Oil Dripper

How about a can of oil up on a shelf with a hose down to a needle valve assembly on the carriage, with a 1/8" copper drip tube that is hand bent as needed. This is almost what I do.

What I do is to replace the can on the shelf with a strained-pump assembly on the floor running soluble oil to the needle-valve assembly, and the chip pan draining back into the coolant filter-pump.

Joe

Okay, I get about the best finish with stainless and alloy steel on the lathe with oil. The 14x40 (and the turret lathe) has a coolant pump, but a single drop of oil goes much further without soaking me down.

There are oil drippers available, but they are either pretty crummy like the one I lost a decade or more ago that came with my Harbor Freight drill press, or they are very incomplete for the application.

I think one of the issues with the cheap ones is they don't have a hole in the bottom (top) to let air in. It makes it very hard to get a nice controlled drip.

For lathe work my thought is it needs to be on an articulating arm that can be mounted to the back splash or on a mag base. It needs to be able to be visually checked for volume. It needs a valve at both ends. One to control inflow of air, and one to be able to adjust to as slow as one drip every 3-5 seconds.

I don't know where I am going with this, but aerosolizing cutting oil is not the answer I want. I just want a nice slow drip of oil. I'm actually thinking two valves at the bottom. A ball valve to turn it on and off, and a needle valve to control flow when its on. So it can be adjusted and left adjusted.

Varying head pressure might be an issue. I guess it would need to be kept pretty full. Hence its volume needs to be easily checked at a glance.

I'm about decided I'll have to make one, but I'm open to being surprised with an economical and elegant solution.

Bob La Londe

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The simple way to maintain the level in a reservoir is to feed it from an upside down bottle with its opening at the desired level. When the level drops air will enter and let liquid out to restore it. I haven't found an on/off valve with water bottle threads, I might see if this will reshape water bottle threads to fit in-line hose ball valves. The two are almost identical.

He described a vessel that appears to convert water into wine, by opening or covering the vents of secret compartments with a finger. I heard of that somewhere else too.

Oil can on a shelf is as good of an idea as any. Not sure if being on a shelf up high (there is one above that lathe) will add much pressure over right there on the machine. I would think the majority of the head pressure if from weight rather than height. Can't hurt though I suppose.

Either of those is about what I was thinking as readily available, but incomplete for the application.

I suppose if I wanted total control I could use an IV pump, but what they don't tell you about IV pumps is the tube is generally single use. They don't care if it wears out.

Pressure is proportional to the product of height and fluid density. You can always put some compressed air above the oil pool.

Joe

Oil can on a shelf is as good of an idea as any. Not sure if being on a shelf up high (there is one above that lathe) will add much pressure over right there on the machine. I would think the majority of the head pressure if from weight rather than height. Can't hurt though I suppose. Bob La Londe

--------------------------------------- Two of these on a vinyl tube would give you flow adjustment and shutoff.

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The pressure at the bottom depends only on height and density. The amount of fluid anywhere in the system has no effect.

A "perpetual motion machine" sketched historically / in-antiquity wouldn't work for that reason. It had a basin narrowing into becoming a funnel into becoming a pipe, which looped around and went above the basin. There is this feeling that the area of water in the basin must preferentially cause it to push-down on the water entering into the pipe, hence as a small pipe making the water flow around to emerge higher than its starting-point. Technical training including The Law of Conservation of Energy and the like lead you to confidently reject this as a fallacy, on in terms of these technical / scientific understandings it is easy to see why. You see where the forces go, etc. - the mind "sees" it.

Long way of saying - yup, Jim states a basic reality.

A "perpetual motion machine" sketched historically / in-antiquity wouldn't work for that reason. It had a basin narrowing into becoming a funnel into becoming a pipe, which looped around and went above the basin. There is this feeling that the area of water in the basin must preferentially cause it to push-down on the water entering into the pipe, hence as a small pipe making the water flow around to emerge higher than its starting-point. Technical training including The Law of Conservation of Energy and the like lead you to confidently reject this as a fallacy, on in terms of these technical / scientific understandings it is easy to see why. You see where the forces go, etc. - the mind "sees" it.

Long way of saying - yup, Jim states a basic reality.

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Good answer.

Capillary attraction (surface tension) can raise the liquid level in a narrow tube and misleadingly suggest the wrong explanation. Human senses aren't good at judging force, distance or motion, or we'd all be pro ball players.

The first Mesopotamian farmer who dug an irrigation trench off the Tigris would have seen that the water was no higher in the trench than at the river, and didn't flow in at the bottom and out at the top in a loop. If it had the clever and observant scientists of Babylon would have noticed and taken advantage of the free power. We still use their base 60 number system for time and geography, instead of the proposed decimal Metric versions.

There are ways to make water flow uphill or against pressure, but they obey the conservation of energy, input > output.

https://practical.engineering/blog/2019/12/17/how-does-a-hydraulic-ram-pump-work

Okay, I get about the best finish with stainless and alloy steel on the lathe with oil. The 14x40 (and the turret lathe) has a coolant pump, but a single drop of oil goes much further without soaking me down.

There are oil drippers available, but they are either pretty crummy like the one I lost a decade or more ago that came with my Harbor Freight drill press, or they are very incomplete for the application.

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Somewhat relevant to this, I finally tried rethreading a plastic soda bottle neck to garden hose thread on the lathe, and it worked! The diameters are nearly identical and the bottle has wider Acme threads. The bottle neck was jammed onto a dowel turned to a snug fit, and indexed to test and replace it to cut deeper. This one tests to 30 PSI, more than enough for a brake pressure bleeding reservoir etc. For water bottle rockets I've pressurized a

Garden hose thread accepts inline shutoff valves, NPT adapters and tire valve plugs to blow out RV tanks. I use garden faucets for my outdoor compressed air outlets, capped to keep bug nests out.