Hi Clive,
I don't have any gauze or screen on my coolant pump intake it would
be a bad place to have it whatever type of coolant /cutting oil
used as the small area can soon become clogged.
I have 4 machines which use the neat cutting oil and all of them
have a primary catch tank to trap washed down swarf, the oil travels
over a weir then into the bottom tank which remains clean.
With your Warco HV machine it has a very small tray at the base
much the same as my mill ,i use some made up extension wings
to catch overspills i think you would probably need something similar.
An overtray could incorporate a primary catch tank and would avoid
a difficult job cleaning out the main coolant tank .
As Nick_G posted.
"I find that if a good quality soluble is used the water evaporates away
and leaves a nice thin film of protective oil on the machine".
This or course does not take account of the evaporated water that
has disappeared into thin air only to magically reappear now completely
devoid of any rust inhibiting properties on every metal object .
As Neil Lickfold posted
"Clive, the best and longest lasting machines I have worked on, never used soluble oil on the machines.They used straight cutting oils, that were thin
like a honing oil. The machines that used soluble oils had wear in them as to the almost new condition of the cutting oil machines. I'm a convert of
using oils and not water based coolants now ".
I would agree with that ,my Warco lathe i have had for eighteen years and
has used neat cutting oil in all of that time ,the slideways are still like new.
If you go with cheap coolant, ie soluble coolant and by cheap i mean
on a volume by cost basis it could be dearer in the long run.Just recently
a thread on a Myford 280 lathe the owner seems to be faced with a with
a bill for about £900 .00 to have the bed reground ,whilst we don't know the
history of the machine the most likely cause is poor maintenance / lubrication.
John