Coolant pump

I have home brews on all my machine tools. Just a simple resivoir, small pump and lines. No "filter" per se is used, just a chip basket on the return side where it empties into the resivoir, and I have a large magnet inside as well. Best to have the resivoir split into two seperate sections, one that the return fluid goes into and then runs throuh some holes in the baffle to get to the other section where the pump pickup is located.

A 5 gal plastic bucket has been used by lots of folks, and for ideas just look at any sold in the catalogs.....sure are not hard to figure out. Lots use 5 or 7 gal metal cans. Harbor Freight also sells a small

7 gal IIRC

I see no reas>x-What's a good way of rigging up a coolant pump for a lathe, as opposed

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The flood coolant system on my mill cost $16 mostly for a locLine starter kit and some 1/2" OD nylon tubing. The pump was salvaged from a tacky little fountain that my mother had in the front yard. It looks like a relabeled Little Giant submersable. It sits on a brick in a 5 gallon pail. The feed line goes to an old needle valve mounted on a magnetic base that came with a cheap dial indicator that crapped out long ago. I only have to crack the valve or it would cover the table in Mobile Omicron.

BTW, there has got to be someth> I have home brews on all my machine tools. Just a simple resivoir,

I got a small submersable fontian pump from lowes and a 5 gallon plastic bucket, been using it for years.

Got evaporative coolers in your area? A "swamp cooler" pump works pretty good for moving oil. Ive stuck one on a bracket, hung it on the side of a plastic 5 gal bucket, so its 2-3" off the bottom, run a hose to the machine, and returned the oil through a kitchen mesh strainer. Total cost if you buy everything new is about $30. Quite, portable from machine to machine, runs on 110..

Only time I had a problem was when I tried moving Castrol Black cutting oil, and the shop temp was around 45F. Sorta slowed the stream down a bit.. but that stuff is normally like heavy crude anyways.

Gunner

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On what principle does such a pump work? I've been trying to think of a pump type that won't mind little bits of lathe chips and toolpost grinder abrasive. Something without tight internal tolerances in other words.

My shop is unheated and can get pretty cold.

I've got recirculating pump from an ice machine. Think that would work?

Glenn I used to use the Loctit or Cedarberg ball jointed flex stuff until I found an old discarded oil can with one of those spiral wrapped metallic spouts. It had 5/16" fine threads on it, and I tried it. It worked fine. I then went on a quest for more of the same items, and eventually wound up with enough to use on my lathe, bandsaw, grinder and mill (2 of them on use here) and so far they have proved to be superior IMHO to the ball joint type stuff. They stay where you place them, and they do not pop apart at the most inopertune time. Some have ends that are replaceable so you can make a nozzle of various orifice openings.

IIRC a new replacement spout assembly from Plews, was about $4.50

Never had much sucess with the swamp coolers and oil based coolant, but they worked fine for water soluable oil stuff, which I do not use anymore. When a major big box store went out of business in this area I bought 3 of the swamp coolers (condensate pump type kits complete with resivoir, tubing , pump etc) for $12.00 eac, and none lasted very long doing the coolant pump on a machine tool thing.

Another place to check is if you have a Safety Kleen fellow in your area. A lot of the industrisal palces utilizes this Safety Kleen stuff, as they come around once a month or so and remove all dirty cleaning fluids, and replace it with new recycled stuff. They usually supply the parts cleaner tanks etc free of charge to customers that sign a long term contract. They often have old units and parts in the trucks they carry the new cleaning solvent around in, and I asked the one fellow where I used to work if they sold pumps, and his reply was no, but what are you looking for, told him, and he opened up his truck and said help yourself, and save me from having to throw it all away and clean it up to meet environmental standards. I obtained 4 nice heavy duty gray mills pumps FREE as wlel as associated other odds and ends. One was a centrifugal cleaner, and another item was a device that added additional pressure by way of air to the output of the pump for a heavier cleaning flow.

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Most of the pumps used are centrifugal design, so there is no metal to metal or plastic to plastic contact and a fair amount of debri eaisly passes thorugh without any worry on causing a problem. Diaphram and vane types are a contact type pump and are more fussy when it comes to debri. Usually having the divided resivoir is suffiicient to eliminate most problems as such. In the top of my resivoir tanks I have a large hole cut, which accepts a standard kitchen strainer approx 4" in diam, and all returning coolant gets dumped into it (sort of like a large chip strainer). before it gets back into the resivoir. The divided resivoir allows for any remaining debri to settle out, while the cleaner stuff gets back into the pump side to be recirculated again.

I have qa friend that has been using one of those 1" "clear water" pumps sold by harbor freight for under $25.00. It is divided up to supply coolant to multiple tools, and it all returns back to one central resivoir. Its been in use now about 2 or 3 years and works fine. All its seen is auto tranny fluid and the seals have held up just fine.

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just a few examples..

They are a cheapy plastic centrifical (sp) pump. They dont tolerate chips very well, so you have to make sure they are off the bottom of the sump, but they run abrasive laden oil just fine.

However the bottoms detach easily for chip cleaning if need be.

Shrug, here in the Southwest, even Kmart has em in stock

Ebay has em

Gunner

Chuckle..thats how I got my parts washer. One of those that sits on top of a 35 gal drum. Works fine.

Gunner

The only real problem with an ice machine pump or a swamp cooler pump is that they aren't submersible, and have an open motor on top.

You have to use a large enough tank (or better yet, rig some sort of an overflow tank) so the fluid level rising high enough to submerge the motor is not an option.

That, and those open centrifugal pumps only have like 3' of head, if you need a lot of flow at high head they may not work.

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Those HF pumps ( stock number 1479 ) are one of the things that are a bargain. The advertisements always say something like 10 foot lift, but that is on the suction side. The pressure side is 110 feet of water or nearly 50 psi. It is a one stage turbine pump. If I were going to use one as a coolant pump, I would control the flow by dumping the excess and run that back to the tank thru a filter that takes a auto oil filter.

Dan

I set up the mill with 3/8" black pipe fixed to the column, with a tee and a nipple facing out on either side of the quill so the actual loc-line is short and stiff, that makes it easier to adjust the position. One ball valve in the main line and one each in the branch lines. Branch valves are adjusted for flow and the main is to switch on and off without messing up the adjustment.

A large stream comes out slower and splashes around less than a fine stream. Also flushes away chips better.

In my older K&T mill the coolant pump is a mechanically driven gear pump that looks just like an auto engine oil pump. Quite worn internally but it still works.

Washing machine drain pumps can be almost free ($8 US equivalent or so) new.

is where I got mine from) Something like a bucket as a sump, with the inlet line at the bottom and the pump at the top. You want to keep the flow nice and slow so that it gives a chance for the chips to settle out, rather than a quick flow. A layer of foam or cloth or something in the middle as a filter might not be a bad idea either.

That is what my system consists of. Oil pump from an Austin A40 (British) and a gear motor salvaged from a photocopy machine which probably turns about 120 rpm. The only filter is the original mesh on the inlet to the pump. Most chips are going to settle to the bottom of the chip tray or the reservoir.

Being a positive displacement pump I contemplated a pressure relief valve but in the end settled on a tee fitting to feed the oil to the nozzle, with a loop of tubing rising about a metre up the wall behind the lathe and then down again to discharge into the chip tray. I found this loop needs to vent to atmosphere at the top of the loop, otherwise a siphon would establish itself which caused air to be sucked back into the nozzle rather than oil coming out.

It has only been installed about six months so I can't make any claims about longevity.

Regards Malcolm.

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