Lathe Coolant

[SPiN Racing]

Evening all.

Figure I would post another little project I made.

When using the Lathe I have for the first iteration of the ball turner base I was making, I was spinning a 5" chunk of square steel, and wanted to make it round.
As it was a interrupted cut, as well as a pretty decent face speed, even with the lathe ticking over slow, I generated a fair amount of heat. The chips that were flying off and landing on my arm were giving me small blisters wherever they landed. (ow)

SO I loked around and decided to make my own "flood" coolant pump instead of spending a hundred bucks on one. (I did figure out you can get a system for around 50 bucks now.. but Im ok with things)

I ordered a pump from Harbour freight, and got a bucket from Home depot with a variety of parts as seen. Cobbled them together and voila. Pump!

While I am waiting for the teens to sleep and I can do the santa thing.. I will snap a couple pics of what things are like now... and add them to this thread once I get back in.

This first Pic is the bucket with the Sink Drain sitting on it, The PVC drain pipe length, as well as the stainless steel sink strainer screen.


Next Pic shows the feed hose, the clamps, and the LAMP THREAD "things"


This pic has the simple electronics I was going to use to wire things up to the lathe itself, so that when the lathe has power, so does the pump assy. THe switches go into a small panel up top, where I have a overhead light, and also the coolant pump.


This pic is of the drain I put in the drip tray"?" of the lathe itself, as I have it sitting with a half bubble slope towards the chuck.. so the runoff moves very slowly to the drain.  In the actual surface I have the drain going through the base, and the spout goes directly into the BIG sink drain that I put in the lid of the bucket.
THe small sink drain itself needs a taper depression to fit properly, so I turned a chunk of scrap on the lathe, along with a female side, and bolted them together to dimple the metal so the drain fit into it nicely.
The small stainless screen was put into the drain, and a small cloth piece laid into that to catch the smaller material that may get into it.


Bucket with large drain cut and inserted bolted into it.


Side view of the bucket, pump and feed hose. There are cuts in the PVC drain so it didnt have any issues with the fluid getting back out. (I wasnt sure how fast it would feed once I got things going.. but the pump was 160GPH)

[Brass_Machine]

Spin,

That is great.  I am going to add cooling to my bandsaw... May have to steal some of these ideas!

Eric

[bogstandard]

I have flood coolant already fitted to my machines, and it is great, but do expect to get a little wet when machining, the damned stuff flies everywhere.

But for those little jobs that need to be kept cool, I am just waiting for my man on Disney cruises to get home in April, he is bringing me one of these

http://littlemachineshop.com/products/product_view.php?ProductID=2725&category=

If it works out well, I will be getting another three so that I can fit them to all my machines that have a use for coolant. To begin with, I will just mount it onto a mag base and move it around between machines. The only down side is that really you need to have an installed air system.

John

[SPiN Racing]

Ohhh yeah those misters look to be really nice to use.

The only question I have (not having worked in any form of machine shop ever..)  Do they cool well??

I was milling a stainless heart shape from some really off Stainless I got at a boat salvage place.. that appears to have GRAIN... and i was cooling with abottle of WD40, and spraying the bit liberally.. and tried doing shop air from a nozzle to cool.. and it didnt seem to do much. I know that the coolant in the mix will help cool, as well as lubricate.. but I wasnt sure how well.

Im planning on making another of the cooling things for the Mill as well.
THere is a small ear thing on the side of the head that appears to be waiting for a shaft with a small nozzle and coolant flowing to it. 



Here are pics of the coolant on the Lathe itself.
On top of the bucket the discoloration (not sure how it will show in the re-sized pics) is from the cosmoline from the "quick change" gears. I set a slew of them on the top of it the other day when changing the gears to cut some threads.

OH YEAH. I forgot.
THe original setup I had a 1/2 inch line running up to the lathe, and then narrowing to a 1/8 or 3/16ths or so line that ran to the tool. The thing is.. it was REALLY poor on performance after runing on and off for several months. THe pump weakening I think (what do you want for 3 dollars at Harbor Freight).
SO I made a Delrin scrap into a nozzle of sorts, tapped it and poped a 3/16ths brass line into it, and ran the hose up from there.
It was WORSE.

