Overheard a guy in the break room talking about chip clearance and it made me switch up my whole approach

I was eating my sandwich and this old timer was telling someone how he runs his coolant at a higher pressure just to blast chips out of the cut zone. I always thought that was wasteful, figured the chips would just fall away on their own. But then I tried it on a tricky aluminum job this morning and my surface finish went from decent to mirror-like in one pass. Has anyone else had a simple coolant tweak change their game that much?

2 comments

2 Comments

lucas_carr249d ago

Ran my coolant at high pressure for a few years on the advice of an old mentor. Saw a lot of wasted coolant and ended up with more mist in the air than I liked. Switched back to a lower pressure flood and focused on nozzle placement instead. Got similar results on aluminum without the mess. Sometimes the simple tweak is just getting the stream exactly where it needs to go, not cranking the pressure up.

morgan.nancy9d ago

Sometimes the simple tweak" works for you, but high pressure has its place for deep hole drilling.