Thread: todays tools gloat

Originally Posted by Pete O

One of these days I will add a coolant system to mine, the drain is a challenge because of the leg arrangement.

Pete I fitted coolant to mine a few years ago but no longer use it, it is a pain moving containers around trying to catch coolant as it runs down the inside of tubes and often out onto the floor. I use bi-metal blades now and just give it a squirt of oil every now and then.
I bought 2 bi-metal blades 2 or 3 years ago and i am still on the first blade so i would say more to pay per blade but i think cheaper overall as in that time i would have used maybe 1/2 a dozen carbon blades plus coolant.

Originally Posted by Pete O;[URL="tel:1997927"

1997927[/URL]]Your bandsaw is the same as mine, I picked mine up from a clearing sale maybe 5 years ago (edit- October 2015), paid $300 and it was money well spent. Does yours have a makers badge on it?

I also paid $300 for this one, I haven’t looked for a badge but it has Barron Sydney cast into the top blade guide arm, the original owner had a gravity coolant setup but I’ll just plumb it up to my lathe coolant pump.

982D25A4-C1CB-4B60-A62D-994BCE72F0E8.jpg

I just looked at our maintenance single acting shop press and it has been fitted with one of these units https://www.ebay.com.au/itm/18377362...BlBMUJzc7MiZYA
A34D1AC8-4733-4ECB-A5D1-1A2D12BDE7F4.png

I think I might do the same except fit some sort of valve block connecting each end of the ram, then I can select the direction of flow to the ram, I imagine there’s a valve unit out there that can do this, and allow fluid on the low side to return to the tank?!?

Originally Posted by NedsHead

I also paid $300 for this one, I haven’t looked for a badge but it has Barron Sydney cast into the top blade guide arm, the original owner had a gravity coolant setup but I’ll just plumb it up to my lathe coolant pump.

982D25A4-C1CB-4B60-A62D-994BCE72F0E8.jpg

Interesting. Might be a different manufacturer or the same at different times; mine has no insignia cast anywhere. The arm that sticks out the side for the material stop is 1" round on my saw, looks a different dia on yours also my vice handwheel is a solid disc.
I have run coolant on mine with a makeshift setup, problem is the blade carries the coolant all the way around it's lap and it drips off everywhere, particularly at the back where the lowest point of the blade is during a cut, difficult to catch it there so really needs a drip pan that covers the entire footprint of the machine.

Originally Posted by shedhappens

Pete I fitted coolant to mine a few years ago but no longer use it, it is a pain moving containers around trying to catch coolant as it runs down the inside of tubes and often out onto the floor. I use bi-metal blades now and just give it a squirt of oil every now and then.

On my BS I separated the legs from the body of the saw (and while I was at it took the opportunity to increase the height of the saw above teh floor by 100mm) and inserted a SS coolant catch tray in between the legs and the body of the saw.

IMG_6157.jpg
This works well at catching coolant from short stock but I know what you mean about coolant running down the inside of tubes etc.
To cope with this I sometimes put a quad layer of PE film and a lacky band over the end of the tube.

Originally Posted by BobL

On my BS I separated the legs from the body of the saw (and while I was at it took the opportunity to increase the height of the saw above teh floor by 100mm) and inserted a SS coolant catch tray in between the legs and the body of the saw.

IMG_6157.jpg
This works well at catching coolant from short stock but I know what you mean about coolant running down the inside of tubes etc.
To cope with this I sometimes put a quad layer of PE film and a lacky band over the end of the tube.

Yes that's just what my saw needs also but it will be quite a long tray, if you have a look at Nedsead's saw in post 2488 the drive wheel of the saw is way out behind and this is where a lot of the fluid drips off. This has been on my to-do list for ages but is nowhere near the top of the list yet. Having to pay other people to do sheet metal work for me tends to keep those jobs on the backburner.

Originally Posted by Pete O

Yes that's just what my saw needs also but it will be quite a long tray, if you have a look at Nedsead's saw in post 2488 the drive wheel of the saw is way out behind and this is where a lot of the fluid drips off. This has been on my to-do list for ages but is nowhere near the top of the list yet. Having to pay other people to do sheet metal work for me tends to keep those jobs on the backburner.

I agree about the tray needing to be long enough. My guard is prevents coolant loss out the back while its running but I do get fluid running down the blade when I lift the blade right up out of the way to remove/insert stock so I had to make sure the tray was long enough to catch the fluid running off the blade that BUT not get in the way of the motor.

These days with the hydraulic down feed cylinder I hardly ever lift the blade to the vertical position. I just lift the blade up to the max height of the cylinder and that usually gives me plenty of space and time to insert stock into the vice.