SO I put the thing up on a Box.. and Voila.. it works Very nicely now. (Its just the lighting.. there isnt any coolant in the tray)



Coolant Holder.
Mag base from WT-Tool. And a piece of scrap turned, and threaded. Chunk of spare Delrin (suspension bushing scrap) and bored a hole, slotted it, and put a overkill bolt into it. Drill and tap the side for a butterfly bolt, and a rubber fender washer, slip the tube in, and its infinately adjustable so I can aim it directly on the tool tip from anywhere on the cross slide.




Here is a Pic of the dirty dog itself.
As you can see I made a chip deflector/lube catcher that runs the length of the lathe.
Cost about 10 bucks. Brass hings, little bag of nuts and bolts, and a piece of shatter proof lexan/klux/plexi, that is used for screen doors.
Grabbed two 2x4s, and clamped the piece into them with C-Clamps, got out the heat gun and spent about 15 minutes heating the edge by the 2x4s. Once it was hot, a little careful pressure, and voila, benddddd.
I set some stuff on it to keep it in place, and let it cool.
I ended up having to put a little metal part on the edge of it because a lot of turning I do for a little side project causes tiny hot stainless stuff to sizzle my hands when turning them. SOO a chunk of sheet metal from a Mazda, and some rivits, and I was good.

[bogstandard]

Spin,

I have no idea how these air units will work, hence I only ordered one to try out. In fact, if it does work well, and if it will strip down, I just might make my own. There are some very expensive ones on the market, to both cool and blow the chips away, and supposedly they are very good.

WD40 is a fairly good lubricant for surface machining ali, but I doubt it did much for your stainless. You really need to get the temperature down to stop it hardening while you are cutting it. So that is where the flood coolant comes in.

If your coolant pump is a centrifugal one, which they usually are, they can only lift so much 'head' (pump uphill), so you putting it onto a box has brought it into it's 'head' range, and now it works. Next time you will know how to cure the problem.

You are doing a great job putting little mods onto your machine. Every little mod makes machining just that bit easier. It doesn't matter what it looks like, if it does the job, you have succeeded in your efforts.

I have to be very careful on my machines, as I am fully electronic, having DRO's on all axis, so I have to keep the coolant away from them as much as possible, they are water resistant, but I don't want to tempt fate. So I am a bit reluctant to use full flood coolant, and so keep it to a little dribble.

John

[Bernd]

Hey Spin,

Very nice mod to a home shop machine. This is the kind of stuff I like.

Bernd

[sbwhart]

Hi Spin

Great bit of work:  coolant is a real usefull adition to a machine, I sarted with a gravity drip on my machine rigged up from a hospital drip, (got family in that line of work  ) that did me for a bit then I bought a small camercial unit, as I've only got a small shop, my machines will be close together so when I get my mill I'm planning to service both machine from the one coolant tank.

For those chaps who don't know coolant does three main things

1:- keep the tool cool (obvious that one)

2:- Lubricate the tool reducing friction and wear

3:- Clears chips away from the tool

On comercial machine tools some coolant systems can be quite high pressure especialy when deep hole drilling etc, the coolant being forced up small holes in the drill this washes the chips back out away from the cutting face.

There are many different types of coolant and methods of applying it depending on the material being machined and the type of machining being done, but for our use any good general purpose water soluble coolant will be fine what ever you find best.

We use to run six spindle cam autos  (good American machines made by ACME Gridley) on neat cutting oil the only problem was that if the swarf was alowed to build up round the tool they cought fire 

Have fun

 
Stew

[bogstandard]

Spin,

A little tip for you.

If you get a fairly large magnet (I used a speaker magnet broken into 2 horse shoe shapes), and pop it very close to the tray drain or into your bucket top strainer or both. That will pick up most of those tiny ferrous cuttings that can get into the bottom of your bucket and fester away. Just clean them down every now and again.

It is the tiny particles that get thru which do the damage to pumps and bits. I don't have a solution to stainless or non ferrous, but anything that can be done all helps.

Also make sure your draw tube is about 1/3rd away from the bottom of the bucket, that way, any heavy stuff will settle out, and you won't be pulling it into your pump. Scrape the settled crap out every so often.

John

[SPiN Racing]

 Oh yes thanks!!

I will put a magnet down there and get it in the fluid.

Works well

Spun a piece of metal tonight to make a small spacer for seating lug studs in a RX-7 rearend tonight. Need to think ahead and snap some pics of the little stuff.