There are many soluble oils. You can find several (at least) at the local
oil company - not auto-parts - but the guys with tanks in the back and
often have rail road access. They have the books and connections.

But many are available from MSCdirect and other suppliers. Trim Sov is one
I use on my saw and it is a good general purpose oil.

Martin

Wild_Bill wrote:
I'm speculating for these comments, because I don't know what is the
best product that would/could be used with your machine (or why Taig
says not to use water-based coolant/lubricants).

I think there is a difference between water-based and water soluble
lubricants, which could be explored.

There are some glycerine-based cutting lubricants available, which are
water soluable, which doesn't mean I'm suggesting you use water on your
machine, but the water soluble characteristic is very favorable since
the workpieces can be rinsed clean with water.

There are likely to be some Taig user groups on Yahoo or other forums
(or you could start one). I would imagine that some users are using
something other than WD-40 (although I realize some folks believe there
isn't anything better for any application that's better than WD-40)

I would be reluctant to use a hydrocarbon cleaning solvent-type coolant
for machining, adding some to a bandsaw cut is one thing, but having a
volume of it sitting around (and pooling in a chip pan, on shop rags
etc) doesn't sound very good to me.
I wouldn't consider automatic transmission fluid to be the ultimate
answer either. There are probably other DIY concoctions being used that
probably don't have very good properties for cutting metal.

I believe WD-40 is primarily made up of Stoddard solvent, or something
very much like Stoddard, which is a great cleaning solvent, BTW.

Glycerine-based cutting lubricants are going to be non-flammable, unlike
WD-40 or Stoddard.
One of the glycerine products that I'm familiar with is Lenox Pro Tool
Lube. I've used it a lot, and it's performance is great. It's viscosity
is more like liquid dish soap, not as thin as water or WD-40 (although
it can be thinned).
The only disadvantage of the PTL is that it can soften the paint that's
on my machines from China, not immediately on contact, but it will if I
let a dribble sit on the paint for a while. I don't consider this to be
a serious problem though.

Aside from flooding, squirting or spraying methods, you might want to
consider gravity. Having a steady, adjustable drip just ahead of the
tool path (or directed directly onto the cutting tool) shouldn't be too
difficult to set up.

A recovery tank would hold the run-off, lifting and pouring or a simple
hand pump could be used for transferring enough liquid for a work
session up to the delivery vessel.
One of the squeeze-bulb hand pumps used for priming an outboard boat
motor might suffice if there aren't any chips suspended in the liquid.

The flooding process works very well for carrying chips away from the
cutting tool though, which definitely has benefits.