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How Much Does Your Shop Spend On Coolant?


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Interesting topic. Just as a matter of interest in Europe they have more stringent environmental regs for hazardous waste than we do, and when they first came out the machining community was up in arms, what ever shall we do?

Then it dawned on them that getting rid of coolant altogether was a money making opportunity and now they machine mostly without coolant. So they removed the cost of the coolant and the cost of disposal/recycling.....

And for the really tough jobs they use misters carefully calibrated so that the coolant is totally evaporated from the heat generated by the cut, leaving dry chips.....they are years ahead of us on this one.....

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Nick - I wasn't :lol:

Total submersion all the time - keep everything wet and for us, tool life was better than dry cutting. It also helped with flushing chips as we made a lot of deep electronic enclosures - on verticals...

Never wanted to try misters - didn't like the idea of atomisation in the air.

Regarding coolant - my shop had 11cncs (4x #40 10k rpm, 3x #30 15krpm, 2x cnc lathes, 1x prototrak mill, 1x prototrak lathe). We ran Houghtons and it was £950 per drum.

We ran at 10% (80+% ally with from tapping from M1.6 upwards, 15% stainless, 5% yellow and titanium) which helped the tool life and small threads. I just checked and we used to buy 3 barrels a year.

Consumable tooling spend was around £2k per month sometimes less (for cutters/drills/taps/tips). So say £20k P/A and coolant £3k

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IIRC we were paying $800 or so a barrel 1 to 1.5 barrels a month.  I think your costs seem pretty much in line, ours were closer to 20% of consumable tooling cost.

Short of cutting Titanium,  99% of what is out there can be done dry.  I ended up mostly dry in my days at the litter box, but I had a hard time overcoming chip welding issues during 5xd drilling, and finish boring, as the structural steel we were machining liked to stick to itself with high machining speeds.  The boring was acctually fine, except when you went through a stacked plate intersection, 100% failure dry, chips would weld and chip the insert every time.  With coolant, you would get weeks of life.  Never once though did it seem like surface footage was an issue for the tools without coolant.  Mist through the tool worked well, but wasn't 100% reliable, nor was it properly implemented as it didn't have a tube in tube design all the way to the spindle connection.  Getting rid of coolant though would have been the holy grail though as we had welding operations after machining, cleanup was a bitch and was very labor intensive (likely 50% of our labor needed), and we carried out ton's of coolant, probably 80 - 100 gallons of makeup per day.  Our Japan colleagues were cutting dry, but their cycle times were 2x longer than ours, and they were using solid carbide drills. as the tip style drill bodies couldn't put up with the heat long term.

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11 minutes ago, huskermcdoogle said:

IIRC we were paying $800 or so a barrel 1 to 1.5 barrels a month.  I think your costs seem pretty much in line, ours were closer to 20% of consumable tooling cost.

Short of cutting Titanium,  99% of what is out there can be done dry.  I ended up mostly dry in my days at the litter box, but I had a hard time overcoming chip welding issues during 5xd drilling, and finish boring, as the structural steel we were machining liked to stick to itself with high machining speeds.  The boring was acctually fine, except when you went through a stacked plate intersection, 100% failure dry, chips would weld and chip the insert every time.  With coolant, you would get weeks of life.  Never once though did it seem like surface footage was an issue for the tools without coolant.  Mist through the tool worked well, but wasn't 100% reliable, nor was it properly implemented as it didn't have a tube in tube design all the way to the spindle connection.  Getting rid of coolant though would have been the holy grail though as we had welding operations after machining, cleanup was a bitch and was very labor intensive (likely 50% of our labor needed), and we carried out ton's of coolant, probably 80 - 100 gallons of makeup per day.  Our Japan colleagues were cutting dry, but their cycle times were 2x longer than ours, and they were using solid carbide drills. as the tip style drill bodies couldn't put up with the heat long term.

