Time for an oil change

END USER: Dura-Mill Inc., (800) 444-6455, www.duramill.com.
CHALLENGE: Eliminate component degradation on tool grinding machines.
SOLUTION: Switching to a low-viscosity, cobalt-inhibited, hydrocracked synthetic grinding oil.
SOLUTION PROVIDER: Blaser Swisslube Inc., (845) 294-3200, www.blaser.com.

Grinding oil is essential when grinding high-performance carbide cutting tools. It’s needed to keep grinding burn at bay and provide lubricity at the wheel/workpiece interface to impart the required surface finishes. However, an oil with an improper formulation can have unintended consequences.

Dura-Mill Inc., Malta, N.Y., produces solid-carbide endmills, such as its WhisperKut and WhisperKut Plus with an asymmetrical variable-helix design to reduce harmful harmonic resonance. The toolmaker was experiencing machine tool issues but having trouble pinpointing the exact cause, noted Charles Ward, Dura-Mill’s plant engineer.

“The electrical cabling was failing at an astounding rate in several different brands of machines,” Ward said, adding that the plastic wire ways that prevent wires from becoming tangled were also cracking and falling apart.

Courtesy of Blaser Swisslube

After switching to Blaser Swisslube’s Blasogrind HC5 synthetic grinding oil, Dura-Mill eliminated degradation to plastic components in its grinding machines (above) for producing solid-carbide endmills (below).

He explained that once the outer jacket of a wire hardened and broke, the same thing would happen to the inner jacket. “In a lot of cases, when the inner jacket breaks, it’ll take the copper wire with it and the machine will fail,” Ward said. “On average, every couple of years we had to replace several thousand dollars worth of cables and be down a couple of days doing it.”

In addition, oil mist caused external plastic components to deteriorate.