Lubricant for general hobby machining.

[maticulus]

I tried veg oil but I found it caked up to much and formed a hard layer on the lathe , I've been using bacon fat on steel , works good and smells fab

No rust issues so far but mileage may vary


Stu

I've considered this but recall reading that it must be boiled several times in water to remove the salt which can cause rust. Vegetable oil was said to cake up on the lathe after a while and I certainly don't want that problem.

 

[stupoty]

I've considered this but recall reading that it must be boiled several times in water to remove the salt which can cause rust. Vegetable oil was said to cake up on the lathe after a while and I certainly don't want that problem.

My brother has been warning of the rust issues also but so far I haven't had any. I do tend to keep the ways quite oily and give it a wipe down quite regularly.

Been using it as the main cutting lube/coolant for about 6 months now.

Stu

 

[maticulus]

Sadly I think there are few sales support employees that actually know about the equipment they are selling , even the “technical” staff is very limited to a degree.

My brother has been warning of the rust issues also but so far I haven't had any. I do tend to keep the ways quite oily and give it a wipe down quite regularly.

Been using it as the main cutting lube/coolant for about 6 months now.

Stu

6 mo is too early to know for sure what that pig juice is going to do but I think I'll start saving it instead of throwing it away and I'll certainly boil the heck out of it two or three times in a good bit of water to make sure its free of salt. I suppose I could run a continuity test on it with a multimeter and check it against water in theory, to confirm go/nogo.

One things for sure, it'll reduce my carbon footprint by using the oil from my thick sliced Wright Bacon instead of the usual chemicals. It'll lower the price of the bacon indirectly too.

 

[Larry$]

One things for sure, it'll reduce my carbon footprint by using the oil from my thick sliced Wright Bacon

That's as good of an excuse as any to eat more bacon!

 

[Advil]

I'm a big fan of the quart of Variocut C Moly Dee from Castrol. It works exceedingly well for tapping, drilling and cutting and tiny amounts go a really long way. It's sold as a tapping fluid but it's also a top quality drill cutting oil for tough materials. I use it on cobalt HSS drills in titanium and stainless all the time. Works great on aluminum too. It's also a really good cutting oil on the lathe when you don't want to break out the flood coolant. You can brush on very small amounts of it and get good results.

Aluminum, Stainless, Titanium... it just works.

 

[maticulus]

I'm a big fan of the quart of Variocut C Moly Dee from Castrol. It works exceedingly well for tapping, drilling and cutting and tiny amounts go a really long way. It's sold as a tapping fluid but it's also a top quality drill cutting oil for tough materials. I use it on cobalt HSS drills in titanium and stainless all the time. Works great on aluminum too. It's also a really good cutting oil on the lathe when you don't want to break out the flood coolant. You can brush on very small amounts of it and get good results.

Aluminum, Stainless, Titanium... it just works.

I learned the importance of lube on a Titanium shaft I was making for my electric turbo. If it's Ti it better be lubed, even if you think the speed is fine. Odor associated with industrial options was a concern for me until recently, I gave away a brand new bottle of supposedly improved odor tap magic, because I didn't want to "die", or develop a condition that made me wish I was dead from the fumes it was giving off. That's a plus I forgot to mention about the thread cutting product I used from Harbor Freight, it foamed up for a bit and was dense, but it didn't produce much of an odor in the amounts I was using it. I sprayed a little bit of brake fluid in the house and nearly started a war with my wife. It didn't seem like much and then the AC got ahold of it. She raised hell for more than a day. I didn't do that again.

I moved recently and now have a garage, good for me, bad for the machines here in FL coming from a room indoors. It has rained everyday for the past 5 days and the humidity is out of control coupled with the door opening to let more moisture in along with the heat from the car (it's still wet 2 hrs later) after coming home at the end of the day and is quickly creating the perfect storm.

To my shock I saw two small developing rust spots on my like new 6" adjustable PM chuck that seemed to have appeared over a few days and when I remembered how much I paid for it, the spots grew even bigger in my mind. There's also a spot on the edge of the cup area of the mill table.
I'm shopping for a dehumidifier right now.

 

[GT-6 Racer]

Tap magic aluminum can’t be beat for for brush on for all sorts of aluminum work. Tap magic ep-extra by the gallon for everything else that’s not using flood coolant. I like to buy acid brushes by the bag. I avoid their pro-tap as it stains iron and steel.

I very much prefer Relton Rapid tap for hand tapping in steel.

