Neat Cutting OIl

I use one of the castrol neat oils on my Hardinge CNC's. I cant remember the type, as It has not been changed in a while. The machines each hold 30 gallons of the stuff! Hence it's expensive to replace, something like £200 per machine.

Personally I'd not recommend it on a manual machine, it gets everywhere unless the machine it enclosed or you turn at very low speeds. It does create fog too, which my machines have filtermist units to deal with it.

Helps the machine last forever though! But much messier than solubles unless the machine is completely enclosed.

Wayne....

In article , Charles Ping writes

I use Shell Garia H (as recommended by George Thomas) for steel turning and milling. I only use drip feeding, not a pump - I just don't do the heavy cutting to justify it. Not experienced any problem in probably 20 years - and still have a large part of the 5 gals left.

David

J&L will ship next day - they do it, but not bought any yet - work keeps getting in the way of play!

Hallett Oils sells a good range of model engineering oils by mail order (in small quantity). Their neat cutting oil works well for me.

Mike

We used Ovoline Oils products Opal and Agate.Ovoline are now part of Fuchs.All the oil companies do a neat cutting oil.You have to decide what materials you are going to use it on as some attack aluminium some go for copper etc.If your haulage guy with the Movano is coming anywhere near Edinburgh I can give you a gallon or ten.It will be used but ok.I`ve got 1600 gallons in machines which are coming out. regards,Mark.

Use soluble oil, but apply it with one of the hand-held water sprayers from garden centres.

That way, you don't need a pump and all that paraphernalia, and you get a better distribution than with drip-feed.

Charles P> Having been bamboozled by all the industrial specs for neat cutting

Thanks for the advice chaps.

Mark I know the man with the van is heading north sometime and if you were near me I'd take you up on the offer of a few gallons of Agate but it's hardly worth the effort when J & L can supply 25 litres of Exelcut 401 for £38. Interesting it was 25 quid in my up to date printed brochure but is now 38 quid online. That's the oil business for you.

Regards

Charles

Never accept the first price J&L offer you, they will always do some sort of deal if you push them a little -the advantage of phoning up over on line ordering (well, we always get discount anyway)

Regards Kevin

Also check it's 25 litres. The crafty ba#~ards are sending out 20 litres at the old 25 price.

-- Regards,

John Stevenson Nottingham, England.

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I would also echo Waynes' comment, although I have only used neat cutting oil available from the machine importers I found it a huge dissapointment. As well as the issues Wayne mentioned I found that tipped tools, light machines and cutting oil do not mix. Unless the tip was brand new introducing oil meant that it would not take a light cut at all. A particular problem when trying to get a really good finish. In my experience a tipped tool does not produce a really good finish when brand new but does when slightly used to produce an element of burnishing. With oil and a light finishing cut a tool that produced an excellent finish dry would alternate between cutting a rubbing. A new tip and oil would need to be run really fast to produce a reasonable finish and guess what high spindle speed does to oil - throws it all over the place. Of course this is no indicator of performance on a CNC where the appropriate surface speed can be obtained and the mess is not an issue if the cutting medium can be contained. You will tell from my comments that I am still a bit raw in this world so if my experience is not typical I would appreciate a heads up on what I'm doing wrong.

Best regards

Keith

Carbide tools generally need to be pushed hard to give a good surface finish. A lot of ME lathes are not suitable for carbides unless the tool has positive geometry.

An example is a job I have been doing today. 316 Stainless 42mm dia,

39mm dia spigot turned on both ends done in one pass at 750 rpm to finish diameter, finish and limits are perfect. This with coated carbide insert and Flood coolant. I think the average Myford would be running for cover at the thought of this ;-)

A lot of the tips I use would just push off and rub on a small machine.

Light cuts rarely work unless a cermet grade insert is used.

In my experience you either use flood or no coolant at all with carbides. Dripping coolant has little use at all apart from giving the insert thermal shocks. Because I can I choose to use flood. High pressure pumps and 2 or 3 nozzles in use at once.

Well I'm glad my machines are enclosed ;-) Hate to lose to much of that expensive cutting oil!...

Some neat cutting oils can stain some materials.

Wayne....

Hello Charles,

I used to use Neatcut 3A from Warco. It was quite expensive, but I only needed a small quantity. I found this to be very good stuff - it didn't feel particularly "slippy" when it got onto stuff like handwheels. The stuff they sell now looks different to what I bought though... I don't suppose anyone knows what Neatcut 3A really is do they?

I then bought some Exelcut 401 from J&L for my Bridgy clone - this I have been disappointed with - it is extremely slippery stuff. And it does seem to get everywhere...

Good luck!

Jez.

jezatjezhyphennikkidotnet

Jez Hi, interesting comment. I have two containers of "Neatcut" from Warco although neither is marked "3A". They are totally different with one being very light in colour and not "slippery" the other is much thicker and darker and does feel "slippery" when it gets all over the machine. To be honest I haven't been impressed with either as a cutting medium although the darker one works well for tapping. With 4 litres of the stuff I won't be short of tapping fluid for a while!! I did try thinning the thicker of the two but that didn't help either. I'd be very interseted if you could track down the source of the version you had success with.

Thanks for that comment, I was about to try this one as my next attempt to find a decent cutting oil, I'll have a look somewhere else now. I suppose in reality the problem is that we all want something slightly different from the oil as we all use it slightly differently. Please let us know if you find a "goodun", it might stop me filling up my garage with tins and tins of dubious oil.

Best regards

Keith