Cutting fluids

Does anyone have a list of recommended lubricants for drilling, reaming and tapping different materials. (steel, S/S, bronze, brass, gun metal, cast iron, aluminium, etc.)

Can these be used for milling and turning or are they different ?

Also homegrown substitutes if you do not have commercial products.

Paraffin for aluminium. Cast Iron & brass dry. Neatcut from Warco for steel. Also Rocol Cleancut - expensive though.

Same for both lathe & mill.

Regards,

Peter G. Shaw

Rocol RTD compound. (RTD = reaming, tapping, drilling) It's a sticky paste so retains the swarf. Great for tapping and threading but not suitable for milling and turning. Use Pter's recommendations for that or soluble oil for steel.

Russell

Cast iron, brass and plastics dry for all operations. For general machining I use Biokool14, a soluble oil, from Hallett Oils. Most of my machines have flood coolant systems built in. Specifics as follows:

General turning: dry in all materials unless I'm using HSS tooling, or parting off where I always use coolant. For drilling in the lathe with HSS drills I run coolant.

Repetition lathe: coolant, to get rid of the swarf.

Vertical mill: Mostly dry as I use carbide tooling.

Horizontal mill: Mostly with coolant, as I use HSS cutters.

CNC mill: I always use coolant, except CI, B and plastic, for swarf removal rather than cooling

Cylindrical grinding: always with coolant

Surface grinding: Dry, no coolant system

Hand tapping: in stainless steel and/or taps over 1/2" I use Rocol RTD

Machine tapping: with coolant, except for aluminium where I use WD40

Regards,

Andrew

for all drilling, tapping and reaming on all the materials you mention except cast iron which is machined dry ( in industary it is sometimes cooled by compressed air) try Tapmatic gold, you should be able to trace in online, a 500ml can will last years as you only need a couple of drops per application.

Try "TREFOLEX", depends how old you are but a can of the stuff could last you upto a lifetime

It's a green paste.

Len. P.

Agree with Andrew except for the advice to machine all plastics dry. For Perspex I would use Paraffin.

Norman

I use a parafin/ engine oil mix for all general turning etc. applied by brush or oil drip can,( except c/iron and brass.) Trefolex for tapping , drilling and sawing harder steels. Of course if you have pumped cooling use soluble oil (suds).

Neat cutting oil, CORA B from Morris's, for steel and bronze. I also find it better than paraffin or white spirit for good aluminium. Brass and cast iron dry although white spirit appears to reduce the squeeling noise made by brass during turning. Rocol RTD liquid is better than RTD paste for tapping steel.

JA

Thanks for the feedback, especially the common name products. I live in Australia and we do not have some of the brand names mentioned.

Regards, Paul.

hi i use Brylcreem Hair Creem for all aluminium as it is made from liquid paraffin oil and it sticks the the taps & reamers and it is cheep

ty Kevin

Templex Blue Foam tapping and cutting, aerosol liquid, very clean and excellent material on all except S/S.

Castrol Hysol Excell for all my steel turning / milling, Castrol Varicut paste for tapping Even my slideway lubricants are Castrol [Magnaglide] as is the gear boxes on my lathes and milling

machine [Castrol Hyspin] as you can tell I am a great believer in Castrol products.

I've used 'neatcut' fromm Reeves and also a neat cutting oil from Machine Mart that seems to be a different formulation now from what it used to be, brush applied. All seem to work and make a notiecable difference for turning, milling, drilling and tapping.

Paraffin and WD40 work on aluminium alloy.

Main problem with any neat lubricant is smoking when taking heavy cuts. I've been know to fill the workshop wityh blue smoke when cutting stronger steels - not just by burning out motors! Not healthy, and one resons I installed an extractor fan.

Neil

For those not in rthe UK ( proberbly know), for parafin read kerosene. Diesil would do instead I imagine, and at the price of kero in NZ, would be preferable. Ian S C

Thanks for the tips on using alternatinve products especially using Brylcreem. Have not used it for 50 years when it was the fashion to have oily hair.

Lard is useful for tapping hard materiels and Rape Oil is also good, this can be bought as cooking oil.

Clive

Ian SC, When you say Kerosene, do you think I could Jet A1 aviation fuel?

Amazing what folks know on this forum.

Neat oils have several functions - lubricating, stopping things sticking to the cutter and colling tehe cutting edges. 'Make do' solution are often really good at one or two of these things and will suit particular tasks, custom oils will, hopefully, be good at all three and suit most purposes.

Even spit can work for some materials, and another good tip I saw recently was a wax candle on a bandsaw, placed so teh blade cut through it as it sank into the work.

Neil

Essentially Jet A1 is kerosene plus a few additives. Usually it will have more aromatics (up to about 20%) than domestic kerosene. For machining you could use it instead of kerosene. However aromatics are linked with cancer.

JA