99% can be done dry??? Really 

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I would love the idea of dry cutting but the question I have is chip management. I'm working on a project right now in a twin turret, twin spindle lathe making aluminum parts that require super fine finishes. the parts are to be loaded and run unattended by robot. Without 1000psi coolant I couldn't imagine how this could be accomplished. The chips build up so fast. We are also setting up mill parts that require the same finishes and have a lot of material removal. If we didn't have all the coolant wash down we would have to have and operator there constantly blowing chips from the sides of the machines into the augers. 

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On ‎3‎/‎2‎/‎2018 at 2:19 PM, Newbeeee™ said:

It also helped with flushing chips as we made a lot of deep electronic enclosures - on verticals...

 

On ‎3‎/‎3‎/‎2018 at 6:37 AM, YoDoug® said:

I would love the idea of dry cutting but the question I have is chip management.

Chip control is definitely an issue, and I think the flood coolant definitely provides a more stable environment, unless your air and/or mister system is carefully controlled and maintained.....chips sticking to the machine in unwanted areas  however is also the result of using coolant, they are sticking to evaporated coolant so kind of a vicious circle there.....

Don't get me wrong I don't come to work every day trying to find ways of eliminating coolant, however it is probably used more than necessary..

On ‎3‎/‎2‎/‎2018 at 2:19 PM, Newbeeee™ said:

It also helped with flushing chips as we made a lot of deep electronic enclosures - on verticals...

One of the main reasons the HMC configuration took hold......

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On 3/3/2018 at 8:37 AM, YoDoug® said:

Without 1000psi coolant I couldn't imagine how this could be accomplished.

Having a machine designed for dry cutting is key here.  Most machines out there today aren't well suited for it.  Very few VMC's are capable of lights out machining without coolant flushing chips out of the enclosure or work area.  Some HMC's are pretty darn close, but likely still have some weak areas.  A few machines that come to mind that would be well suited to dry machining would be, say the Grob Universals, or for a case of a VMC that is setup to handle chip evacuation well, the DMG CMX 1100V.  Obviously the key is steepness and simplicity of the way covers and enclosure below the cutting area.  Getting chips out of the cutting zone itself, well, all VMC's are challenged in this department dry.

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5 hours ago, nickbe10 said:

One of the main reasons the HMC configuration took hold......

There was  a couple of jobs ran (1st op) in a vice on a 4th to allow +/- indexes to machine the other faces.

This was handy because we could A180 G4P3000 A0 and continue! 

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There is definitely more to this than simply turning off the coolant. One of the first examples I saw was machining Titanium using the mist technique. It was done for an MSc thesis (in Germany if my memory serves) back in the mid 90s. About 10 pages of heat transfer calculations and a mist system that made anything that I ever ran look like something from toys 'r us.....

Don't know what I would do for 12D deep holes in Inconel/SS/Ti........

And if you could really keep the coolant out of the machine air blast might do for chip control.......

But this would definitely involve a complete re think compared to what is "generally accepted" practice, from the bottom up

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1 hour ago, nickbe10 said:

But this would definitely involve a complete re think compared to what is "generally accepted" practice, from the bottom up

Certainly, I have always loved it when upper management or a rep come through and say, "well all you gotta do is".  The subject of dry cutting is far deeper than it looks on the surface, I'm waiting for the day that our regulations push more and more shops to change the "generally accepted" practices more toward dry, though it seems it is happening in places, finally people are seeing the benefits when using HSM techniques.

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I just switch to a soluble oil from years of using a semi synthetic.

it might not be as good at rejecting tramp oils, but going from $115 per pail to $75..................

Rust was also an issue with semi syn.

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On 3/3/2018 at 8:37 AM, YoDoug® said:

I would love the idea of dry cutting but the question I have is chip management. I'm working on a project right now in a twin turret, twin spindle lathe making aluminum parts that require super fine finishes. the parts are to be loaded and run unattended by robot. Without 1000psi coolant I couldn't imagine how this could be accomplished. The chips build up so fast. We are also setting up mill parts that require the same finishes and have a lot of material removal. If we didn't have all the coolant wash down we would have to have and operator there constantly blowing chips from the sides of the machines into the augers. 

