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Where does all my coolant go?

 
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franke
Master Poster


Joined: 26 Jun 2004
Posts: 161
Location: Indiana, USA

PostPosted: Wed Jun 30, 2004 12:04 pm    Post subject: Where does all my coolant go? Reply with quote

This week I have added 25 gallons of coolant to two machines (a Haas VF3 and a Fadal VMC15XT). It has not been hot enough to evaporate (my refractometer tells me the water to coolant ration is consistant) and there is no indication of spillage. If I had spilled 25 gallons of coolant there would have been a huge mess. I know I lose some blowing parts off but other than that, where the heck does it all go?
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dawn
Master Poster


Joined: 26 Jun 2004
Posts: 311
Location: Mishawaka, IN

PostPosted: Wed Jun 30, 2004 12:09 pm    Post subject: Reply with quote

You'd be surprised how much surface area that a bunch of chips have. Coat all those surfaces with a thin film of coolant and there it goes.
A chip wringer works, but you have to figure out how much the coolant is worth that you're throwing away.

Different coolants have different "cling" factors. Oil is usually the worst for sticking, then the soluables, the semi-synthetics, and last the full synthetics.

When we switched from a semi-synthetic (Trim Sol) to a full synthetic (Tru North Syn B) our coolant usage dropped about 30%.

Also:

Use what's called a chip spinner. The same would work for coolant. Personally I just cycle the chip conveyor and I'm about to put a timer on the relay to do this automatically.

And:

have a 1 yard dump hopper with a bung in the bottom corner. Set the other side up on a 4x4 and slip a work pan under the spout. I can usually reclaim (?) maybe 5 gallons (?) of coolant out of a yard this way. I then run it through my spinner (continuous Mayfran) which seperates the solids and gets a little bit of oil off the chips before I send it out to the hopper outside. Whatever comes out in the spinner goes to the oil slingers. (They never seem to mind.)

I doo not gravity drain my chips off of the oil slingers as those hoppers move around the shop too much. I will yield aboot 15 gallons of oil per yard - and I doo my best to not get any more oil in my chips than necessary too.

If the cost of replacement isn't enough - think aboot the environmental aspect of it too. I even spin my floor dry through a batch wringer - AND I will reuse it many times for emergency messes. Only use new after the mess is cleaned up. Works for me. !!!

Hope these help. Razz
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