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 Flood or Mist Coolant
Machining with manual machines, which is the preferred coolant
among members here? I don't see a lot of flood coolants and only
occasionally mist coolant.
Seems most just brush or drip on some cutting oil or their coolant of
choice. I guess they all cool and lubricate but which is preferred. I'm
talking manual machines.
Was in an old machinist shop today and he was using Kool Mist and says
that's all he uses, lathe, mill, drill, tap, bore. He's happy with it
and I'll admit he produced
beautiful finishes. What do you think of Kool Mist?
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I use mist on my manual machines if I need cooling when turning or
to clear chips when milling. Using it can visibly improve finishes in
some milling operations. Sometimes just use the blast of air to clear
chips and do not turn on the liquid. When parting stainless, especially
if leaving a thin wafer of material it does a nice job of cooling and
lubing the cut. If turning tool steel and taking a decent cut with HSS I
can cut much faster using the mist than I can cut dry. And using
carbide cutting tool steels and stainless, I can cut faster with less
heating of the part and longer cutter life with mist. Most of the time I
just cut dry on 12L14 and aluminum. If grinding to a knife edge it
prevents bluing/burning the edge of the material. When sawing, it is
helpful to direct the mist on the blade as it exits the cut. Some of
the coolant makes it around the circuit of the blade to lube the cut and
the blast of air blows the swarf out of the gullets of the blade.
In other words, for me, it is nice to have and economical to use.
Flood coolant would be more effective but generally a mess so I do not
use it. Might want it if I were really pushing for maximum production,
but that is not an issue in my shop. Most likely would be running CNC
with enclosed machines if production were a factor and then flood would
be essential.
I am sure there will be a a lot of pros and cons we'll see in subsequent posts in this thread. But the mist works for me.
Denis
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Search on Trico micro drop and Acculube in this forum and you'll
hit some useful discussion on "micro drop" lube systems. They use an air
blast with micro drops of an oil based lube but the don't make any mist
at all so they don't foul the air at all. They're not cheap but they
work pretty well on mills and lathes up to 3HP or so.
Paul T.
Valve and Chassis Spring Tester Home Page - Power Technology Valve and Chassis Spring Tools
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I had flood coolant on my little cnc mill but have recently changed
to airblast or mist. I typically work in plastic or aluminum and have
found the flood to be more trouble than its worth for the materials I
work with. I would think it would be the same for you if your cutting
something like titanium all the time you might want flood since its hard
to get the heat out of the cut. But if you just doing general machining
in standard 1018 or 6061 AL then air with a quick mist here and there
might be all you ever need.
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To all of you who have used misters, I have an application
question. If I were to attach a 48" long 3/16" ID steel tube to the
nozzle on a system like the Kool Mist, would a useable amount of mist
make it to the end of the tube? The setup would prevent me from moving
the nozzle to the end of the tube, because it holds a widget that needs
the mist for a cutting application. I called Kool Mist and asked, but
the lady there just gave me a canned answer that sounded like it was
read from a sales sheet.
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In my bandsaw, I'm currently using mist coolant. Less mess,
effective. In whatever machine you have, I guess kool mist will work
best.
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I like the concept of a mister but the one we have at work seems to
fill the air with coolant. breathing that is not worth it. I have hoses
hooked up to the ends of my bridgeport that go into a bucket to catch
all the coolant I use. I typically use a 20 oz with a small hole in the
cap. I spray it onto the cutter as needed. when tapping or reaming I use
cutting oil from an acid brush. air is effective for some apps too,
such as pockets and anywhere the chips can not be pushed away from.
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James, no is the answer. The air/coolant mix happens right at the
tip. sure you can add a hose but it will not be a fine mist, more like
air and large droplets. But you can get a longer hose from them or get
creative with tubing and fittings from McMaster of Small Parts inc. I
modified a system for our Haas GR510 to use the existing coolant line as
the air line with a 1/4" Line-Lok nozzle, works great!
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mo841, yep, I hate the water based systems for that, nasty sticky
residue as well. You can also get too much oil and smoke from the Micro
drop and Unist [my favorite] if they are not adjusted right, some
operators do not get the idea or are too lazy to read the instructions.
We have machined almost daily for three years and have only used one and
a half gallons of coolant and some of that got spilled!
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