You can daisy chain the new compressor to the tank on the old one and greatly increase your air reserve. Start up the noisy compressor when you won’t be around and bring it up to pressure then you have all that reserve air to keep the smaller compressor from coming on sooner.

I agree, you don't want to breathe in atomize oils. A great way of converting the mist into droplets, is to use one of those small clear cigarette filter tips. They don't contain an actual osmotic fiber filter. They work entirely through centrifugal action to concentrate the atomized tar from smoke into drops around the inner chamber. In you're case, it will form droplets which drips out of the chamber. The advantage is that they're shorter in length and more effective than a tube. They are very cheap and often sold in drug stores or on Amazon and sold under different brands.

Great project that accomplishes what you wanted. And I am so glad you gave a good explanation at the end of the dangers of mist cooling. Many people don’t know about that.

My 15x72 Leblond Regal has a 3hp motor. This whole situation is bananas. And I support it.

When I was an apprentice back in the 70s, we were taught to make the coolant ourselves - it was nothing more than engine oil, mixed with enough dish soap to emulsify it, then add water to thin it down.

If you use airbrush as mister, you can always remove valve components to get it fully on. You can also loosen the nut clamping the needle and pull it back as much as you want to adjust amount of coolant. Having a needle not fully seated in the front nozzle is the way trigger also adjusts the amount of paint. I think the idea of using an airbrush is quite clever. Cheap ones are dirt cheap and you surely don´t need the max quality brush for just misting.

Really cool idea. If it were my project I would probably have made the reservoir longer. Say the height of the cabinet. And mounted it to the side of the bench with pvc gutter mounts. Quality of life improvements would include a fill port on the top so you don't have to unscrew the whole lid to refill and a level indicator. Just something simple like a 90 degree elbow top and bottom with a clear hose so you can see when it's getting low. And maybe a drain port for easy cleaning if the cutting fluid gets all stanky. Great idea tho man.

Very clever - and far less mess than flood cooling; may rig this up for my bandsaw 👍🏻

You can also use a draw fan made for airbrushing, it just gets positioned behind the item you are working on and draws air along with mist into the replaceable filter in the housing. It’s like having a mini paint booth. I used an airbrush for many years for artwork that I did for friends who were into the slot car racing hobby. I almost forgot to mention that you can also pipe in a larger tank, like a portable air tank that you can put in your car to air up tires.

loved the video, very interesting to watch 😃 I laughed at the pauze when that dog passed and you were spray painting 🤣

That's actually a super convenient idea for a small lathe setup like that!!

This is clever. Thank you kindly for sharing. The “WD” in WD-40 stands for “Water Displacing.”

That hose to control the mist; genious! I have nearly the same setup, I'm going to add a hose to the nozzle. Thank you soo much!

Almost ended up with a blue dog. Great job with the mist system. Cheers Willy

Good stuff...I bet it does just a good a job as some of the commercial misters...just smaller, and since you are working with a mini lathe it's just the right size! Keep em coming!!!!

The airbrush idea is new to me today, thank you for it.

I think that reservoir, being so neatly done and tight, after some coolant is used will obtain underpressurez forbidding more coolant to spray out. I reckon it will need some inlet hole for the air. I'm surprised how well this airbrush works as a mist coolant. Great idea!

An oldie but a goodie ... MISTER! 🤣😂

The mist cooling looked to be really effective. I reckon that I would go with that and an exhaust fan rather than flood cooling. A bunnings 4mm irrigation hose would do the job to turn the air on and off. They are rated to about 140psi which is way more than your compressor will create.

love this! you might want to add a sight glass of some kind to the reservoir so you know when it's running low - it'd suck to run out in the middle of a long finishing pass

very nice as always, I really liked the final touch with the hose making it a more floodcolant device. I already have all the parts and I want to try it out myself 😁 Now I just wish I had a 3hp motor and vfd 😁👌👍 thank you for sharing all your creative ideas //Kenneth

Very cool. I have a suggestion that could help in the long run. I would use a fuel filter from a string trimmer or leaf blower or some other small engine even rc cars have them. The carbs on those engines don't have much sucking power so the filter is free flowing and will help to keep the pick up tube in your res on the bottom. My thought is it can keep contaminants from the filling process out of the small orifice in the air brush.

