Thread: Tramp oil

Wondering of anyone has an effective, inexpensive (preferably zero cost) method for removing excessive tramp oil from a coolant reservoir?

Having a long-overdue cleanup on the Frankenmill today (Victoria U2 with Bridgeport J-head) and the coolant sump (the entire base section of the machine, maybe 4-foot square-ish and 5" deep)) has probably an inch of lubricating oil floating on top of the coolant. I guess that 20 litre drum of lubricating oil that I have squirted into various parts of the mill over the past couple of years has to have gone somewhere! It promises to be a massive pain to clean out as there is only one point of access, the approx 3" diameter hole that drains the coolant into the sump. Makes me envious of modern machinery with removable sumps. I think I need to add a gravity separator of some sort but am open to suggestions on how to get the damn tramp oil out of the tank to begin with. Having not used the coolant for a while, it is currently separated rather than emulsified.

Suck it off the top with a wet vac. if you hold the nozzle in just the right spot you should be able suck the tramp off and leave the coolant behind.

If you use a W&D shop vac keep a half bucket of sawdust handy, when you finish sucking it up throw the sawdust into the vac and let it sit there and maybe stir it wth a stick to absorb the oil. use a lot more oil than sawdust so you can just put it into a rubbish bin without drawing any attention to the fact that you are disposing of oil.

If you can remove most of the top of the coolant tank tank I found a better way is to fold up about 10 sheets of paper towelling and lay it on the top to the oil. The oil is preferentially absorbed into the paper and after about 30 secs absorption you can gently lift out the paper with a fat layer of tramp oil sticking to it. If it's an inch thick you will need multiple goes but usually a couple of goes is all that I needed to get >90% of the tramp oil out.

Re disposal, I use sawdust or the paper type cat litter to soak up the oil once removed then burn it in my shed heater when it’s nice and hot.

I use a vacuum pump and a converted 9kg gas bottle with 2 fittings on the top. Pump connects to one fitting, a bit of hose on the other fitting to do the sucking, oil ends up in the bottle.

Going forward Pete, you might want to consider running just straight oil instead of coolant.
I’ve done it on my TOS mill - for exactly that reason - tramp oil leaking into the coolant tank.
The tool life of HSS tooling is awesome with the oil, and no issues with rust etc if you leave the machine unused for a while.
I just threw a 20L of ISO46 hydraulic oil into it and find as long as you flood HSS tools they stay quite cool and you don’t get any smoking swarf etc.

Steve

Most dumps take used oil for free (they actually get paid for it), better if you dispose of it properly there.

Thanks for the responses. I posted the question when I came in for lunch today in the middle of a bit of a cleanup. Having gone back out, I spent much of the afternoon sucking the tramp oil off the top of the coolant with a 50ml syringe (I don't have a wet vac). I'm stuck at home with covid at present so this was a suitably mindless way to spend a low-energy couple of hours but not something I'd want to do frequently. I did end up sucking out a lot of coolant with it of course. When I bought the mill the coolant tank was like the septic tank at a leprosarium. I thought it must have been neglected for decades but today's experience shows it doesn't take long at all.
Unfortunately I can't get the top off the coolant tank; the foot of the main machine casting IS the tank and the only apertures are where the pump is bolted in and the round hole with a strainer where the returning coolant flows in- a round hole about 4" diameter. I did some soaking up of oil with paper towel but it is obviously limited with such poor access.

Originally Posted by OxxAndBert

Going forward Pete, you might want to consider running just straight oil instead of coolant.
I’ve done it on my TOS mill - for exactly that reason - tramp oil leaking into the coolant tank.
The tool life of HSS tooling is awesome with the oil, and no issues with rust etc if you leave the machine unused for a while.
I just threw a 20L of ISO46 hydraulic oil into it and find as long as you flood HSS tools they stay quite cool and you don’t get any smoking swarf etc.

Steve

That's really interesting Steve, I've read on here of people using ATF but not straight hydraulic oil as a cutting fluid. I'd be a little concerned about the mess when it's thrown around; the soluble oil at least doesn't leave much mess where it inevitably gets thrown. Definitely something to look into.

