Has anybody tried using DuPont's Teflon silicon spray for a drilling lubricant? Is it too lightweight?
- posted
12 years ago
Has anybody tried using DuPont's Teflon silicon spray for a drilling lubricant? Is it too lightweight?
icant? Is it too lightweight?
Teflon breaks down at the temperatures produced during drilling producing some extremely toxic compounds.
icant? Is it too lightweight?
Not the right stuff is what it is. Cutting compounds are made for the task, they're not just lubricants. You can get by with field expedients on some jobs but if you want a smooth hole, get the stuff for the material you're drilling(which you didn't say). Just one won't do everything, either.
Stan
icant? Is it too lightweight?
Pipe threading oil from the big-box hardware stores works well. Kerosine is fine for aluminum, substitutes are lighter fluid and WD-40. You can also drill steel and aluminum without any cutting fluid.
jsw
Yup...pretty sure the same guy also tried using an old car door to mow his lawn...
... while still attached to his car.
ant it worked too, at 90 MPH.
i
Reminds me of the video of the drunk/drugged kids driving down a residential street hoping to smack one of the younger kids riding bicycles. Filmed from the other side of the back seat... As the car slowly approached one of the young kids on a bicycle, the teenager opened the door and smacked the kid. Unfortunately, the drunk teenager handling the back door let it get away from him, lost his balance and leaned too far out while trying to hold on to the door. That's when his chin met the bumper of a parked car, that instantly yanked him clean out of the car by his chin.
Instant Karma.
I think that's all correct, except... Looks more like the mind-blowing car was oncoming. And the kid was falling out of the door before the oncoming car took his head off.
lubricant? Is it too lightweight?
lubricant? Is it too lightweight?
The canola oil definitely works better than nothing, and it doesn't cost much and it doesn't smell at all in use--but it probably doesn't work as well as "real" cutting fluid would either.
It's worth finding a supply of real cutting lubricant, Doug.
Cutting oil attempts to do a couple of things at once: Provide high-pressure lubrication, and prevent skating of the cutting tool. These two objectives are at odds; certain oils and additives are better at it than others. Sulfur, for example, provides some lubrication at extreme pressure but it also has a threshold, above which the film punctures, and lets the cutting edge in to do its work.
Most cutting oils are not really very good lubricants. An extreme-pressure lubricating oil would be much better. But it could make your tool skate over the work, particularly with lathes that have less than production-quality stiffness. Flexible tools or workpieces can produce the same result on *any* machine tool.
Until I came to this NG I had no idea that serious hobbyists did so much...uh, experimenting, with all kinds of industrial and kitchen liquids. You may come up with an effective one every once in a while, but the commercial products made for the job usually will beat them.
I realize it's not easy to find good cutting oils these days, and that a lot of users mix up some pipe-threading lubricant with a little kerosene or whatever as an expedient. I haven't seen DoAll's cutting oils for sale for quite a few years now. They came in quart cans. But you can still get Buttercut, I think. That's straight lard oil, one of the first cutting oils used for machining. It may actually work no better than your canola, but it does do the job.
Note we aren't talking about "coolant" here. On small machines, lubricating usually is far more important than cooling.
icant? Is it too lightweight?
If you want free use drain motor oil. Rather than an eye dropper you might have better luck going to a hardware store and getting an acid brush. (For acid soldering flux.)
These are cheap (should be < $.20) and real do a good job. Your drilling oil acts as a coolant and a lubricant. At the cutting edge a great deal of heat is produced and having the coolant really helps extend the life of the drill as it takes the heat with it as the smoke bellows. squirting on the oil works OK but most just drips off and makes a bigger mess then necessary.
As someone else mentioned, if you are drilling aluminum WD 40 works pretty good just go easy and spray little spurts and try not to inhale too many fumes. True for any coolant WD is not too nasty like the teflon spray.
My first machine shop trainer (yes, I _have_ operated a mill and a lathe) used lard or Crisco for aluminum, and for steel, whatever liquid petroleum product was on hand at the time - usually kerosene.
Thanks, Rich
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