I am about to purchase a new lathe. My little training at the local technical school had lathes with coolants. If price is not a consideration, is one better served paying the extra for a lathe with a coolant system ?
Most of work will be with small work pieces using 6000 or 7000 series alloys and some work with mild steel.
Thanks in advance.
Tom.
Coolant is not real practical, or usually necessary, on small parts, especially on a manual lathe. At the high speed needed for small aluminum parts, the coolant will spray all over the shop, unless you use a very encompassing shield. Then, you won't be able to see what you are doing, because the shield will be like a rained-on windshield with no wipers.
Where coolant really does help is on very large pieces that need extensive stock removal. For instance, a 2" OD bar that needs most of its length turned down to 1" OD. This bar will get real hot, which will eat HSS tools, or just cause it to grow in size while you cut it with carbide inserts. Then, to get an accurate measurement, you would need to wait a half an hour, with a fan blowing on it, to make your final measurements and cuts. What a pain! Much better to run coolant on it, and keep the work at room temperature. Then, when you mike it the last time, there's no worry of it cooling down and shrinking below the desired diameter after the last cut!
You have to worry that coolant can get under the saddle or crossslide and corrode the HE** out of the lathe. Also, coolant that is rarely used goes rancid.
Jon
I concur with Jon, I have a lathe and rarely need coolant. I keep a spray bottle of distilled water nearby in case my work gets a little hot. A can of WD-40 comes in handy sometimes too.-Jitney
???
My coolant doesn't corrode the hell out of my lathes. I get an occasional orange mark or stain, especially if I don't blow it down or wipe it down. It hasn't gone rancid (It's only 6 years young) I use it on a manual lathe, if you adjust the flow with loc-line hose, it doesn't splash much. It will splash if you let it hit the chuck jaws. The splashing isn't as much a function of high speed or low speed, its the flow rate and chip stream. I can get splashing on a large dia workpiece turning slow because the coolant goes down around the work and flys off in the direction of the taper attachement. Or sometimes the chips spring off the tool and flick coolant at you. Since coolant is 90+% water, it tends to dry off without much mess.
I *used* to run coolant in my lathe. Now I will only use cutting oil. The problem with coolant is it getting into everything and then the water evaporating. Leaves gooey shit behind and that can restrict the lubrication channels. So your nice new lathe can become a fairly new, but very worn lathe. Besides, the oil smells way neater when it smokes.
michael
Oil is nice until you spill it on the floor.
I'm not sure why anyone who's machining aluminum wouldn't want some type of lube/coolant. If you want to take a decent DOC and make your motor work for its breakfast, you should be unable to correctly machine aluminum without fluid.
Yes, fluid will spray when you're working very close to the spindle. Get a chuck cover. You may not be able to see exactly what you're doing, but you're not looking at the work piece when you're running it anyway, right? (watching the dials, listening to the cut). Covers are good anyway when machining steel with carbide and no chip breaker. That can produce some very dangerous (f***ing hot and sharp) chips. Ask my right index finger how it knows (doh!)
Regards,
Robin
I work professionally as a machine tool mechanic, and I have access to just about every type of coolant there is in common use. I could take home a gallon of concentrate for free from just about every manufacture of coolant, and my machines are filled with OIL., not toilet water, not soulable oil, but good old fashioned cutting oil, and will forever do so.
The only machines I use anything other than oil, is occasionally I use a mister on the big Gorton mill, and even then, when Im doing long cuts in steel, I rig up the shields and use Oil.
Each to their own, but I crawl around all day long in green slime, fixing worn/broken machines that have been running "coolant".
Gunner
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