Coolant system for milling machine

Got a lot of jig making to do in mild steel atm for work and am looking to speed production up as its taking an age to mill mild steel flat so was looking to fit a coolat system to the mill to help keep the cutter cool. Whats the best way to go about this?

Don't know anything about cooling

However

You could use a shaper which can almost be as good as a grinder when flatness is critical

One of those flat magnetic chucks may also be handy for speeding up the work

I have read about high speed milling cutters which don't use cooling nowadays, I think it's the car industry which uses them. (Not cheap of course.)

gl

Hi Alan .

What you set up depends on a few things :

What sort of set up do you have for a Mill ?

Does it have a chip/coolant tray or is it just mounted to a bench ?

What tooling are you using , HSS ot TC orTCT .

Are you facing/surfacing or milling slots or side milling ?

How much cash you want to spend and how often will it get used .

Ok so if you're using HSS ( i suspect ) and just facing /surfacing - a drip feed is all you need but if you are milling slots some more flow to wash away the chips can help .

If your mill is mounted directly to a bench without a tray you won't want anything more than few drops here and there as it will run everywhere .

If you are facing and can use carbide cutters (TC) or carbide tipped (TCT) i wouldn't bother with coolant .

A simple set up is a plastic drink bottle, plastic hose (fish tank airaitor hose works well ) and a small valve (from fishtank airaitor system as well) just fill the bottle then hang it up over the mill and use gravity for drip feed , there are some complete drip feed units available from machinery suppliers so you don't need to make one up if you don't mind forking out the cash for a bottle and a hose .

If you need a flood system then a system specifically designed for this is the way to go and your local machinery supply shop will set you up but $$$$

For very small work i just use an old SINGER OIL bottle filled with some made up coolant and drip it onto the work by hand as i feed the cutter along , also good for the drilling machine .

I don't know what the new cutting fluids are like for lifespan ? when i used to operate roll grinders about 20yrs ago we had to empty every tank for Christmas as the 4 week holiday was long enough for it to go rancid .

And watch out for the splash ! i ended up making some removable gaurds to stop coolant getting away from me especially with small cutters running at a higher speed .

Ian

Knuckeled down the other night and sharpened the carbide face mill that came with the machine the previous owner had replaced a hss face mills cutters with what I suppose were old braized carbide lathe tools. But he must have hit something hard with it as they were smashed to bits on the tips so 2hours of grinding later and we had a set of tools good enough to get the job done. Must admit they went through the steel like butter 30/40 thou a time no trouble no coolant needed. So I will just switch to carbide for mild now.

My milling machine is basically an axminster zx25. When funds permit I shall seek something bigger as this would make a fine hobby machine but when im trying to earn a living its not earning its corn

I have set up a simple flood coolant system on my SX3 mill using a 5 litre plasic bottle as a tank and a car winscreen washer pump. Power is from a 12v battery and a plug-pack charger.

You will need to make some sort of tray and splash guards to collect the used coolant and drain it back to the tank.

PaulJ

I think the time a plumb for a collant system and a decent dro for it i can buy a larger 3ph machine equipped with both. Also found cutting with carbide tools at reasonable speeds gave a very good finish (well for a jig) and required no cooling.

2hours of grinding later...

I assumed it was a difficult job, then decided to say, Just in case you are using a stone which is meant to sharpen hss

Are you using a green grit wheel?

It only takes a minute to do a carbide tool on a green grit wheel if your angles are easy

They ground pretty fast but they were in such a terrable state I had to grind masses off. If I had any other choice I would have just binned them.