Machining Fluid Filtration and Particle Count Measurements

Ruhatiya, Chaitanya

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Machining Fluid Filtration and Particle Count Measurements

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Disposal of cutting fluids is a major problem for machining and manufacturing industries. Primarily due to high disposal cost and issues with production downtime and, unscheduled maintenance for large central machine shops. While it is also important to maintain the quality of machining fluid for a high-quality manufacturing and extended tool life. Moreover, the imposition of stringent EPA norms has forced the large machining facilities to search for a dependable process that will help extend the life of machining fluids and avoid system clogs. Field evaluations with industrial stakeholders revealed that major hurdle to attain mentioned objectives is accurate characterization of coolant for particle count measurement across different parts of filtration system. Therefore, this work is focused on development of sample processing standards for accurate and controlled characterization of versatile particulate loading inside coolants. It was observed that small and mid-scale machine shops are largely unaffected by issues addressed by this study, thus formulations in this work are aimed at recycling of machining fluids in large central machining facilities. The coolant samples evaluated were of semi-synthetic and synthetic type for high precision Aluminum alloys, and Nickel-Titanium and Steel alloys for automobile and aerospace application respectively. The target metal fines in loaded and filtered samples were primarily in range of 1-15 μm. This study was able to achieve standardization of sample collection, processing, and accurate particle count measurement for establishment of correct filter-system location and count-process relationship.

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