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- Nov 27, 2012
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Lathe fire? Story!
Ray
I suppose lathe fire does sound extreme. It's happened to me only twice now but that's enough to remember. Not actually a fury of fire & no real damage to the lathe other than minor discoloring to the paint. Ti chips are flamable, thinner the swarf, the easier it combusts just as steel wool burns. But Ti burns very white & bright, too bright to look at!
I forget exactly how it happened the first time & I don't plan on trying to find out how to duplicate it. But I remember turning some Ti at probably too high of SFM, saw some very minor sparks but did not think anything of it. Well one of those sparks fell onto the swarf below & a pile ignited. Definitely got my attention real fast!
Second time when I was making the Ti ferro rod holders below. I've made a number of them before without an issue but one time I was facing the ferro rod which sparks very easy if the SFM is too high. Again the sparks fell on a bundle of Ti swarf on the chip pan & boom, bright white light! Ferro sparks like hell so now I flood it with lube when cutting to prevent ignition.
I wish I had a pull out chip pan, I hate when there is long stringy swarf that gets caught & creates a bird nest & is why I take the time to get rid of it when needed. But with the Ti, it's the fine stuff that scares me of igniting, not because of bird nesting.
Hasn't happened to me in a while as I learned what not to do but I always have those memories. Pros may know what they're doing to avoid stuff like this but I learn the hard way. )
EDIT: This past weekend I had some more Ti chips ignite. If the spindle speeds are on the slow side & I feed to fast/hard I can get a familiar distrinctive sound followed by sparks flying. This time I was boring 4" in depth had had sparks fly out the bore. It was a sight to see but nothing that alarmed me. First time I had sparks shooting out of a bore thow.
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