Thoughts: not good to be inhaling any smoke

Advice: improve ventilation? Cut dry? Flood cooling?

The T- shirt: I LIKE it.🙂

An extractor fan as mentioned is a good idea. I have a reclaimed from scrap bath extractor fan and ducting to a window in the downstairs workshop, and it works well to keep cutting oil smoke or solvent fumes at bay.

Great T shirt! where did No 1 son find that?

I bought a decent bathroom extractor and use that when using a lot of cutting oil, works a treat!

Jim

Life expectancy of retired professional engineers by discipline used to show that chemical engineers had the earliest deaths presumably due (in the old days) to the use of the nose for chemical identification.

Colin

No need to use cutting oil with carbide tooling in a home workshop setting. If the swarf is coming off blue, it's all good. Too many red sparks flying about mean you could slow the rpm down a bit to preserve tool edge life. I avoid the stinky stuff for all except screwcutting and parting off, both of which I do with HSS. With carbide I would not bother there either.

Dont know of any specific health risk in cutting oil fumes but in an unventilated workshop I would give it a miss on general principle and the above lack of necessity — and the pong.

I recently had a very bad experience with cutting fumes. Having run out of my usual parafin based mix for milling ali I resorted to using what I had to hand, Kerosene (It stopped the cutter from clogging-just about). There was a lot to mill and there was a lot of smoke. After about half an hour I realised that I could no longer concentrate and had a bad headache. I got out the workshp – felt terrible. An hour later was back to normal. Lesson learned, quite scary at the time though.

Depends on how concentrated the fumes are, how long you breath them, and what your personal sensitivity is. Sensitivity is a tricky one because Mr Delicate has no problem because he feels ill quickly and runs away, while Mr Insensitive feels fine and gets Emphysema shortly after retiring.

Health issues are unlikely in a well ventilated home workshop because exposure to fumes is occasional and brief. But anyone regularly breathing in lots of smoke, fumes or exhaust gases should take steps to reduce the risk. Ventilate and extract mainly, maybe a mask.

Smokers should be aware that breathing fumes through a lit cigarette massively multiplies the risks. It's because passing fumes through a flame breaks them down chemically, not necessarily for the better! Before Health and Safety Phosgene poisoning was surprisingly common because sucking the fumes from a common degreaser (Carbon Tetrachloride) through a fag converts it into an exceptionally toxic poison.

Dave

With Carbide, run dry, The tip should be quite happy until the chips come off red.

Either that or use flood coolant. Intermittent coolant supply can lead to cracking of the edge.

In general, don't inhale the fumes, and ventilate the shop, ideally with a fan to promote airv movement.

That's my 2 pennorth

Howard

Hi Justin,

As I said in my 2021 post, when using carbide tipped tools I usually don't use any cutting oil for the roughing cuts. I do use oil for a light finishing cut as it seems to improve the surface finish.

Thor

As well as whether tailstock support was used. Guessing it was as it should have been.

Not important, but did you check for taper? It looks like that finishing cut was of too little depth for the cutter?

Examine the cutting edge of your insert very closely with a magnifying glass ! It may well be chipped or just blunt. Some sharpening can be done with a diamond lap. Try a different edge, and check tool height. If your tool height was high then it was rubbing and generating heat, instead of cutting.

It's a nice feeling to have something useful, as for making it from odds and sods, if it works so what ?

Good luck. Noel.

I use carbide insert tooling and also PCD on aluminium so mainly cut dry. However I have acquired some cutting oil used in a friends CNC machine shop and occasionally use that but the fumes have an unpleasant smell. This isn't appreciated if it leaks into the house through the internal door to the garage. I have notice that the oil appears to be a vegetable oil judging by the way it oxidises and goes sticky where it gets on the lathe and mill. So if it is could something like cooking oil be used and would it have a better smell. Castor oil was the best for bike racing back in the barely remembered past but the smell is still well remembered from race days at Brands Hatch.

I found that cooker hoods make fine extractors and used one I got from the dump for a small spray booth. I often see these offered on Freecycle when kitchens get refurbished so can be sourced at no cost.

CS