Coolant

Lathe
1

Do any of you have trouble with coolant foaming? Tormach used to sell synthetic Koolcut?
Stuff was great. But no more.

1 Like
2

I’ve been using Qualichem 251C and have had no problems with that other than the paint starting to come off in the vicinity of welds, which might have more to do with the weld or paint rather than the coolant. No odors at all even though the lathe is infrequently used.

3

Never had foam. I usually run 3-5% inserts concentration. Over concentration is usually the cause of foam from what I know. If your under the max concentration it’s probably dirty sump, pump.

4

Hello @Bruce_Kuller

Coolant can start to foam for a number of reasons, there are a couple of things to check if you start to have this issue:

  1. The coolant reservoir is full and there are no loose fittings on the coolant lines. If the coolant pump starts to suck in air, then you will see foam start to form in the machine.
  2. The reservoir is cleaned regularly per the operator’s manual. A reservoir that is full of chips and debris can cause foam as well.
  3. If the coolant itself looks gross or significantly off-color, the tank should be dumped and refilled. When you check concentration with a refractometer, you are checking any and all chemicals or contaminants in the coolant. A refractometer will check for anything and everything that isn’t water, it doesn’t know the difference between coolant concentrate and way oil or dust particles. If your coolant is full of muck, then you can see a false positive when checking concentration levels.
  4. Some metals are harder on coolant then others, such as cast iron or copper. If you are machining either of those two metals I would recommend adding an anti-foam supplement to your coolant.

I hope this helps :grinning:

1 Like
5

Yeah all of that is good. It’s Fusion brand, cool 2240 from Amazon. Foams in the chip pan pretty well, at about 4% concentration. Of course that reduces cooling and lubrication during cutting. So, about 14oz of 3M antifoam concentrate helped quite a bit. I run Home Depot whole house filters with the yarn type particulate filter. I was wondering if maybe some binder in the filter was causing the problem. But didn’t have it before the coolant change. One thing I noticed, the metal in the lathe seems shinier, no corrosion on steel or otherwise.

I also bought a gallon of Trim E206. supposed to be good for aluminum and steel. We’ll see about brass. Usually you can’t leave any of these on alum or brass overnight. I’ll put the E206 in a some point down the road.