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Coldsaw coolant/lubrication

SeymourDumore

Diamond
Joined
Aug 2, 2005
Location
CT
Guys, Dumb Question Time!

I have an older Bewo coldsaw which I use quite in-frequently, but when I need it I need it.
It has a built-in tank half full of ancient cutting oil and no drain.
All the stuff is just recirculated, and it is probably quite dirty with ... well from whatever it was used to cut God only knows how long ago.
Ergo: It stinks to high heaven, is a PITA to clean off the parts and of course the smoke is quite annoying.

Anyway.
I am about to give this machine some attention.
Planning to give a thorough tank cleaning, add a drain, proper recirculation with a filter of some sorts, and hope to convert it to a water soluble coolant,
preferrably to the same one I use in everything else.

Question: With all HSS saw blades, will the water based coolant be sufficient, or should I stay with oil instead?
And, if the answer is to stick with Oil, does anyone have any recommendation for what kind/brand of oil?

The materials I cut are primarily steel tubing or angles, but sometimes I use it to cut stainless bars to 3-4' lengths or to trim-off various milled/turned features.

Thank You
 
went from band-aide (lennox) and ok, to val-cool. Better sound, but stinks fresh and over time made fingernails bleed. Switched to GreenCut, better cuts, no stink, hands do not even feel like coolant touched them, welds over better than others. Also run faster now, blade life about the same number of cuts.
It will not work on AL at all, it seems to almost promote AL weld to gullets.
 
that is the stuff. Use it on scotchman cold saw, a little hot on mix because as you can tell it is a pita to deal with coolant other than topping off, and even that is not super friendly. Changed over band saw #1 and 2 recently to it and it is slightly better than band-aid. It cost more than lennox.
hot to ensure no stink, rust issues. running 15/20 to 1, band saws and drill 35/40 to 1.
 
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I run the same coolant in my saws as I run in the mill and the lathe.

The band saw and the manual cold saw (Doringer D350) are flood, and I run it rich in those machines. Cutting steel, stainless, and aluminum. Solids or shapes. Works great.

The big cold saw (Kalamazoo) is just for extrusions, I use a Kool-Mist nozzle on each side of the blade. Drill press, Bridgeport also use Kool-Mist. Same coolant, same concentration (8%) as in the CNC's.
 
I gave away 2 brand new sets of Cool Mist kits ( and I DO mean brand new, virgin sets ).
Instead I use the Fog Buster from Hench Manufacturing on the Milltronics, Bridgeport, Hardinge and ... well pretty much everything manual.

On the cold saw though, I'd like to wash away the chips and the HSS blade really wants to be cool when cutting solids.

In the Amada bandsaw, I do use the same coolant as everything else though.
Works well, and I always have a spare 55 Gallon drum on hand.
Hoping to do the same on the coldsaw....
 
If you find another cool mist let me know. I am sponsoring the new (old, used) Bridgeport someone donated to the Museum. I ran out of fun coupons after dro, collets, hold downs, and a few dozen miscellaneous end mills.
The cold saw does like fluid. I forked the coolant with a copper tube to slather both sides of the blade, the original tube was intended to wash the middle- if I hit it during blade change it was always off aim. Being way up in guards kind of a guess with screw driver shaped alignment tool to get right.
 
If you mean to ask if I have one more Cool Mist unit here, the answer is yes.
It has been used once or twice, but otherwise almost new.
Do I want to keep it? Nope!
 
I ran an older Thomas cold saw for some time using soluble oil. That machine has one lever which you can pull and then you can rotate the chuck to effect a differnt cut angle. When it's clean and freshly oiled, this all works with one finger. After I would use soluble oil, the coolant would get under the sliding members and then evaporate, effectively gluing things together. The only way to recover was to liberally apply penetrating oil and keep working the lever and pulling and pushing and eventually everything would loosen up.

Not happy, I switched to 100% cutting oil. It was stinky and dried brown messes everywhere, but the sliding surfaces didn't get stuck.

My conclusion is be very judicious about using soluble oil.

metalmagpie
 
I have been running my cold saw since 1992 with soluble cold saw coolant I buy in 5 gallon buckets from Haberle or lately, I think, Quinn. Cut it 10 or 15 to 1 with water, and it doesnt stink, and works fine, easy to clean off, and doesnt impede welding. It does make the table harder to swivel, as Grant said- but I clean the saw once or twice a year, swivel it a few times and oil the table, and it seems a pretty decent compromise over the mess of cutting oil.
I use a different coolant for bandsaws, punchease for the ironworker, and a variety of other lubes and coolants for the lathe and mill- I dont mind stocking a few different things if they prove to me they work better.
 
Though I didn't think of the table swivel issue, but I don't believe it will be a problem.
The coolant I use throughout the shop is Tech Cool 35035 from Chemetall, and it has solved all of my coolant related problems.

It does not promote rust, does not dry sticky, it kills bacteria ( and I mean actually kills it ) and the smell is quite pleasant. ( did think about trying it in my coffee as well ;) )
Works well with all other operations, let it be flood, spray or just brush-on.
I wouldn't mind stocking various coolants per se, but I also know it's just a matter of time before one of the guys here 'd go Ooops!

My primary concern was that in all coldsaw applications I've seen, oil was used as the lubrication.
Sounds like solubles are also acceptable and I just don't get out much.

Thank You!
 
I use soluble oil in both my cold saws and they see quite a bit of regular use.
I was recently quite amazed at the blade life when cutting some parts for a big job. I was gang cutting five pieces of 3/8” x 2” flat bar, on edge. I cut up about 75 bars of material into 1400 parts and the blade was still going strong. Quite amazing since it was only an 11” blade with a 12mm pitch which means not a lot of teeth!
I think the lube part is less important than the cool part of coolant.

On another note I was getting some foaming problems a few months ago and after some research decided that my coolant was getting to concentrated, added some thinner coolant and the problems went away.
 








 
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