That being said, flood coolant can’t be beat for dimensional control and surface finish. CNC lathe and mill as well as the surface grinder are all flood coolant. Mist coolant is also a big step up from brushing oil. I like cool mist lubricant. Good corrosion control and doesn’t stink. It does leave a sticky film though.

Gojo hand cleaner works great as a grinding lube on the surface grinder especially on aluminum.
All sorts of other things work to some extent. But the commercially available lubricants purpose made are very effective in my experience. The organic stuff like crisco and bacon fat can go rancid and get nasty.

Fluid film for rust prevention. Soak a sponge and keep in a disposable plastic food container. Just clean machine and then wipe down with the sponge. No more rust !

It’s all what works for you.

 

[maticulus]

Fluid film for rust prevention. Soak a sponge and keep in a disposable plastic food container. Just clean machine and then wipe down with the sponge. No more rust !

I'm giving some thought to that but I'm still concerned about the hard to reach areas. My lathe just turned 2 yrs old and a few months back something I did at some point followed by routine point oiling released some rust from beneath the carriage/saddle onto one of the ways. It apparently arrived with that condition as it was indoors at the time.

The dehumidifier arrived in 24 hrs and I put it to work in the garage right away after a call to customer service regarding the condition it arrived in, with a torn box, barely keeping the contents together and appearing to have been dropped, concerning for a possible future refrigerant leak.

The humidity level was 77% in the garage, I set the machine to about 45% and collected a gallon of water in 12 hrs and that was on a dry day yesterday, I believe that's quite a bit. I'm still planning to return it and wait until the Thanksgiving sale and walk in and pick up something equal or better in quality for the same price before they get a chance to drop it.

 

[B2]

It seems there is a magic lubricant and coolant for every everyone! One might ask what are the scientific purpose of these ... from a physics stand point. My perspective is that the main reason for using these is to protect and extend tool life, but since the work piece gets hot and this heat also transferred to the tool cutting edge.

So for me the lubricant is to help to keep the work material from sticking to (transferring to) the tool, or reverse, and more importantly to reduce the friction between tool and work when the tool is not cutting but just rubbing. Coolant is just that, keep everything cooler so there is less wear. It is obvious that if a cutting tool gets hot enough the surface can approach the melting point, but even just a little heat tends to soften the tool surface resulting in removing layers and destroying the sharpness. The best coolant is one which has a large heat latency as oppose to just having a heat capacity. Water would be great if it does not cause rust. This is because it takes the heat of latency to go through 100C temperature point and evaporate (boil) away. The best part of water it is human compatible (non-toxic), where as some of the expensive coolant/lubricants you can buy causes a vapor (choking smoke) that will drive you right out of the room. However, they too seem to be built around having a heat of latency not just heat capacity.

Years ago I learned of a manufacturing process used to mold certain glass materials to final shape using Carbide molds. A piece of glass of the correct volume was inserted into the mold, the materials were heated until the glass was soft and then pressure was applied to form the final shape. This worked fine a few times and then the glass would react with the SiC mold surface and would stick to the surface. Removing it left the mold surface with pullouts and the sticking got worst. So the expensive molds did not last long! So naturally, folks started applying lubricants to try to prevent this. Since nothing worked very well, desperation drove some workers to even try the greasy surfaces that were in the lunch box! The cheese wrappers worked a little, but so did nose oil! (I am not recommending that you rub your cutting tools on your nose! )

In the end, the solution was to remove the Oxygen from the system and to use no lubricants or other contaminates! The molds and glass were evacuated, back flushed with Nitrogen, until the Oxygen was removed from the volume and surfaces and then the hot surfaces, and then the pressure was applied. The volume and surfaces were cooled with Nitrogen, and then the molded glass could be easily removed. This became a manufacturing process where the molds lasted for thousands of times.

So it probably makes sense that oxidation could also play a role in tool wear in the cutting process. Likewise, hardness and toughness are important, but the melting temperature difference between material to be cut and the cutter material plays a big role in how long the cutting edge will last.

 

[maticulus]

It seems there is a magic lubricant and coolant for every everyone! One might ask what are the scientific purpose of these ... from a physics stand point. My perspective is that the main reason for using these is to protect and extend tool life, but since the work piece gets hot and this heat also transferred to the tool cutting edge.

My curiosity remains with which is the better of the two I'm using, given the clear effect on the chip character and at the moment I believe it is the WD40 as a result of the considerably long spirals that developed in response to its application. It suggests to me the cutting action improved in efficiency and cut continuously without a break until the flapping length of metal caused the break.