When I made my coolant tank I deliberately allowed for decent access.
That front flap on a brass piano hinge lifts up and allows me to "post" 4/5 sheets of paper towelling in through the gaps to soak up the tramp oil.
wholetank.jpg
The white PCV loop is a constant hi-flow loop that aerates the coolant sos is doesn't smell.
The elbow tap controls the loop flow and the other little tap is the take off for the lathe coolant.
The availability of the two taps provides very sensitive control over the flow rate.
The black PVC funnel like arrangement sit under the hole in the the lathe tray and catches the back flow.
Inside that there's a fly wire and REE magnet filter.
The permanent magnet water feature pump used in this setup is still going strong after nearly 11 years - unlike the same pump in the bandsaw coolant set up which lasted only two years and was replaced with an AC powered washing machine pump.

Originally Posted by BobL

…use a lot more oil than sawdust so you can just put it into a rubbish bin without drawing any attention to the fact that you are disposing of oil.

For the love of God, please don’t dispose of oil in the general waste. As stated above, the tip will have an oil collection tank.

Originally Posted by snapatap

Most dumps take used oil for free (they actually get paid for it), better if you dispose of it properly there.

Supercheap Auto also take tramp oil free of charge.

I guess making an oil skimmer won't be possible due to already having poor access?

Yeah it's a bit of a problem with this style of machine I think, it's not really feasible to divert the coolant into another system either, I did that for a while when I first set up the mill- as I didn't have a coolant pump on it- by sharing coolant from the lathe, I ran the lathe hose across to the mill (3 feet away) and drained the mill table back to the lathe catch tray, all the inevitable overflow just ended up in the mill sump anyway so I decided to just replace the pump and go with the mill's own system. The machine is designed to drain down to the base so it seemed useless to argue with it. I guess the problem is all the damn lube oil drains down the same way! I might have to revisit the possibility of a separate coolant tank.

I'm intrigued by Steve's system of using hydraulic oil as both coolant and machine lubrication; anyone else have any thoughts on this? If I were to do this I'd need to get a different mill vice, one with a coolant drain path built in. The front end of my K-type vice annoyingly drips coolant outside the catchment of the machine and onto the floor- I couldn't live with that with oil.

I dont know how much tramp oil other people generate but I reckon I put way more oil into the bin from from cleaning up oil leaks, spills and general cleaning than I do from the small amount of tramp oil soaked up from top of the lathe coolant tank with paper towels.

Two years ago while filtering 20L of used ATF in the shed about 2L leaked out onto the floor. I found it hard to believe how far it spread. I cleaned it up by throwing sawdust on it and waiting for a couple of days until it had absorbed it all up and put that into the bin. I could have used rags or worse, loads of paper towels - which would have all ended up in the bin anyway. Sawdust does a much better job as it's like fine vermiculite and absorbs oil from every nook and cranny as opposed to rags which tend to smear it around and won't draw much oil out of cracks.

I use about 20L of chainsaw bar and chain oil a year that ends up being absorbed by wood chips in the cut that then falls on the ground. Eventually when the layer of chips get thick enough they get scraped up with load with bucket and it and goes straight onto the tree loppers wood chip pile.

Yes I do have a bunch pf spare 5L containers that I use for waste oil (from, blueing, hydraulic, heat treatment, compressor, and engines) in my shed. Our Waste transfer station won't take more than 5L at any one time so after I gave up on the used ATF as a coolant idea I had to dispose of 18L of that wretched stuff. I did it on 4 individual trips to the transfer station over about 12 months.

There is a waste transfer station 20km further away that will take 20L at a time but the drum I was using at the time leaked and that's how I ended up with ~5L of waste oil all over the floor of my van. I drove to the tree loppers yard which was not far away and used the sawdust trick, worked perfectly. I parked the van slightly uphill near the wood chip pile for half a hour and then just hosed it all out.

I also get some of my oils from an oil recycler eg Hydro, bar and chain oil etc but he doesn't take, as he calls it, "small amounts of any old $hyte".

Originally Posted by Pete O

I'm intrigued by Steve's system of using hydraulic oil as both coolant and machine lubrication; anyone else have any thoughts on this? If I were to do this I'd need to get a different mill vice, one with a coolant drain path built in. The front end of my K-type vice annoyingly drips coolant outside the catchment of the machine and onto the floor- I couldn't live with that with oil.

Another alternative is an oil mister system which is driven by a small amount of compressed air and a mix of ATF/Kero (or you could fork out for the even more exotic specialised coolant = I think its called koolmist?)

