My Coolant System

[Tenson]

Well I did my first cut today using the coolant. Big smile!

I still have a leak in the bed to track down but I think I know where to look. Other than that, it worked really well!

This test cut was on a piece of cheap aluminium that comes on the front of a tweeter unit for some speakers I make. I've tried to cut it before with an occasional squirt of WD40 but it always jammed up the cutter. 3mm cutters broke and 6mm cutters jammed and went blunt.

In this picture you can see both climb and conventional sides of the test cut. This was a 3mm cutter without any finish pass. Just to the left corner you can also see the poor finish I was getting before I had coolant. I imagine with good quality aluminium plate, 6mm cutter and a finish pass I'll get a really beautiful cut!

I'll post some pictures of the actual set-up later. Just to say though, with a skirt on the spindle I actually get very little splash from the coolant, just lots flowing over the bed.

Oh and I have a mix of 90% water 10% oil.

[Tenson]

A video of stuff in action -