Castrol Carecut saves on coolant and cleaning bills for PDP Engineering

Citation

(2003), "Castrol Carecut saves on coolant and cleaning bills for PDP Engineering", Industrial Lubrication and Tribology, Vol. 55 No. 3. https://doi.org/10.1108/ilt.2003.01855cad.001

Castrol Carecut saves on coolant and cleaning bills for PDP Engineering

Castrol Carecut saves on coolant and cleaning bills for PDP Engineering

Keywords: Castrol, Fluids, Coolants

Running two new sliding-head CMC machines at speed with a conventional chlorine-free mineral oil caused PDP Engineering a serious overheating problems, leading to shorter tool life and lower productivity. Then a fire in one of the machines prompted a change of fluid to Castrol Carecut!

The machine shop at Birmingham-based PDP Engineering operates 12 fixed-head and two new sliding-head CNC machines and employs 60 people. They work mainly with low alloy and mild steel, and occasionally with cast iron, aluminium and stainless steel, producing specialised components for customers including MG Rover, BMW, Land-Rover, and Borg-Warner.

Machine Shop Manager, Scott Wills commenting on the change to a Castrol synthetic fluid says: "Running the two new sliding-head CNC machines with a conventional heat oil caused problems from the start – overheating significantly reduced tool life, generated a lot of smoke and we even had a small fire in one machine! Productivity was also affected as both tools and machines were designed for high speed operation and the cutting fluid wasn't." With the cheaper coolant limiting machine performance and productivity, Scott called in Castrol.

Castrol recommended one of their high performance synthetic fluids – Carecut ES2 – to improve machine performance and suggested that PDP use Carelube 68 slide oil which unlike conventional slide oils does not contaminate the sump as a tramp oil (Plate 1).

Using Carecut ES2 certainly transformed the performance of the new CNC machines, Scott says: "Tools and machines are now able to work at optimum speeds, tool life has tripled on drilling operations and our coolant consumption has reduced by 50 per cent – more than covering the difference in cost of the Carecut and promising considerable long term savings". He adds that further savings on the machines' bag filters, which are now lasting 3 months compared to 1 week with the previous coolant, have already paid for the new coolant! Other improvements include better visibility for operators, who also prefer its handle ability, and better performance in the machines' Cool-Blast delivery system – all points put down to Carecut's ability to maintain its consistency and clarity under pressure.

Plate 1 Carecut ES, the Castrol range of clear cutting fluids

Scott estimates that the combination of Carecut and Carelube slide oil is providing a much longer sump life for the coolant, which could reduce the 6-months cleaning operation to an annual one.

Summing up the change to Carecut and Carelube, Scott says Castrol's experience really has proved that it is possible to buy more expensive oils and still save money.

For further information, contact: Cliff Thrussell, Castrol (UK) Ltd. E-mail: thrussc@castrol.com; Web site: www.castrol.com