecting it.
This shows the bubbler and sealless pump. My main concern with the pump was the flow rate, it has to be pretty slow.
This is what the bag looks like when it needs to be changed. It just doesn't flow enough to keep up. Nothing makes it into the final coolant tank. I go with a 5 micron bag because a coarser bag doesn't last any longer so might as well filter down as fine as possible. Bags are $5 and last for months.
Some of these ideas and parts came from me having to make a larger scale coolant filtration system for my stone work. I have to filter the water to sub-micron levels and a lot of the "chips" are under 10 microns. Coolant flow at the spindle is around 5 gpm with two 1/4" locline hoses and 1/4" nozzles. The minimum amount of coolant I need for full flow is 4 gallons with a good filter, I have about 7 gallons in the system in these photos. I do not have any problems with the coolant getting hot while running production for weeks on end, in fact, I don't notice any change in temperature from the beginning to the end of a day running aluminum. Only having to deal with 7 gallons when swapping coolant makes my life a lot easier. I use a concrete mixing tub to evaporate the water off leaving around a pint of ooze to dispose of.
It would be easy to scale this up some if you wanted to but this works just fine. I have gone through many changes solving all of the little problems so everything looks pretty rough. I just never worried about how it looked since I never knew if it would work or not. Next up is a mini chip auger.
