So I got a new CNC mill (pics and a quick review coming in a few days) and boy can that thing make chips.

I need un-attended cooling so that means a coolant needle stream (mightystream), micro-drop, or full flood cooling. I'm staying away from the mist systems due to the potential health issue.

Just cutting with a squirt bottle of Anchorlube, it seems to me that the best thing about flood cooling is that it washes the chips off of your work and you can spray down the machine to clean it. This all assumes a chip-screen thingy to catch the chips but let the coolant through.

So, is it worth moving to the flood cooling for the chip management and clean up factor?

Thanks!

-Jeff

It depends on the kind of work you are going to be doing, what material, and which tooling you use to machine it. If you are mostly playing with cast iron you won't need it. For some jobs in Aluminium 6061 we run them dry, but use an air blast for chip removal, with just a mist system set up for lubricating any taps that we run. For just about anything else use flood, preferably from several directions so that end mills in particular have continuous cooling and lube no matter what part of a profile you are milling. Invest in a decent flood system and it will pay for itself in extended tooling life and more consistent parts in no time at all. I would also recommend a belt or disc type coolant skimmer (Zebra make good ones) to keep your coolant in good nick.

Hope this helps, and good luck with it.

I'm just was wondering what is really the reason for using mist versus flood? The system I have I think can mist or flood (or just air I suppose since they are both regulated seperatley). What are the health concerns?

I just ran a job from alum extrusion. Tried running air blast & double mist. I could run rough cuts at 5000 rpm & 24 ipm feed max. Added flood coolant and ran at 35 ipm part run time went from 2 mins ea to 1.5 mins ea. 30 secs doesn't sound like much but over 5000 pieces= over 40 hours saved. Get flood it pays in the long run.

Cutting Tool Cooling totally depends on the situation.

Cutting 6061? Flood is the way to go. you'll keep the cutting edges from building up, and you'll get a way better finish and tool life.

Steel with Carbide insert cutters? Be careful. You may only require an air blast. This will reduce the chances of recutting chips(up to 5 times harder than the base material you are cuting) and reduces the effect of thermal cracking of the carbide inserts.

Stainless Steel? Keep it cool man. Flood it so you won't work harden your parts!!!

From my experience, mist is pretty much for machines that do not have a good way of managing coolant flow. No return, or resevoir to store the coolant.

Hope this helps you out.

Thanks everyone! I'll be building a table with sidewalls and a drain in the next few days.

-Jeff

How much and who makes is a decent/cheap flood cooling system?

The more I look at what I have, the less I think it will do anything but mist. It appears to be a nice mist system in it's day...but I definitely don't want oil airborne (it's in my home garage). I've seen mills like mine with a catch at the bottom - I'm assuming for flood cooling - and it looks like a farely straight forward project.

The coolant pump is cheap, some folks use submersible pond pumps. Even the commercial pumps are often by the same company--little giant.

With that said, you need a bunch of other stuff that you must like fabricate:

- Enclosure: Coolant can go everywhere without it. This is going to be custom for your machine. Here is a homebrew example on a very small mill I saw recently and thought was cool:

http://www.thewarfields.com/img/Toys/MachineTools/Workshop/GreatShops/DirtRider027.jpg

BTW, this fellow gets a nice surface finish with that rig:

http://www.thewarfields.com/img/Toys/MachineTools/Workshop/GreatShops/DirtRiderDucati.jpg

I gotta assume the flood cool is part of it.

- Nozzles: Most folks want the ziploc segmented stuff so you can aim as needed. Available at Enco. Can be bought with a mag base, but a permanent spindle clamp with several nozzles is better. Widgitmaster just made one recently I think:

http://www.cnczone.com/forums/showthread.php?t=24554

- Coolant Tank: 5 gallons minimum. Go get a big Rubbermaid tub or similar.

- Chip Filter: Dem chips will eat your pump alive. Lots of thoughts on this ranging from window screen to interesting ways of arranging the piping so the chips can't climb over a high lip, to using a metal coffee filter.

- Bubbler or Oil Skimmer: Left alone, oil gets into the coolant, sits on the top surface, blocks out the oxygen, and let's nasty bacteria grow underneath that stink to high heavens. The bubbler is just a fish tank bubbler. It's cheap, and it agitates the surface to keep the oil from blocking out the oxygen. A skimmer actually extracts the oil. Do a search, but the skimmers cost about $100.

- Miscellaneous valves and tubing.

Try the Industrial Hobbies site (click the movies link on their home page) to see what real flood coolant looks like.

Best,

BW

Thats a nice shop in Post number eight. Looks very well organised. Im jealous!

Hey uhm, BobWarfield:

Stop me if I'm wrong, but isn't that Ducatti part a photorendered cad model ?

Pardon me if you meant it as a joke - I suck at detecting sarcasm

Hey uhm, BobWarfield:

Stop me if I'm wrong, but isn't that Ducatti part a photorendered cad model ?

Pardon me if you meant it as a joke - I suck at detecting sarcasm

No it's a real part.

BW

As an update to the orginal thread, I've built a base and most of an enclosure, and am currently using a "mightystream" needle head and a gravity feed. I have a 10 gallon enco unit on order with a magnetic nozzle head. I'm using Rustlick WS-11.

I'll have construction pictures up sometime in the next two weeks.

-Jeff

I'm up and running with an Enco flood system. The Mighty stream only works if you have a high enough ceiling and good place to hang it.

Check out:

http://www.jeffalbro.net/cnc/flood-table/

-Jeff