Love the Ozito Bunnings single use tool brand. What does my head in is the long warranties on such low quality stuff. If you live near Bunnings, and keep the receipt, it is like a magic pudding of new for old.

Looks like a good idea so far.I hope it will work.Thank you.

Really clean solution, love your videos

Gday, I’ve noticed a big difference since putting flood coolant on the lathe and also on the Cincinnati mill, tool life has increased a lot, your setup works well, I had mist coolant on the mill drill and wasn’t a fan of breathing it in at all, great job mate, cheers

Great Project!

Simple but effective good work

This is an ingenious solution for budget setups.

Great idea , thanks

Years ago I had a project that had me drilling deep holes in titanium rods. I rigged up a coolant setup mounted in my tailstock that directed shop-air to a thru-coolant drill bit so I didn't work harden the parts.

You can DIY a "Fogbuster" type mist coolant system. It atomizes differently and there's NO airborn mist. I've used one on my CNC mill for years. Absolutely no fogging. Ever. Look it up online, it'll be fun. You could reuse several parts of your current setup, including you reservoir, air compressor and lines.

I think i already commented on one of your previous vids, but you can use the cheapest atf oil as flood coolant and as mist coolant... Sure, its not as good at cooling, nor is atf an amazing lubricant either, but it can be bought en masse for cheap and its pure mineral oil with some detergents and antifoaming agents, making it a very good substance for any kind of machine cooling, and unlike water mixed oil, it has 0 bloody water in it, making it a great way to avoid ever thinking about rust forming under the vise or in such places... Atf also has an amazing derusting property, as well as pulling property, where it will suck out embedded bits of crud from stuff if left unattended... Sure, it will wash out the way oil, but you reapply way oil all the time anyways(i hope), and with guards and coolant routing on most machines, it generally doesnt have much access to way oil or the ways themselves... Its almost as viscous as water, which does help with any sort of pumping or sucking(mist systems), and it actually smells really nice when burned... A sweet caramelized sugar smell, which i dont even want to speculate on, safety wise, but it cant be worse than cutting oils which have all the warning labels on them, whereas the atf generally only has the environment/water pollution danger label...

Awesome idea! For quality of life you can add a solenoid to control the airflow and have it switched by the relay from the VFD so you only have coolant when the lathe is on. Also wire in a 3-way switch in series/parallel to override/disable the coolant.

I see one if these on my lathe in the very near future! Thanks :)

The coolant tank will need a breather hole in the lid if you use it for an extended period of time, also that little compressor will be burning up in that cabinet, you should consider a way to pull the hot air out of the cabinet and draw fresh air in.

I enjoyed this video and may well make one for my small lathe

Nice thinking thanks.

Note about tools. You can sharpen absolutely anything, long as there is chemical that eats the material. Have dull file? Clean it and dump it into citric acid bath for day or two, clean the oxide with brass brush under hot water, dry with paper or towel and apply protective oil. Havent had to buy new file except one time i could not find one from scrap piles i visit for specific job. Same applies to pretty much any blade. Only thing to consider is that acid in case of steel will remove material all over, so for mill bit if diameter is important that might a problem same with reamers, but for material removal bits its just fine. Just keep new bit around to do the final pass if you need it to be specific and keep acid sharpened bits in their own place away from new ones.

Oh man! This is super....... cool

Another Idea - add a way longer airhose and put it further away - chek the temps of the compressor after running it for a while in that enclosed space

great work. I see some guys do a little deflection shield on a flex arm and it is really effective at directing the chips away from You

There is actually normally a metal way cover for the more advanced lathes. Flooding is always the best option, but for the lathe you’d need a protection else it throws it all around.

I'm really tempted to do this because i have an airbrush aswell😅 one thing to consider is heat from the compressor. These things get really hot during extended time use. So by keeping it in a cabinet i would think about a way to circulate fresh air in. Awesome video thanks for making it

If you want to put sound insulation around the small compressor, be aware the heat generated by the compressor. I have noticed that if you keep the compressor running for a long time, it can get to the point where the motor housing is too hot to touch.

I laughed at your comment "You dont really want that landing on your skin" cause I was once taking some deep cuts at home whilst wearing thongs (flip flops for the yanks) and had a hot chip land in between my toes, lessons were learnt that day

Love your vids keep it up

Great idea I'm off to Bunnings to grab a unit. It's cheap and I do believe portable.

