If you are a shop manager or business owner, I think I can guess what your daily working life is like. It looks like those acrobats who use sticks to spin plates in the air—and they have nearly 100 plates spinning! The trick is to avoid dropping any and keep them all spinning at once—and all the while enjoying yourself! Remember when “making money machining metal” was fun and you really enjoyed going to work?
Self-help author Dan Millman once said, “I’ve learned that we can do anything, but we can’t do everything…at least not at the same time.” As a shop manager or business owner, you know how true that is. You are given a limited amount of time each week to hit your manufacturing quota and make your shipments on time. Frankly, you are so busy running the business, the last thing you need is another interruption to attend to some kind of problem on the shop floor. And yet, how many hours each week do you spend doing just that? Of course, we live in an imperfect world, so productivity is bound to be hurt when everyday coolant and machining issues pull you away from what you really want to be doing.
What you need is an innovative solution that boosts efficiency, enhances overall productivity and nearly eliminates the need for you to be on the shop floor micro-managing day-to-day issues. That solution may be found in an idea I regularly share with my coolant customers. It involves at least two people and both of them are already available to you at no added cost. Who are these people? Well, for now, let’s call them the insider and the outsider.
Let’s start with the insider. This is a person who already works for you—that’s why he is, in essence, “free.” It’s likely this person works on the shop floor, filling and cleaning coolant tanks. Your insider should be a person you’ve come to count on as a reliable employee—one who has been willing to do a little extra when asked.
To put this idea in motion, let’s write a job description for your insider (a.k.a. the Coolant Contact Person).
It is the Coolant Contact Person's responsibility to:
- Oversee on-hand coolant supply
- Maintain coolant levels and concentrations in the machines
- Oversee machine sump cleaning and skimming schedule
- Build and maintain an ongoing, productive relationship with coolant manufacturer’s representative and work with this representative to help maintain and optimize coolant usage
- Gain the knowledge and learn the skills necessary to troubleshoot and solve minor day-to-day machine and coolant related issues
- Maintain records on all the above and be accountable to management for carrying out these duties
Now, let’s discuss the role the outsider will play. As you may have guessed, this so-called outsider is your coolant manufacturer’s representative. Again, there should be no extra cost for this person’s help.
A good coolant supplier will recommend the best coolant for your particular application(s). Part of their service to you should be periodic checks of your inventory to make sure you never run out of product. Of course, this means you will have to let them into your shop.
Your outsider will also monitor your individual machine sumps and make recommendations as to what is needed to run at optimum levels. Over time, the coolant representative will explain how to best control coolant concentration (with the use of a handheld refractometer). Your insider will learn from your outsider how to recognize when a coolant sump needs to be changed or if it just requires the tramp oil to be skimmed off.
As you can see, the beauty of this idea is that your insider is learning how to monitor and maintain coolant from an expert and it isn’t costing you anything. As a matter of fact, you are getting a more valuable employee in the process! Further, your insider can make sure your coolant company is living up to their end of the bargain.
To help your insider get started, here is a quick review of basic coolant maintenance:
- Clean the coolant sump with a mild cleaner and rinse with water to remove soap film. We sometimes add a small amount of biocide to this cleaning solution to remove residual bacteria that might want to attack the fresh coolant.
- Add enough water to the tank so the pump will allow this water to circulate. An alternative to this is to use an inexpensive pre-mix valve that attaches directly to the drum of coolant. You simply set the valve to the desired ratio and the coolant and water will mix automatically.
- Add coolant concentrate to the circulating water, usually five percent to eight percent depending on the operation. Easier operations in cast iron can be done at five percent concentration while steel, aluminum and more exotic metals will require higher concentrations. Remember that a few extra dollars spent on coolant can save you hundreds of dollars on tool life.
- Check the mixture with a refractometer. If you don’t have a refractometer and you use more than a drum of coolant every few months, then you need to spend the $100 on a refractometer. The cost of the refractometer will pay for itself with just the first drum or two of coolant, and your operation will run more consistently.
- Add water or coolant as needed to maintain the proper concentration. This step can be eliminated if you have a pre-mix setup on your coolant drum.
- Remove tramp oil as often as possible. Tramp oil is one of the greatest causes of coolant degradation. A simple oil skimmer or even a ‘shop vac’ used first thing in the morning will allow your coolant to last much longer.
- Filter out metal fines and dirt to keep your coolant lasting longer. This can be a huge step especially if you want your coolant to last a long, long time. The better the coolant filter, the more impurities you remove, the longer your coolant will last.
Finally and most importantly, be sure your coolant supplier representative is ready, willing, and able to work with your insider. I can’t imagine any coolant supplier who wouldn’t be willing to do this for you. Your life will be easier, productivity will improve and both the insider and the outsider will be make themselves more valuable to have around. Let me make this promise to you, if your present supplier isn’t willing to help you accomplish what I have outlined here, give me a call and I will!
This article originally appeared in Shop Talk magazine in October of 2006. Shop Talk is published
by Magellan Publishing.
