[Concepts_Design]

like the title says, where's all my coolant going? I don't have any leaks but yet I'm losing at least 1-2 gallons a day. my machine is only running on an average of 5 hours a day and half the time I'm cutting delrin so I'm not even using coolant, just air

Only logical thing I can think of is that the delrin chips are absorbing the coolant, but I wouldn't think it would absorb that much but maybe I'm wrong.

Any ideas?

[WOTDesigns]

like the title says, where's all my coolant going? I don't have any leaks but yet I'm losing at least 1-2 gallons a day. my machine is only running on an average of 5 hours a day and half the time I'm cutting delrin so I'm not even using coolant, just air

Only logical thing I can think of is that the delrin chips are absorbing the coolant, but I wouldn't think it would absorb that much but maybe I'm wrong.

Any ideas?

1-2 gallons for 2.5 hours of running isn't crazy. Evaporation, coolant carried off by parts and chips is where most of it goes. For reference I go through 10-15 gallons a day on my HAAS and 5-10 gallons on the Tormach when I was doing production on it.

[Concepts_Design]

wow, I really never would have thought it would be that much. I guess i'll have to keep more water on hand so I don't keep having to run into the house to get some

thanks for the quick response

[pickled]

Yes you will lose coolant and need to keep an eye on it to top it off as needed. When I was located in CO the flood coolant loss was nuts! I kept a couple of gallons of water on the ready at all times. The evaporation factor was unreal out there. Be prepared to add water quickly then check your concentration to make sure that you don't need to add more coolant to the sump as well. Also UHMW and Delrin do hold a lot of coolant. Those crazy strings and fliers that are created when machining the plastics creates a lot of surface area for the coolant to lie upon. Fun, fun, fun! I guess one good thing about a total loss system (i.e. FogBuster) is that you can really plan on when to add the coolant.

[popspipes]

One thing that I found that helps a lot is to contain the coolant to the table, I use a 4 sided shield and drains from the table directly to the screen, keeping it off the machine base. The idea is to cut down the surface area which equates to less evaporation.......

[CadRhino]

It is amazing.
It will help if you clean up your chips after each run.

wow, I really never would have thought it would be that much. I guess i'll have to keep more water on hand so I don't keep having to run into the house to get some

thanks for the quick response

[AiR_GuNNeR]

I use two rectangular cat litter containers. One is about half the height of the other and stacks nicely into the taller one. The short one has holes drill in the bottom. Excess coolant will drain into the bottom bucket. As I need to top off the coolant, I'll pour a bucket of water through the chips, using the drainage for top off.