Subject: Metal cutting Lube/coolant again

From: [email-masked] (Randy Lee)
Date: Thu, 15 Sep 94 15:07:41 GMT

Gang,

there seems to be 4 basic systems for Coolant/lube of metalworking

1. Flood cooling with sol. oil systems
2. Mist systems with similar. compounds
3. Micro Drop systems which I 'think' use the tap magic sorts of high
evaporation rate coolants.
4. air blast units that use the refrigeration. effect of expanding
compressed air.

I have seen the air cool units in action... they have several large problems...

1. they don't lube only cool... hence don't address the main reason for me
of using a coolant/lube... surface finish. I like parts that should have a
tooled surface to have one and not a polished one.

2. they blow chips all over the shop. not a problem in an industrial setting
but in a home shop....

3. they need large amounts of air... far more than my 3.3cfm at 90psi
compressor can provide.

both my lathe and my Bridgeport are well designed to run with flood coolant
systems (large deep chip pan on the lathe with a good back splash... the
mill has coolant recovery as a part of the table design and good splash
shields) but aside for mess of flood systems I don't like the smell of the
mouse milk they use... esp after it is a few weeks old... the shaper has no
provision for coolant recovery. the same for the drill press. the horizontal
mill has a mini version of the B-port system (drain in the table and tray
type base)

right now I use tap magic type materials out of the can via the plastic drip
spout... this is wasteful and expensive (about $6.00 to $10.00 a week on the
stuff even using the MSC clone version) and on the shaper esp it is hard to
control but has the advantage of a pleasant smell and no mess to clean up as
it evaporates quickly... surface finish is great if I do my part and tool
life is greatly extended... but the system is clumsy.

hence my question for anyone using a micro drop system (which I "think" uses
the tapmagic type of fluid) or a mist system which I think uses versions of
the mouse milk fluids (don't know about this but they use a 33/1 dilution
system and I don't think they use recovery... I am concerned about the
amount of water vapor that a mist system would release in the shop
environment as well with these...

so what I really want is info on the micro drop system... any one ever used
it? is it worth the $200+ price (on sale this month from Wholesale tool)

~R
________________________________________________________
Randolph Lee    [email-masked]  [email-masked]
Tag space For rent!.... Inquire Above for atractive rates!

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From: [email-masked] (Randy Lee)
Date: Sun, 25 Sep 94 14:31:46 GMT

In Article <[email-masked]>, [email-masked] (Greg Dermer) wrote:

>Of course the group here on r.c.m is the best, most congenial etc etc but
>what other forums are out there in cyberspace that have metalworking
>related discussions.  Evidently compuserve has something called LEAP (?);
>what's there?  Any others?
>
>Greg (never used anything but Internet) Dermer
>
>[email-masked]

Greg, the r.c.m is by far the best that I have found!(it is also the nicest
place that I have found on the USENET... amazingly free of the crazies and
trolls that seem to prevade much of the net... On the internet there is a
sci.engr.mech section in USENET that I have not found to be too friendly it
seems to have a closed club feel to it machine tool working questions I have
asked there as a HSM have not been responded to... I no longer sub. and have
not looked in for 4 or 5 months... 

Metalworking is talked about on Compuserve in 3 places that I have found:
note that CI$ forums are not yet accesable through the internet... They say
some time next year and a charge will of course be levied to access CI$
forums at that time. for now you must join CI$ and the the word in all caps
used as a 'GO' word as in 'GO CRAFTS' will take you to the forum in question.

1.  the 'other crafts'section of the CRAFTS forum (soon to have a shared
section with jewelery it looks like.... this section was very active (10 to
15 msg a day) in june and july but has dropped off to about 10 msgs a week
on metalworking)

2. The Live Steam Section of the TRAINNET forum (this seems to run about 10
msgs a week on the building of both loco(mostly) and stationary/marine steam
engines. activity here seems to pickup in the winter months.)

3. The LEAP forum for engineering profesionals. this is the CI$ version of
sci.engr.mech but is a much nice place... full of profesionals willing to
help a HSM as can be seen fron the X-posts that I have put up about
MicroDrop systems.

I have not found anything on AOL or e-world of much interest to a HSM. 

I wonder if there are any WWW pages that would interest a HSM that might be
fun to mosaic to?
________________________________________________________
Randolph Lee    [email-masked]  [email-masked]
Tag space For rent!.... Inquire Above for atractive rates!

---

From: [email-masked] (Randy Lee)
Date: Sun, 25 Sep 94 14:32:00 GMT

In Article <[email-masked]>, PAUL <[email-masked]> wrote:
>Don't waste your money! get a one gallon plastic jug, with a cap. Drill a 1/4
>and a 1/8 hole in the cap. find some poly-flo tubing and place it through the
>1/4 inch hole. 

SNIP

Paul, I have used your type of system for years and for the HSM work I was
doing (the 2 nights a week sort of thing) it worked ok... but now I am
taking on more and more outside job work hence this thread...

One problem that has come up is that the promo price from wholesale tool on
these items has ended...  In my case Wholesale tool contacted me 4 days
after accepting my order at $210 to tell me they were out of stock and the
next batch due in 3 weeks would be at $310... I went a bit balistic and
asked to talk to the dept. boss and finaly worked out a comp... they had a
brand new 2 line unit that had been returned for leaking gasket they have
sent it to trico in my name for warenty repairs and either that unit or a
new one will be sent directly to me from trico... they have charged me $150
including S&H... I found this to be a fair settelment and I will report here
on my use of the system

By email I learn of someone who called too late to get the sale price from
Wholesale tool but by contacting MSC and quoting the wholesale tool add
price a reader of this thread was able to get quite close to the sale price
(I think 234 was what he got).

Here is annother response from the LEAP forum on CI$ I find it of interest
that the response on micro drop systems has been compleatly positive from
the profesionals that hangout there... in addition to the 3 public msg that
I have reposted here I have had more than 10 private Emails that all say
about the same thing...

Message: #29843, S/2  Manufacturing
Date:    Sat, Sep 24, 1994 12:18:06 AM
Subject: #29573-Metal cuting coolant
From:    William A. Triffet 74401,710
To:      Randy Lee 72405,32 (deletable)

Randy,

I'm a prototype machinist in a medical device company ( we make pacemakers).
After 18 years of oily, stinky, unhealthfull, and messy coolents I've come
to really like the Trico Micro Drop unit. It uses a vegetable based oil. It
operates under very low pressure - maybe 30psi. While it can't replace a
flood system for big hogouts, it works just fine for 90% of what we do. The
best part is it dosen't fog up the air with clouds of harmful fumes! I even
use it on a Bostomatic 4axis machining center. Who knows, I might be one of
the first machinist in history to see my retirement healthy.<BG> Hope this
helps.

Bill