IMG_6159.jpg

Originally Posted by BobL

IMG_6159.jpg

Bob my coolant is directed at the start of the cut and i have a small wire wheel to flick the cuttings off the blade, to stop the coolant flinging off the blade as it goes around the rear band wheel i used short pieces of car wiper blade on each side of the blade, these are held in place by a plate bolted in the same place as your coolant nozzles, the wipers worked very well and i seemed to get a pretty good run out of them before replacement.

Before this descends into a horizontal band saw customisation thread


Picked up a solid 3phase drill press:
IMG_2924.jpgIMG_2925.jpg
Has an interesting gear/screw on the back to raise and lower the head!

Only 1/2 HP, and looks like 2MT chuck taper, but at least 300kg of over-engineered goodness:




From a 91 year old gentleman's garage. Also some other trinkets;
IMG_2926.jpg
an isolation transformer, vintage plywood veneer samples, a large square, some double-V pulleys, some sort of moulding or combination plane, et c.




He also has an old Hafco Jointer (1970s logo, large machine), and a radial arm saw with over 1.2m slide rail travel. I dunno who would be interested in those

Hi Nigel
A nice pick up.

It will tidy up really well.

Are you going to re- paint it?

Grahame

Originally Posted by Grahame Collins

Are you going to re- paint it?

Maybe just the base and a few handles. The paint on the head and covers isn't bad?

(although there are two different green colours up there)

Got a new TIG torch today, a little water cooled 20 series job. Went with a binzel torch, abitig little handle model. Pleasantly surprised with how comfortable it is to use so far. The love affair continues.

Effectively it's a 9 series torch, but water cooled. Good for 240A @100% duty on DC, 170A @100% AC.
The gas lens kit I got allows a compact head depth down to 40mm - as good as you'll get for those sorts of amps, before going a little micro pencil torch. Looking forward to making it earn its keep on some jobs coming up.

Originally Posted by Commander_Keen

Got a new TIG torch today, a little water cooled 20 series job. Went with a binzel torch, abitig little handle model. Pleasantly surprised with how comfortable it is to use so far. The love affair continues.

Effectively it's a 9 series torch, but water cooled. Good for 240A @100% duty on DC, 170A @100% AC.
The gas lens kit I got allows a compact head depth down to 40mm - as good as you'll get for those sorts of amps, before going a little micro pencil torch. Looking forward to making it earn its keep on some jobs coming
up.

A question out of curiosity from a TIG welding newbie, what is the plan for cooling water? A dedicated water cooling unit, mains water or perhaps an alternative recyclable water system?

Cheers
Salv

I have a commercially available cooling unit, which I got used, and is rated for 800w cooling ability, with about a 4L reservoir, flow rate approx 5L/min IIRC. This seems to be good for up to 350A 'by the book' - which is more than my machine can provide.

I did a teardown / cleanup on the unit before putting it into (my) service - it's a simple assortment of parts which could easily be emulated with off the shelf parts. Namely:
Small radiator core 150x150x80 rough dimensions, 240V water pump, 24V fan, quick connect fittings (could also use other fittings, as desired - ie 5/8" 18tpi LH gas fittings are common for water), some control boards.
Would be a simple project that you could build mild to wild if you wanted. Basic principle is store water, pump water, get water cool, pass it thru torch, repeat. It runs a cooling fluid which smells sweet, but isn't green like antifreeze/glycol. I believe that mains water can lead to deposits which affect torch cooling ability over the longer term.

Many of the above parts could be easily cobbled together from 12V automotive applications, if you wished- radiator heater core, electric water pump, flow limiting valve, fan, etc.

Thanks for providing the 800W heat generation figure as it enables me to do a calculation I have been wanting to do for some time.

Back in 2013 I picked up a 20L closed loop SS cooling tank / heat exchanger with a small (1/2HP) 3P pump from a skip at work and its still sitting under my house
It's from an old (1960's era) Russian X-ray machine and I have always reckoned it could make a useful TIG torch cooler
Some further details here https://metalworkforums.com/f65/t181...e-coolant-tank
It has all manner of pressure sensors etc on it as well so it could be jigged to provide some protections.
Coolingtank.jpg

I have dragged it out from under the house several time to look at it and even taken it a part a few times - once to consider using the motor on my mill to drive to coolant loop but I could not bear breaking it up for that purpose and ended up resurrecting the original mill pump motor.

I did some back of the envelope calcs and found that if I started out with 20L of water at 20ºC, assuming an 800W heat generation in the torch and no other heat losses it would take around 2000s (~30 minutes of continuous heat generation) to raise the water temp by just 20º so it would easily do half an hours worth of continuous cooling at 800W. For comparison using 800W (and no heat losses) to heat 20L from 20 to 100ºC would take about 2.3 hours. Inserting a small radiator in the loop would extend the time considerably.

I don't have a water cooled TIG torch so would need to get one but so far in about 8 years have not really needed one. Mainly because I usually operate under 120A on ferrous and under about 160 for Al and usually only for short runs.