Sunday, 20 December 2020

Mini-Lathe - Cutting fluid feed

Doing a lot of parting for the various fasteners I am making at the moment led me to contemplate improving the manual drip oil bottle approach I have to feeding cutting fluid, which led me to eBay and YouTube to see what others were doing. A bit of slow-time at the computer led me to a simple drip feed oiler solution and as I’m lucky enough to have a lifetime of oddments knocking around the workshop, I thought I could easily build something without spending any money.

The solution started with a bit of 3/16” copper brake pipe, which I bent into a ‘question mark’ shape, squaring one end and filing a shallow angle on the other. It’s held by a piece of black Acetal round bar, cross drilled 3/16”. The plastic bar is very short, about 3/4”, and has a strong circular magnet attached to it with an M5 countersunk screw which is threaded directly into the Acetal:


The copper pipe is shaped so that the magnet can sit out of site behind the splashback. There is a pvc tube (fish tank air line) attached to the copper tube which leads to a valve, again a fish tank component: 


The valve is metal, to avoid any compatibility problems with cutting fluids and plastics and is there to shut off or restrict the flow of oil. The fluid comes from a washing up liquid bottle (told you it was cheap) hanging on a hook on the wall and full of oil:


 Fully open, the oil drips at a reasonable rate:







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