On Sun, 18 Apr 2021 13:02:50 -0700, 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. I was buying 20-50 gallons at a time from the local
grocery stores of whatever their store brand was when I first started.
I didn't really want to be dependent on a water service to fill a tank,
and I'm not sure they provide distilled as a service anyway. I think
for those services its all RO filtered for drinking water.

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.

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 and the reservoir is about the right size to mix up
one bucket at a time. If I remembered to fill and premix buckets even
on days I am not running all the machines all day I had "enough" coolant
on hand. I've been using it for several years.

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. I
spent this morning cleaning it out, and replaced the fuse and it seems
to be working ok again. I need to clean out the evaporator tank more
often I think.

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.

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

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.

Small shop, 30 gallons in Mill, about 35 in Lathe, 2 gallons in
horizontal saw.

I use tap water, the city sources its water from the river. I never
had any problems I could blame on the coolant or the water.

I never run any job long enough to test tool life, I can run SS,
aluminum and carbon steel all in the same day.

Randy
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Randy