How to clean mini mill coolant cheaply and easily?

[1ctoolfool]

Hi all,
How can i quickly and cheaply clean the thin layer of scum that floats in my coolant tank?
the mini mill tank is integrated into the base so it's kind of hard to get to.
please advise, thanks,
joe V.

[Dugg]

I recently cleaned up the Mini. We have a second punp installed that draws from the same sump as the coolant pump and is connect to a garden hose to clean the inside of the enclosure.

I used it to drain the entire coolant tank after removing the screen in the sump. Further flushing really cleaned it up and then fresh water and Handsterfers Coolant.

I'm thinking about using the clean up pump to periodically send the coolant through some sort of filter and separator arrangement.

Has anyone come up with a good chip fliter?

[jackson]

you can instal a skimer on them, and they do have cemicals that will treat it very well just ack you ever you get your coolnt from they should know

[Newby2]

Have you tried good old fashioned newspaper?....sucks up the oil but not the coolant
Steve

[Dugg]

My pal at NASA says they have a central collant tank with a fancy filtering and conditioning (?) system. They pump collant to the machine(s) to be used and pump it back to the central tank at the end of the run(s).

[dertsap]

http://www.zebraskimmers.com/oil_ski...skimmer.html#L

if you have an old bbq rotisserie motor you can easily make your own skimmer such as the one in the link

or news paper as been suggested earlier , cardboard works well also

[1ctoolfool]

please explain how to use the newspaper you mentioned. As a filter, like a coffee filter?
thanks,
joe V.

[dertsap]

just lay the paper to float on top and the oil soaks into it , once the paper is saturated use another piece until all the oil is out of the tank

[Geof]

The problem with the MiniMill is that the coolant tank is inside the base of the machine and the only access is a hole about 6 inches high and 12 inches wide in one side. Getting sheets of paper in would be difficult enough, pulling them out would drip oil all over the place. Mounting a skimmer is also impossible.

I use an oil extractor like the one in the picture to suck off the oil floating on the surface of the coolant after it has not been used over a weekend.

[widgitmaster]

I have two coolant systems in my shop, one for my lathe, and one for the bridgeport mill. They are both in 5 gallon buckets, with submersable pumps. The one under the lathe has an oil shimmer that has a nylon belt which reaches deep down to the bottom of the bucket. The lathe in my shop gets the most oil to prevent rust, as I spray it down daily with a presurized bottle. All that oil eventually ends up in the bucket too!

When the lathe is not in use, I run the skimmer to take the oil and gelly fish off the top of the coolant! The removed oil ends up in a one gallon container for disposal!

The mini mill is probably not as easily mantained by a skimmer, so I would suggest you use a second container like a 5-gallon bucket under the mini mill. Attach a hose to the drain on the mini mill's tank, and let the coolant flow to the bucket! The tank on the mini mill would just catch some of the solids!

Have fun!

[Geof]

Eric; The Haas MiniMill is maybe not so mini as you are thinking about. The bottom of the coolant tank is only about 4inches above the floor so draining the coolant out into a container is not possible. Also the capacity is something like 20 gallons.

[widgitmaster]

Yikes!
I stand corrected, thanks Geof!

The only other suggestion I have is a pneumatic vacuume pump, we had one mounted on top of a 55 gal drum, for rapid extraction of old coolant from all the VMC! Then the rolled the drum out back and drained it into a tank in the ground, where they paid somebody to haul it off when full!

The pneumatic vacuume pump was no bigger than an alternator on a car, but it sure draind the CNC machines in a hurry!

By the way, that Hass Mini-Mill is a nice machine, sure wish I had one!

Eric