I have this system set up on my mill and lathe but I still use the soluble oil coolant on the lathe as I think it works better on deep holes and bores.

I use a 1L detergent bottle as a reservoir (75% ATF and 25% kero mix). Not much (actually bugger all) is used while milling - since I've had it on my small mill I have only used up half a bottle in 3 years although admittedly I don't use the mill all that much. There is some mess but it's minor compared to coolant spinning off or dribbling everywhere. There is no return, the kero evaporates so the remaining ATF just sits on the mill and mill trays. There's not enough used to recycle so I wipe it off after use and of course the wiper goes into the bin . So I have effectively put about 2 jumbo rolls of paper towels containing ~375mL of ATF into the bin over 3 years.

I was going to used a full flow "used ATF" coolant system but when I saw another member using the much cleaner the mister system I decided to go for that.

Originally Posted by BobL

I use about 20L of chainsaw bar and chain oil a year that ends up being absorbed by wood chips in the cut that then falls on the ground. Eventually when the layer of chips get thick enough they get scraped up with load with bucket and it and goes straight onto the tree loppers wood chip pile.

Quite a few manufacturers make a biodegradable chainsaw bar oil. The non-bio oil will wash out of the woodchips and into the soil.

Pete i use way oil and also sae30 oil, these are non detergent oils and mix with coolant maybe better than the oil you have been using.
I use semi synthetic coolant and I dont worry about tramp oil as it does not seem to affect what i am doing, i just keep on topping it up and adding a bit more coolant if i think it is needed. About the only other thing i might do is add an extra splash of disinfectant as a precaution because i got badly infected fingers years ago when using plain mineral coolant. I have a refractometer but have never used it, i think the main thing to do is add the coolant to the water.....not the water to the coolant.
If you invision the tramp oil as giving you some degree of automatic lubrication the problem will be solved.

Originally Posted by jack620

Quite a few manufacturers make a biodegradable chainsaw bar oil. The non-bio oil will wash out of the woodchips and into the soil.

That really only applies if the sawdust is saturated with oil so its the excess oil that washes off the chips. If excess sawdust is used washout occurs to a much smaller extent. Wood chips are preferred use method by environmentalists to mop up many litres of oil from spills in rivers lakes and oceans. They preferentially absorb oil over water and the oil penetrates and binds deep into the sawdust. To speed up the break down of the oil the chips are sprayed with an oil degrading bacteria but there are some of these bacteria in most woods which is another reason why excess sawdust is used. As the wood is broken down by fungi and moulds the associated bacteria also break down the bound oil.

The idea of the bio-degradable bar oil for chainsaws is probably less about use while cutting wood and more about better coping with spills. But IMHO it's probably a bit of a sop to greenies, who want to ban everything to do with chainsaw use. FWIW I don't agree with wholesale felling of native forests either. Perhaps more significant than bar and chain oil is the two stroke lube used because it's not intimately mixed with sawdust when ejected . On a well tuned engine, when using the manufactures mix ratio of 50:1 most of the oil is burned but some is not burned nd comes out as a mist in the exhaust and settles all around the users. This problem is compounded by users who think it's better for their chainsaws to use more oil in the mix than is recommended by the manufacturers ie typically eg use 25:1 which is what my dad used on his old saws in the 1960's. Most of that excess oil is now not burned but fogs the air and surrounding foliages etc but being unbound easily washes off onto the ground when it rains. Dad would go thru about 10L of mix in day of cutting. If he worked in a dense patch of trees that meant the foliage became coated in a light sheen of unbound oil.

The biodegradable bar and chain oil also costs an arm and a leg. The Stihl bio plus costs $170 for 20L. If I provide my own container I get 20L of recycled bar oil with tackifier added to my specification for $50. I have used canola which is biodegradable but if it sits in the oil tank for too long it can gum up the saws oil pump, plus it coats the operator, saw and chainsaw mill with a gooey sticky layer that is tricky to remove especially if it is allowed to harden. A solution to the latter problem was to leave my chainsaw mill on the back lawn and the dogs would give it a thorough licking and get every skerrick of canola off the bar and chain. They would lick it for hours and probably injected a few G of wood along with the oil, What always amazed me was how they did not cut themselves.
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