Cooking oils as cutting oil?

Anyone tried using the varieties of cooking oil as a cutting lubricant? e.g. peanut oil, canola oil, olive oil, etc.

Does it work?

Olive oil has a smoke point of only about 190degC, so I'd use at least a good peanut oil, which is around 230degC.

When you're done using it as a cutting oil, just run it through a sock to filter out the bigger chips and you can use it in your deep fryer.

Be careful to filter it through a sock again when putting it back in your machine, because french fries can get stuck in the moving parts.

Some of the better cutting oils can be used as cooking oils, though with the addition of sulfur, moly, and chlorine they don't work well in salads.

I've successfully used "Pam" spray that's normally used in hot frying pans. Worked great to prevent built up edge when turning copper.

There was a water soluble coolant that used Jojoba bean oil. Worked great and didn't get rancid. I believe that ended up in a Boeing coolant but I'm not sure of that.

Then there's Castor bean oil used in race engines. Worked great in the heat of those engines but gummed up rings a bit. I think that was how Castrol got started.

Most of the micro-drop coolant put vegetable oil in the airstream to lubricate hot tools. The cooling is done with the air blast which also clears chips.

Fizzissist is right though, watch for smoking point on vegetable oils.

Dick Z

As a flood coolant, probably not a good idea. Ever had a pan catch fire in the kitchen? Now imagine gallons of oil going up. As a mist coolant, been done since about 92. First one I put in was a trico micro drop on a tree knee mill.

Honestly....the only good application of a food for cutting is using cream, or 1/2&1/2 for tapping copper.

Otherwise, you're just asking for rancid.
(beer, btw, is an excellent after-cutting fluid)

As a flood coolant, it's 90% water. The Jojoba been soluble oil never got rancid. But the beer as after cutting coolant has been proven and re-proven often. I'll drink to that!!! LOL

Dick Z

An after thought. While these aren't "cooking oils" they are water soluble cutting fluids made from vegetable oil.

Rustlick ULTRACUT Green CF and PowerCool Green CF

DPI metal cutting fluid.

They're biodegradable but I'm not going to drink them.LOL

Maybe we should mix a some vegetable oil, vinegar, water and a little mustard for an emulsifier. Oh wait! That's salad dressing. But then we could eat it if it doesn't work out as cutting fluid.LOL

Dick Z

being new and all (6 months manual- 3 weeks CNC...but... 6 hours a day at work reading/researching and studying) I don't have a giant basis for comparison but I purchased a Kool Mist portable unit Friday for the wallet wrenching price of $114 including coolant (4oz good for a gallon) and a couple of 1/4" to 3/8" reducers for the air line.

Holy freakin crap. Literally DOUBLED my cut speeds on my rougher and ended up building a (yes I'm serious) cardboard enclosure to contain the freakin chips flying twice as far and twice as fast.

Kool Mist 78 looks cool (like blue Kool-Aid), bio-degradable... and at $5 a gallon (mixed 4oz per gallon of water) or $30 per gallon of Kool Mist its the cheapest thing in my "shop". I need to get a bigger compressor but my HF 11 gallon only kicks on every 10 minutes or so of spray.

My wife can keep her kitchen oils... for a $100 AND chips get the hell out of the way.... I'll take the Kool Mist :)

Try the micro-drop units (can probably get a demo unit from salesguy).

As I have mentioned more times than anybody wants to hear, we had a job to cut 3/4 in. "T" slots in some press platens.

These platens were in the presses on site in a customers plant. We end milled the slots, milled into "T"'s with a "T" slot cutter using a portable milling unit.

In 8 hrs. of milling, we used less than 3/4 cup of vegetable oil. Lots of chips from the air stream.

If I remember correctly, the bio-vegy oil was $63/gal.

Dick Z

I have been using palm oil as cutting oil for drilling. I am looking at experimenting with a soap, water, weg oil mix and rice bran oil. Ricebran oil is 490f smoke point.