Hey All,

Anyone have a good design for a cheap home built coolant skimmer?

I am thinking of a small 110 volt motor that way i can plug it in at night when i go home. Any one build or design one of these? it should be easy but the one thing i am not sure of is what do they use for the belt to be able to pick up the oil but still be able to scrap it off.

Thanks for any ideas you may have..

Hi
Not a good idea to leave skimmen ON over night.
1 pint @ Hr ,more or less, quite the mess.
Ben there , that,
Bear

Urethane timing belt, two pulleys, a barbeque rotisserie motor, V-shaped scraper trough, a bucket, and some scrap metal to put it all together.

Hi, the last firm I worked for before I retired had a big old multi spindle lathe, and attached to it was a skimmer.

The design had a disc made from Perspex or any other plastic sheet, and this rotated slowly in a trough of coolant.

The oil on the top of the coolant stuck to the perspex and as it went round a couple of wipers at the top scraped the oil off and led it to a trough to the side.

The disc rotated slowly, about 3 or four rev per minute, all day long, driven through a small windscreen wiper type motor and worm drive gearbox.

The hardest part is to make the disc rotate slowly enough, needs a small worm drive gear box.
Ian.

The design had a disc made from Perspex or any other plastic sheet, and this rotated slowly in a trough of coolant.

I wonder if a couple (a few? ) of old CDs would work ?

Hi Bill, the problem would be surface area, and the other side of the CD being a lable, but on a small scale it would probably work with two CD's back to back.

I suppose you could use an old 78 rpm record, but it really needs a smooth surface area for the oil to stick to without attracting the coolant too, as the disc dips into the coolant/oil mix, and running slowly so's the coolant can run off and leave the oil on the disc surface.

I reckon a windscreen wiper motor complete with gearbox would do the job, as long as it could be made to run at about 4 or 5 rpm, perhaps through a diode bank to give resistance control to the field coils.
Ian.