Bob La Londe wrote:
At no time since I have started using water soluble coolant have I used
tap water. I am on a private well here and have modest to high
dissolved solids.

Makes sense, but it matters what those dissolved solids are. Carbonates
aren't so bad, sulfates a little worse. Chlorides are probably much worse,
but what are you trying to protect?

I looked at DI, but then I either have to recharge the DI system
periodically or I have to hire a service to handle it. I don't like
being dependent, and I wasn't 100% sure DI would do the trick.


Did you consider reverse osmosis?

I bought a small distiller. Really intended for residential cooking and
drinking. It produces about 11 gallons per day and has a 4.5 gallon
reservoir. It has worked for several years, but the setup and
production marginal. I can go through 10+ gallons a day if all the
machines are running

Is that purely evaporation, or is there some carry-over loss?

Last week it died, and I have been shut down. Well I have been shutdown
dealing with some family issues, but the distiller probably kept me from
running some short jobs. Ok. I really didn't want to work anyway.

Hope that situation improves. It's way more important than the water!

Some time back I contacted Master Chemical and asked what level of water
treatment I should have and they were pretty noncommittal so I just
stuck with distilled.

Sounds a bit like they don't think it matters much.....

I have to ask. For those of you using water soluble coolant in a small
shop are you using for your water source?


I'm talking out of turn here. I'm no machinist and haven't used water
soluble coolants since high school shop class.

P.S. I just ordered a new distiller with a 25 gallon reservoir. The
one I have will go on the shelf as a backup when the new one arrives.

It'd help to know what's in your water supply, how the water escapes
your coolant cycle and whether you care about water cost.

Resistance heated stills tend to be pretty expensive to run unless
electric power is close to free. Vapor compression or heat pump stills
would be better but still not good. A decent RO system will give about
10 PPM by itself, DI polishing seems unlikely to be useful in your case.
RO's by far the most cost-efficient, _provided_ your feed water doesn't
need a lot of pre-treatment, which depends on what's in it.

It'll be hard to give a useful answer without knowing a bit more about
the constraints you're working under.

HTH,

bob prohaska