Brown Gunky Residue – Dormer Supercut or El-Cheapo ISO-32?

[Jon GibbsParticipant @jongibbs59756]

I must admit I'm still quite new to this game and the first lot of cutting oil I bought was from Arc (Maxcut No 5) and it worked well but it did niff a bit. So much so the Missus complained. I also started to lubricate my ML7 with Arc's HLP-32.

As that ran out I bought some Dormer Supercut from my local steelstockists and it smells a bit better and seems to do a reasonable job – I'm now on the third bottle of the stuff which I use neat by brush or from the bottle. It's about the same cost, if not more money but is easier to get. I also recently switched to El-cheapo's ISO-32 at £10 per gallon – my old lathe pees oil from every orifice.

The problem I have is that I've noticed that my lathe saddle has started to stick when I get back to the lathe, until it gets oiled again and my taps have a gunky brown waxy residue on them with swarf mixed in. I thought it was rust to start with but it isn't – just brown waxy gunk.

Now my conclusion is that this gunk and stickiness is more likely to be the Dormer cutting oil rather than the cheap ISO32 but any other opinions? Does anyone use Supercut and like it. Are there any other cheap cutting oil options?

Many thanks

Jon

[Jon GibbsParticipant @jongibbs59756]

Which Cutting Oil?

[Roderick JenkinsParticipant @roderickjenkins93242]

Jon,

You might want to have a look at this thread

HTH

Rod

[Jon GibbsParticipant @jongibbs59756]

Thank you Rod,

I'll try that stuff – It sounds as if I might using too much anyway from the accounts of others.

Thanks again

Jon

[Anonymous]

Personally I wouldn't use either. Cutting oils don't do much cooling even with a flood. Dabbing it on here and there is likely to just end up as a sticky mess with no real benefit. I rarely use coolant on the lathe (mainly for HSS drilling and parting off) but when I do I use soluble cutting oil.

Andrew

Edited By Andrew Johnston on 07/01/2016 13:47:54

[Jon GibbsParticipant @jongibbs59756]

Thanks Andrew,

I should have said that I use exclusively HSS tooling.

I do cut dry as well sometimes but have noticed an improvement in finish with neat oil, especially when cutting and drilling tricky material like stainless.

Jon

[Anonymous]

While I tend to mostly use insert tooling on the centre lathe I exclusively use carbon steel and HSS tooling on the horizontal mill and repetition lathe. In both those cases I use coolant rather than cutting oil as I want to cool rather than lubricate. It also helps to wash away the swarf. I'd also rather have some steam in the workshop than smoke!

When I was experimenting with surface finish versus turning parameters I found that on stainless steel (303) a slightly better finish resulted when using coolant than not. So I don't think the better finish is necessarily exclusively due to the cutting oil?

Andrew

[Jon GibbsParticipant @jongibbs59756]

I'm sure you're right that there's more than one way to skin that cat. It was 304 stainless I was machining.

Rightly or wrongly I've taken the plunge and order 5l of Lubetech's finest on Rod's suggestion.

At £4 per litre delivered it's about 1/6th of the cost of the Dormer stuff I think was gunging everything up and about 1/5th of the cost of the Arc's Maxcut.

Jon

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