Karl Townsend wrote:
"John R. Carroll" wrote in message
...
Winston wrote:
On 4/21/2010 7:48 AM, Bob La Londe wrote:
Ok... my little toy mill is never going to scream like some of
those machines featured in YouTube videos,

(...)

I am talking an order of magnitude difference. We aren't talking
a 20-50% improvement in efficiency, but in this particular
experiment nearly 2000%.

The active ingredient in WD appears to be Mineral Spirits available
in 1 gallon jugs for less than 10 bucks from the big box stores.

So less than 8c/oz vs 30c/oz. for WD.

I would be very interested in your test results using Mineral
Spirits as a cutting fluid for aluminum.


Kerosene will work equally well.



John, I think I remember you're a pro machinist from AMC. I used to
lurk there till the OT made it useless. Anyway, I use toilet water
(water and 6% soluble oil) on AL - flood on the CHNC lathe and heavy
zero fog mist on the mill. I used to use oil in the CHNC but didn't
like the mess in the shop. Just curious, does anybody use kerosene in
machines like this? It would slowly evaporate and not leave an oil
film on everything.

Vegetable oil or, if you can get it, real cutting oil.

http://www.blaser.com/index.cfm?type=land

See Vascomill 22. It's one of the premium cutting oils for milling machines
these days.
You can't really convert a machine from soluble to oil, however. Not without
some major contortions.
Even then, a big milling machine will take a couple hundred gallons and VM22
is expensive, about $20.00 per gallon.
You would want to clean it and dry everything our disassembled just to get
started.

Wes could probably tell you what they use on his job.

--
John R. Carroll