Originally Posted by
IMT
I use one of these:
Originally Posted by
IMT
If you have a lathe or.. eh-hem a mill... you can make your own barb fittings pretty easily. Brass is expensive, but aluminum rod stock can be pretty cheap if you buy full bars from your local metal vendor. If I am at the store anyway, or making an order for other things I'll buy barbs, but often when I am elbows deep in a project I'll just make them. I keep a little brass and a little more aluminum on hand anyway.
You know a two tank system is one of the methods of settling out fines that can chip clog nozzles right? I have a two tank system on my lightest currently in service mill now. Coolant drains into a filter screen in tank one, goes under a baffle, and then rises up to an overflow that flows into tank two where the coolant pump is. That machine also has the smallest coolant reservoir (the amount in tank two) so I have to run small nozzles at regulated flow to not run out of coolant in process on that machine, but even with the smaller nozzles I hardly ever have a chip clog. I mostly use that machine for engraving, but I do use it to run a job once in a while when I have an idea that's burning a hole in my brain, and the other machines are busy.
P.S. There is no need for your overflow tank fitting to be high into the main tank if your goal is just more volume. If the hose barbs are fitted lower you have more useable volume because then the overflow tank can flow back in your main tank. You don't want it at the bottom because the flow in the hose could get clogged by fines, but an inch or two off the bottom should work ok. The benefit is you can use something like a five gallon bucket outside the machine for your volume, and mark it at the same level as optimum for the machine. Then you can add coolant to the bucket where you con see it easily. The levels will then automatically equalize and almost all the volume in your system will be useable volume. That does nothing for fine chip management, but it definitely will increase the time intervals for adding coolant to the system.