Cutting fluids?

I use a product called Kool Mist and a mister on my lathe. Works well exept for knurling and threading, use oil there.

karl

Does Canada require the equivalent of the MSDS (material safety data sheet) ?

Wes

This is a repeat of a reply I posted in October

I've been having very good results with a water soluable synthetic(?) cutting lubricant for drilling, tapping, sawing, knurling and turning on the lathe.. steel, ss, brass and aluminum.

The stuff is marketed by Lenox (a cutting tool brand, band saw blades etc), named Pro Tool Lube. The label states that it contains no silicone, is biodegradeable, and I think the stuff is glycerine-based. It's given excellent performance for all the cutting tasks mentioned above, and it rinses away with water, so I can shoot a stream of water from a trigger-spray bottle into (or thru) holes to flush cutting chips out easily.

There is no troublesome film or oily residue remaining after a plain water flush/rinse. When I want to paint parts that I've used the PTL on, I don't need to do any other preparation, other than what I'd normally do for bare metals.

Pipe cleaners work well, although the ones that are made for crafts seem to be fuzzy synthetic stuff, and not like good 'ol fashioned pipe cleaners. Gun cleaning bore brushes are handy too, and there are solvent-proof brushes for cleaning the siphon tubes of paint spraying guns.

I've gotten the Lenox PTL at Fastenal.

WB ......... metalworking projects

I'm using cool mist as well, but wonder if it has any rust preventatives in it, or should i saturate the mill with WD40 after use.

Commercial water-based cutting fluids almost always contain rust preventives, but they're short-term protections only. In a small shop they can be a problem because you aren't refreshing them all the time and the machine isn't flooded all the time with the coolant and its rust preventives. That's why I avoid using them. When I worked in a commercial shop, they were fine.

-- Ed Huntress

Find and read the MSDS on water. Last one I read suggested that prolonged skin contact was unwise.

Dig out the MSDS sheet for the stuff, and see what the ingredients are. For the most part, if you arenot making mist clouds of a high speed machine, or bathing yourself in it, and you keep your hands out of your orfices before washing, there are not too many things to worry about.

Are you in the same room as a gas appliance with a pilot light?

That the stuff?

You could resort to bacon fat mixed with olive oil, if you want something relatively benign in your shop, but stay away from the salted bacon. (hmmm..Is unsalted bacon still bacon?...)

Cheers Trevor Jones

Yes, but for commercial use.

Consumer use commodities do not require that one be attached, but they are often available for asking, or you get to find your own.

Cheers Trevor Jones

Olive oil is hygroscopic. While it works well for old-fashioned diamond lapping, I don't think I'd want to leave it on my lathe.

As for bacon fat, it's the same thing as lard oil except that it has some counterproductive stuff left in it -- the stearin, also known as tallow, which thickens it up but which doesn't improve lubricity. Straight lard oil (olein) is the stuff that works better for metalcutting. Sulfated lard oil is the stuff to use for cutting steel on a home-shop lathe. It may stink, but it's fairly benign, except that it's also a bit hygroscopic and you at least want to wipe it off your machine and then oil it with some kind of machine oil before putting your work away.

-- Ed Huntress

It is possible to get "refreshers" for antifreeze. Basically a fresh dose of the corrosion inhibitors that came with the antifreeze in the first place, to save you from throwing away perfectly good ethylene glycol every couple of years. I have wondered if these would make a useful additive for toilet water, assuming that one can keep the anaerobic bacteria at bay long enough to make it worth while.

Mark Rand RTFM

Yes, they're available. They're used in large systems that keep re-treating their sumps full of water-miscable coolant, and biocides are replenished along with the anti-rust additives. But I don't know if they're available in small quantities, nor if they're really practical for small shops. You still don't want to let the coolant stand on the machines.

-- Ed Huntress

"Ed Huntress" wrote in news:KMLZi.2853$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe09.lga:

Not only that but a lot of old iron and home machines weren't designed for water soluble cutting fluids. So you might find that it gets into bearings, under slides and into gearboxes.

I've got 55 gallons of brand new cutting oil I'd like to get rid of. Good stuff for manual machining. It was bought for a project that didn't pan out where we had to use a customer's specific brand of cutting oil. I might even have two drums, I'd have to check. I've got at least another

55 gallons of very expensive cutting oil that's a brand we don't use anymore.

I'd be happy to give it away if I could be sure I was free from liability from the EPA. IOW's I can't have these drums and oil turning up being disposed of in an improper manner. The oil is probably worth 16 bucks/gallon give or take a buck or two. I'm pretty sure the one drum was $900 and change for a drum. It's formulated for medical machining of Titanium and Stainless. But would work just fine on anything else.