You might want to add a little PC cooling Fan to the compressor. These little guys get quite hot when running for a long time (at least mine does) and a bit of cooling might make it last longer =)

Perfect!

Night and day difference to the chips produced after you added coolant. Great problem solving

You should be able to increase the switching frequency of the variable speed drive to remove that high frequency noise from the lathe motor. By default it is around 2-4kHz. Set it up as high as possible

Hahaha. I love the trail of destruction since the new motor install

That might be a great idea for me to expand upon at my own shop. We have to run a mist cooler for one of our lathes, it's a CCC setup but uses a plasic hose you adjust to get close to the cutting tool. Great concept but when the part your turning is 3' od and your running .250' passes you spend way more time adjusting the hose to both do its job and not get sucked into the piece. I want something rigid and foolproof, this could be that.

great job. My only comment would be to protect your lathe motor. 👍

Nice idea I am going to build something similar but I will use the cars coolant tank that I had to change anyway and a compressor from our scrap fridge-freezer or windscreen washer tank with built in pumps

i have a compressor setup like this to blow the chips off to one side on my mill. mine isnt as nice to look at and doesnt have the tank so its just the compressor pumping air into the hose an i have it necked down at the end to increase the pressure. ive never had issues out of it but the little compressor does get hot after running for a bit. mine didnt have any kind of cooling nor did it have the plastic body covering it so u might want to keep an eye on the temp. i added a 120mm fan to the end to cool the motor an a smaller 80mm fan over top of the compressor cause it does have heat fins so i figured that would help. ive been running this setup on my mill for a couple months now but i had previously ran the same setup on my cnc router an ive lost track of how much time it has running on it but its been fine. it might have been fine without the fans but it was just to hot for my comfort to leave it running on my little cnc router so the fans helped deal with that worry. thought id share.

Just had an idea watching this. A perfusion should work just as well, be much cheaper, totally noiseless,more compact, doesn't use any electricity, and you can adjust the dripping.

I have been just deep freezing my parts I am cutting, that works well also.

top idea

you could hook up the tank of the older one in the the supply system , use it as a bufferso the compressor doesnt kicks in so often , it allso allows you to kick on both compressors and get more cfm if you need it , i have a sandblasting cabinet and need more cfm to run it and im planning to do just that

Interesting idea. But those adjustable blue tube things are only a few dollars. And you have a lathe, so making a needle valve might have been more relevant imo

I have a very old EDM.modified a lot.its a nice little playground with restrictions.but for me ,beeing a professional mech and experienced with lathes and mills,its fun getting all out of it whats possible.precision wise,stability and so on.but having acces to bigger lathes and mills is neccessary.

If you want to silence it then make sure you some mass to the metal. Look at a dynamat type system so you lower the resonance of the metal. As the foam on top of the mass damping. Remember to isolate the compressor with some rubber feet.

You could always just build little shed for air compressor and put a hole in the wall so you can have the compressor outside and run a long hose from outside to inside.

The main factor to the carbide tip wear in your case is the lack of rigidity of your machine. As you mentioned carbides can handle a lot of heat. But they need a rock solid mounting platform to perform at their best. Something small lathes struggle with. Even my larger and more solid Herless struggles to be rigid enough to push carbide tools hard.

If only someone would have suggested this exact thing months ago.

Just some thoughts because i use a similar setup for my CNC: As you already mentioned: This is not exactly healthy ;) Thats the reason why i´m using a Water/Alcohol/Soap Mix for cooling. Downside: You have to clean and oil the machine after work or you will get rust! I have a similar compressor, but not the same. It has cooling vents, but there is no fan inside. I opened the motor to be sure. No fan and no room for a fan. I did mount an external fan (radial) for cooling, otherwise it will overheat and melt some parts inside the compressor. The capacitor was the first part that melted.... ;) Check if yours has a fan...

Cool

Cool project 😂

Using a spray gun is a good idea, didn't think of that. I use a gravity fed drip coolant setup with mag base hose I got off eBay. No compressor needed, just need to adjust the ball valve to control the coolant volume. Only use it rarely though, just squirting some manually with a needle oiler bottle seems enough most of the time.

Nice work! Incidentally, those airbrush hose fittings are 1/8" BSP.

