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Coolant reuse/recycle

BSCustoms

Cast Iron
Joined
Dec 29, 2014
Location
WA
Our shop is in the middle of an ongoing significant discussion regarding the use and maintenance of our coolant.

We are a very large machine shop with every variety of machine tool a shop should have. We have a few hundred employees and a designated "coolant team".

The discussion we are currently in is the "team" has been trying to sway us from using HOCUT 795 to Castrol syntilo 9913/9918. Most all of the employees enjoy the houct over the syntilo, ill try to lay out my understanding of the general opinions.

Hocut:
works great as intended for all materials.
minimal evaporation so rarely need to top off.
some individuals complain of skin iritations if coolant is not properly maintained.
Coolant does seem to go bad if left in unused machines for long periods. (some machines will sit for months with no use)
There is little to no residue or rusting of parts.
Machines show no "wear" from use.

Synitlo:
works well as a coolant.
we experience extreme atomization and not all machines are equipped with mistbusters, so topping off can be as much as 10 gallons per machine per shift.
same skin irritations if not properly maintained.
coolant works well when sitting idle for long periods.
parts rust and corrode frequently if concentration is not maintained well, which can be difficult with the amount of evaporation/atomization happening.
when the concentration gets too high it is stripping the paint and seals off of the entire machine. We have two same era machines that were on hocut, one was switched to syntilo and within a month looked 10 years older.

I am not sold that Hocut is the perfect coolant to use but I feel its the better of the two. I am not sure why we cant try other more known coolants this is something I am working on. I find it strange that there are few people running syntilo in the real world.

One item I think is a huge challenge is the coolant teams attempt at recycling our coolant for cost savings. It seems most shops just cycle out the bad and put in fresh. Our team is attempting to reuse bad coolant with just agitation and skimmers.


To me it seems the emulsified will handle the poorer care and set up better than a synthetic as far as water condition, tramp oil removal and lack of machines with a mist catch system.

I am looking for general input to bring to the table regarding emulsified vs synthetic and the criticality of maintaining each in a certain way. which might work best with less than ideal maintenance. And also on the recycle side of things, what is needed to produce true "clean" coolant that has been used but gone through the right treatment process.

Thank you.
 
I don't have much to offer but look forward to hearing replies. We are a small shop 8 lathes and mills using Rustlick ws 5050 for years and it's time for something new. Considering Hocut among others. Not looking forward to the down time and cleaning before change over but it's time we moved on.

Make Chips Boys !

Ron
 
If the shop is not on a central coolant system, pick & choose what each machine gets.
 
I don't see a single reason listed to switch to Castrol. Talk to your coolant team again and get the reasons they want to switch and add them to the discussion. If the reason to switch don't add up, there may be another reason. Such things as the company rep buying more lap dances sell lots of different products.
 
You are a fairly large shop. Any coolant rep worth his salt will set you up with a trial. We have tried several different coolants over the years, and have gotten great help from different companies in our search. They should be willing to help you properly clean and prepare a machine for a fresh charge. They should be willing to make regular shop calls to collect and send to their labs samples. Look at all aspects, especially the quality of your water. Are you cutting titanium? If so, that is a challenge in itself, as it tends to make the coolant demulsify, or "break". The issue of dermatitis is generally controllable through regular coolant maintenance. There are companies that make equipment for filtering and pasteurizing used coolant to help extend its life. It is amazing how much it helps to simply make sure the material that is being machined is clean and free of contaminants. If your machines leak a lot of machine fluids into the coolant, the life is can be substantially reduced.
 
If coolant irritates skin, it is irritating innards too. skin is extremely strong compared to innards. Those msds sheets actually mean something after you turn 30. Knowing that it is harmful and not suppling ppe to workers is questionable, in this day and age you do not need toxic coolants - minus some extreme exotics. Balaigh sells safe coolant now, it is mainstream.
 
+ 10 on HoCut
Been using it for 2 years
Easy and quick to blow parts,,that right there saves hours and hours over the course of a year
Can' think of any negatives
 
Well our biggest problem is that we are government so getting new things in to "try" is very difficult. especially with hazmat type stuff.

Some of the reasons the coolant team is pushing the syntilo is for cost. The write up they did is heavily biased towards the Castrol so I don't really believe the metrics they are reporting.

We are trying to push to have separate control over our own coolant, not great progress thus far.

Thank you guys for the input so far.
 
Does anyone in this FORUM know of a company or service that performs an audit on the coolant HEALTH in a your shop. They are totally UNBIASED, and have no affiliation with anyone like CASTROL or any other companies that sell machine coolant?
 








 
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