I'll probably end up paying to get it hauled away.

Such is life nowadays.

Get some one-quart or one-liter containers, bottle it up, and sell it on e-bay. You ought to be able to sell a drum of it for $2,000 that way.

Find out first if you'll run into any trouble with UPS shipping or whatever.

BTW, this is exactly what I planned as a sideline many years ago, before I started freelance writing. I still believe it's a good business, and e-bay makes it a lot easier to distribute.

-- Ed Huntress

"Ed Huntress" wrote in news:yRRZi.5805$ snipped-for-privacy@newsfe08.lga:

Probably not a bad idea. I'm pretty sure I can get a local shop to come and take the Hagsterfers. The other stuff is a special blend, very expensive with plenty of sulfer.

Where is it?

Gunner, who only uses oil in his machines.

Political Correctness is a doctrine fostered by a delusional, illogical liberal minority, and rabidly promoted by an unscrupulous mainstream media, which holds forth the proposition that it is entirely possible to pick up a turd by the clean end.

That is great idea. I could use a gallon or two but I hope to never do enough work that I need 55 gallons of the stuff. I plan on going sailing one of these days, but in the mean time I need to make some parts for the sailboat out of stainless. You could probalby just sell it here. Use Paypal and your good to go. What is the cutoff limit for hazardous shipping? Where is it located?

In high production shops, they may vaporize a lot of these products. I visited a shop that had some screw machines making something with large tapped holes in it. Every 15 seconds the tap would be rammed into the part and a HUGE cloud of oil smoke would explode out of the machine and be sucked up by a big fume hood over it. I mean, this was a cloud 10 feet in diameter and

5 feet high, just a column between the machine and the hood. That cloud would be a true health hazard to anyone who worked close enough to inhale a taste of it for a couple hours.

Your machines in the home shop are not likely powerful enough to vaporize coolant like that. If the stuff doesn't have much odor when you take the lid off, I would not worry about it. If it does, you may have gotten the wrong stuff. I have some tapping fluids that are fairly aromatic, but I use one drop per tapped hole, so it is no problem. My kids will inherit the remaining

90% full can.

Watch out for the MSDS for water - when vaporized it can cause scalding, when deep enough it can cause drowning, maybe even a danger because you can slip on wet floors.....

Jon

I used to do a bunch of this when I used Trico's Tri-Cool, especially getting all the water out from under the movable vise jaw. I used LPS-1, similar to WD-40 but I think better.

When I switched to Engineered Lubricants EnCool 9, I didn't have to do this anymore. There was just enough oil (or something) in there that the water wouldn't really collect under the vise jaw, and even if it did, it would NEVER rust. it also improved cutter life by a big margin and didn't grow mold in the sump for months.

Jon

Maybe I should've further explained that although the Lenox Pro Tool Lube is water soluable, I don't have any pump/flood systems on my machines. I mentioned that it flushes away with just water, for easy cleanup and flushing chips out of tapped holes, as opposed to solvent washing of parts to remove cutting oils and blowing chips out with compressed air (not a good practice).

I just dribble this Lenox cutting lubricant on the workpiece and cutting edges with a plastic lab-style dispenser bottle or dab it on with a brush. The dispenser bottles are just about ideal, since there is a dip tube in the bottle, I never need to turn the bottle upside down, or shake it or wait for the liquid to run to the top. They apply the desired amount right where it's wanted.

I appreciate that this product rinses away with water (and no fire risk or foul odors) instead of solvents, for economy and convenience, but also because my fingertips dry out and crack even more when I get solvents on them.

I haven't found anything that restores the skin oils, and I've tried all the store products from Badger balm to udder cream, lanolin and other dry skin products inside nitrile gloves when I sleep. Soaking them in cider had no appreciable effect.

I've been considering trying lard this winter. I'll hafta reinforce the bedframe.

WB ......... metalworking projects

On Fri, 16 Nov 2007 11:41:32 -0500, with neither quill nor qualm, "Wild_Bill" quickly quoth:

My fingertips split (under/at the nail) if I let them dry out, and using Herbal Ed's Salve from Herb Pharm several times a day cures it. I think the beeswax in it makes the difference in keeping moisture in the fingertips, plus the herbs boost the healing.

Have you tried using the liquid gloves? It might allow your body oils to remain under the "glove" and not get washed away by the solvents.

On occasion, I use Derma Plus, a small can of the foam gloves I got a decade ago. It works well to keep grime out of my pores. I don't know about its moisture control, but it can't hurt.

I have a feeling that I'd sleep better if I _don't_ ask...

-- After all, it is those who have a deep and real inner life who are best able to deal with the irritating details of outer life. -- Evelyn Underhill