Neat cutting oil for a Hardinge CHNC?

Mine holds 30 gallons. I use Hangsterfer's 5418 but it's costly. You might try Mobil cutting oil, cheaper. But unlike Toilet water you only have to by oil once .

Glad to see another fella with a CHNC. Its simply the finest small CNC lathe there is. FWIW, I changed my machine over to toilet water. Oil is great for production, messy for others.

Karl

By toilet water, I'm assuming you mean water soluble coolant. How long have you been running soluble coolant? Are you getting any rusting/staining of the ways or other machine parts? I thought that was one of the reasons they ran neat cutting oil on the Hardinge's is to keep the bedway nice and neat, ...

Thanks!

Yes, TW is the industry slang term.

maybe 15 years

You get this if you run too low a % water soluable. 7% is my target. I got lucky and got a refractomter.

Biggest problem with toilet water is a REAL NASTY bacteria can grow. I use an anti bacteria treatment and a fish aquarium air pump on all the time.

Your whole shop will have a neat film of oil. Then the dust will cling to it and you will have a neat film of grime. Hope your SO don't mind you tracking a neat oil film into the house. You'll need to keep a shop rag in your pocket to keep wiping the neat oil film off every thing you handle.

Karl

Got to get an extraction system... When I use soluble coolant on the surface grinder it tends to fog the shed up something wicked when the coolant gets picked up by the wheel. Nice cooling mist, and then you realize that your shirt is sticking to you...

Mark Rand RTFM

Got it.

Yeah. My friend's VMCs have had this. He skims them and uses tablets too.

Hmmm... a film of oil everywhere doesn't sound like a good thing. Don't want my SO nailing my testicles up on the wall...

This is for my home shop for prototyping, maybe light production runs. Don't want the cost to be too high, short or long term, and I don't want the machine to rust or corrode from using it. How much was the TW coolant?

Thanks!

I've been using Encool from Engineered Lubricants. They made up a gallon of concentrate for me, I've been using it at something like 10%. I use it on the mill, have left the vise on the table for months, and I get a slight black stain that rubs right off, nothing more. I have left the sump for months without the slightest hint of odor. Something does grow in it, as I get a yucky film that grows on the coolant surface, but it doesn't smell! I used Tri-cool before, didn't have rusting, but poor tool life and horrible smells after just days in the sump. Eng. Lube listened to what machining processes and materials I was using and then supplied what they thought would work best, and they sure were right. I have no connection to them, just happy with their coolant and embarrased that I haven't used up my gallon of concentrate yet so I can buy something from them!

Jon

...

Jon, you need to get out in the shop more.

To the OP. Getting all the oil out of your CHNC will be a job. I found that taking the sight glass assembly off the tank at the end of the machine and fill the tank with coolant past the exposed holes ran oil off the top. Repeat several times. I kept skimming oil off what came out and putting the overflow coolant back in the machine. I then used a hole saw to cut a hole in the tank where the back right panel is. I run a belt type skimmer through this opening.

Many people swear by this coolant or that coolant. I use whatever is in the shop my son is working for at the moment. (he brings home free concentrate) They all seem the same to me. I think the keys are: Keep the oil/crap film off the top of the coolant. Keep an air bubbler running. You'll have no problems with these two precautions. I also put in a bactericide - just an added precaution.

Karl

Good luck, CHNC's do not last long with Toilet water, the Hardinge tech told me that. Even though my new 1992 was sealed to try to offer them to people that wanted to use it the water still gets in the turret & ball screws. One shop I know changed 5 of theirs over to TW & within 4 months they had trouble with all of them.

I'm still running my 92 model all day every day on production & it still holds .0003. NO repairs other than a few air valves. But it was filled up with oil from day one. Use oil & a mist extractor & you won't get a film all over the shop! All my CNC's & screw machines run oil.

I think the key difference here is production vs. intermittent use. No question, in production, oil is a good way to go. But my machine is being set up 200 hours a year and runs maybe 100 hours a year. Allowances must be made on any machine not running oil, run the air line oilers at a good rate. Same with the ball screw and way lube units. I have had to take my pop up turret apart and clean it a couple times. Its about a one hour job.

Karl

We use toilet water where I work in our cnc's. Rust has never been an issue with toilet water.

Personally, I love the aroma of oil.

Wes

At HP in the 80's I ran one of these. We always used "real" oil. Hangsterfers (sp.?) as I recall. Yes, .0003 was routine. We had a few jobs where we held .0002 (not plus or minus, .0002 total) Any problems were always tooling, never the machine's fault. We had oil mist removing equipment. Smog-Hog I think. Helped with the "oil all over everything" problem

Bob