coolant/lube

savarin

savarin

Active User
H-M Supporter Gold Member
Hi all,
raw newb here.
So far all my tooling is carbide inserts and I believe they do not require coolant (called suds when I was in high school)
A lot of my work will be in aluminium and before I owned a lathe I used wd40 for tapping and cutting, even flooding a magicut file with it when filing aluminium.
I found it to work very well.
Would there be any detrimental effects using it for cutting with these tools or is it a waste.
I have a windscreen washer unit I am converting to a coolant/lube supply.
Thanks
Charles
 
In my shop, I dry cut with carbide on the lathe. On the mill, for HHS or carbide endmills, I use spray mist, when it works, and or cutting oil. Face milling or fly cutting on the mill, dry. Drilling/tapping my favorite cutting fluid.
My favorite cutting fluids include TapMagic, Cooltool, Tapfree (which I like very much). WD-40 is banned from my shop! I may get a can to use on aluminum if a need comes up. I don't cut much aluminum in my shop.
 
4gsr said:
In my shop, I dry cut with carbide on the lathe. On the mill, for HHS or carbide endmills, I use spray mist, when it works, and or cutting oil. Face milling or fly cutting on the mill, dry. Drilling/tapping my favorite cutting fluid.
My favorite cutting fluids include TapMagic, Cooltool, Tapfree (which I like very much). WD-40 is banned from my shop! I may get a can to use on aluminum if a need comes up. I don't cut much aluminum in my shop.
Click to expand...

Hi Ken,
I liked tap magic but the cost is a bit much for anything other than threading.
May I ask why wd40 is banned from your shop?
I ask because I've noticed many Americans stating this but no one give a reason.
Thanks
Charles
 
Charles,

The reason I don't have WD-40 in my shop, I found out about 15 years ago why things were turning brown. It was caused from trying to use WD-40 to prevent rust. WD-40 was causing things to turn brown, which was fine film of "rust". I now use Starrett M-1 or typical hydraulic oil on my machines, or LPS-1, or LPS-3 for long term storage.

Also, for general cutting, WD-40 doesn't work very good. It does work great for aluminum cutting.

If you can find Tapfree in your neighborhood, it is about a dollar cheaper than Tapmagic. I also use a couple of the cutting oils out there for hole drilling on the mill and lathe, and some tapping.
 
If you are on a manual machine, you can get away with a spritz of WD-40 here and there to improve surface finish, and prevent a built up edge. I used to use some water based coolant in a spray bottle too, and that worked pretty well. With carbide tools you need to be careful; with heavy cuts (hot cuts) you either want heavy coolant, or no coolant. Spritzing a hot carbide cutter is going to cause stress cracks on the cutting edges due to the rapid changes in temperature.

I also highly recommend building a "fogbuster" clone. I built one a couple months ago. They generate an air blast with a very fine spray of coolant. The air blast moves chips (improved surface finish, less broken cutters), and adds just enough coolant to prevent a built up edge on aluminum.

Here is the pic of the one I built. The body is a piece of acrylic I had lying around. There are two needle valves, one for air flow, and the other for coolant. I found that having 2 gives the best adjustment of the coolant stream. The whole thing runs at about 10psi. I put everything together including the coolant tank (not pictured), regulator, and fittings, for about $80US.

IMG_20120708_220433.jpg
 
DMS,
That is one slick mister. Does it do continous or pulsed coolant? Did you mill the lexan block yourself or have it made? I also see that very very nice GMT vice in the background. and collet system on the mill. Nice looking set up all around.
Bob
 
Rbeckett said:
DMS,
That is one slick mister. Does it do continous or pulsed coolant? Did you mill the lexan block yourself or have it made? I also see that very very nice GMT vice in the background. and collet system on the mill. Nice looking set up all around.
Bob
Click to expand...

What Bob said! :biggrin: I wouldn't mind seeing some more detail on your "fogbuster" as I have been looking at those for myself.

Thanks,

-Ron
 
now that looks a cracker. Wouldnt mind seeing some more detail myself before I start my drip/flood feeder.
 
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