What  Robot are  you going with? I see there is  software out there for Robots as well have been curious how well they work, seem to be in the early stages....

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On 3/3/2018 at 9:37 AM, YoDoug® said:

I would love the idea of dry cutting but the question I have is chip management. I'm working on a project right now in a twin turret, twin spindle lathe making aluminum parts that require super fine finishes. the parts are to be loaded and run unattended by robot. Without 1000psi coolant I couldn't imagine how this could be accomplished. The chips build up so fast. We are also setting up mill parts that require the same finishes and have a lot of material removal. If we didn't have all the coolant wash down we would have to have and operator there constantly blowing chips from the sides of the machines into the augers. 

The best setups I've seen use Air Knifes, placed as you would "chip wash down" sprayers. This was on a system cutting Ti, that was using Liquid Nitrogen - Thru Spindle. It was on a Mill-Turn machine, VTL-style. They chose the Liquid Nitrogen because it leaves zero residue on the parts, and allows almost double the SFM compared to flood coolant at 12%. In addition, when turning on this machine, with LN directed at the turning insert tip, the chip control is fantastic. Even in materials that tend to be stringy, with poor chip breaking control (rat's nest), the combination of high heat generated in the cutting zone (800-1000 SFM in 6AL-4V), and the rapid transition to far below freezing, gives you chips that break quickly and consistently.

So the secret to running without coolant is using compressed air to push the chips into the chip trough.

For anyone considering LN, just remember that you should run a ducted fan to the outside of the building to vent the machine's enclosure. Also, it is wise to let the system stop pumping LN for a couple minutes before you enter the workspace. The nitrogen is already 78% of the air you breath, so it is harmless, unless it happens to displace the 21% of atmospheric oxygen, which could technically make you pass out and kill you. But with the proper care, it is a much better system than using liquid coolant. 

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16 hours ago, bushpiolt said:

What  Robot are  you going with? I see there is  software out there for Robots as well have been curious how well they work, seem to be in the early stages....

We are probably going to go with Kuka for robots. They seem to be the easiest to integrate a six axis force sensor for polishing.

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10 hours ago, Colin Gilchrist said:

The best setups I've seen use Air Knifes, placed as you would "chip wash down" sprayers. This was on a system cutting Ti, that was using Liquid Nitrogen - Thru Spindle. It was on a Mill-Turn machine, VTL-style. They chose the Liquid Nitrogen because it leaves zero residue on the parts, and allows almost double the SFM compared to flood coolant at 12%. In addition, when turning on this machine, with LN directed at the turning insert tip, the chip control is fantastic. Even in materials that tend to be stringy, with poor chip breaking control (rat's nest), the combination of high heat generated in the cutting zone (800-1000 SFM in 6AL-4V), and the rapid transition to far below freezing, gives you chips that break quickly and consistently.

So the secret to running without coolant is using compressed air to push the chips into the chip trough.

For anyone considering LN, just remember that you should run a ducted fan to the outside of the building to vent the machine's enclosure. Also, it is wise to let the system stop pumping LN for a couple minutes before you enter the workspace. The nitrogen is already 78% of the air you breath, so it is harmless, unless it happens to displace the 21% of atmospheric oxygen, which could technically make you pass out and kill you. But with the proper care, it is a much better system than using liquid coolant. 

I have seen an air knife tried for aluminum that was a catastrophic failure. In order to get the chips not to pile in the corners the air pressure had to turned up to the point that the light aluminum chips were flying around the machine like a debris in a hurricane. Then when the air was turned off they all fell back to the corners. Maybe more strategic placement of air would help solve that problem but, compressed air is not cheap. The cost of all that air would be crazy expensive just to be able to machine dry. 

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