It's okay if your chips are hot. If your chips are breaking and coming off hot, then the heat should be leaving with the chip. If your feeds and speeds are correct, and using the right tooling, you can take a huge depth of cut with an aggressive feed, break hot chips and put little heat into the part.

you can use 3d printer to produce custom adapters for weird threads, recently i had to adapt M13x1 and that was nowhere to be found, quick print from petg did the job (as long as its not too hot > 80deg celsius), and yes you can produce really fine threads with lets say 0.1mm layer height

Since I hate breathing unknown chemical mist and vapors in the shop, I think you might try a vortex tube and see if just cold air (-20 -> -50)will do the job? Maybe combine that cold air with an applicator of a bit of heavier cutting oil that won't vaporize so easily. Just spit balling here to avoid breathing aerosols.

I like the tube at the end, it gives you a bit of safety too if it happens to touch the chuck or workpiece. It does seem to be dripping small drops on the job, I wonder if you could simplify the whole system and just have a gravity feed dripper with a tiny nozzle? 🤔

9:29 yesssssssss 🎉

cool

👍✌️

Up until the end that was almost 100% badass. I would have liked to have seen something DIY instead of the airbrush nozzle. But at the end you got "piece of mind" spraying your lathe with WD40. WD40 has solvents in it.

Try adjusting the spray pattern on the airbrush, you might not need a different nozzle 🤷🏻‍♂️👍🏻

Hi Bud been Watching your videos if you want to get a better finish on the slides put wet/dry paper with double sided tape depending how much it out will depend on grit use then just push back and forward should get equal flat smooth surfaces 😊

Keep using the WD-40. If you make sure it's dry by air isn't normally okay, but we have a CNC that is run hard and put up wet, it looks worse than the others.

Did you add a air hole to the reservoir bottle? You may want to add a check valve to the coolant hose so it doesn’t need to suck the fluid all the way back up every time you turn it back on. Last thing you do know that WD40 is an acid and it breaks down oil that’s why you put it on old oiled components it breaks down the old oil so the lubricants in the WD40 can start working so when you put it on your lathe or other machines with surfaces metal on metal the WD40 will break down whatever oils you add making them less effective causing an increase of unnecessary wear

👍💪✌

make a viynle tube sight glass nice build

Lovely job mate. Who was the 4 legged shop assistant?

It's a funny coincidence that, just yesterday, I was thinking of doing the same thing with my mini lathe.

Defenetly a geat idea of using the airbrush as an mql System, i never would have come up with this idea. However please don't use regular coolant for mist cooling (for long periods of time), there is a reason why special mql lubricans exists. The reason is as follows: If you atomize regular coolands, the oil particals get mixed with air and brcome suspended. They will adhere to anything your skin (not so damatic), irretate your eyes (only in large quantities) and get into your lungs (this is the most problematic one). This is the reason most vmc's with TSC have some kind of mistcollecting system. Idealy you want to enclose the lathe in some form or another. However i don't thinkt this is feasible for you. Maybe use it with good vetilation or a some sort of fune extractor. Don't worry since you propably aren't exposed to it all day everyday, however i just wanted to give you some advice.

Appearently you can remove the compressor from a refrigerator and add it to an air tank to create a near silent air supply

Cool! Hey, whatever works is the fix! 🙂

Like the idea. But I can't bring myself to put water anywhere near my machines. 😬

What duty cycle is that compressor rated for? May want to make sure it's not going to give up the ghost on you if it's running full-time to keep up!

Looking good man, have you considered a solenoid connected to the VFD perhaps to turn the air on and off so it's automatic?

Hi, Air Compressors need air to refill the tank ,,,inside it will get hot better keep it out for cooling and fill air. And remove the needle from airbrush to get better air

Just as a note, WD40has a long term corrosive resistant variety you might find more useful

Will you need an air bleed hole to allow air into reservoir if using mister for extended periods of time?

Is your air compressor going to have enough air going to it while it is in the cabinet to be able to cool itself? With the doors closed it seems it would want to recycle the warm air over and over until the heat built up and took either the motor or the compressor out. Not trying to be critical of what you have done just something to consider.

You could try and use isopropanol as a coolant. Heared that its very good especialy when a good surface finishes is a requirement for the Part.

Will probably cook the compressor in a closed space, especially a cheap box store brand. Rule of thumb is running at 50% capacity.