Tread Cutting Oil

[s78wingrider]

Sometimes hard to find what I need in this area. Anybody know something else I could use in place of tread cutting oil to tread a piece of aluminum? Thank You, Aaron

 

[sweettractors]

I use most any light weight oil that is handy. 3 in 1 does good. Fluid film does well. Ken Sweet

 

[Soundguy]

ditto that.. when cutting or drilling.. just about any oil will work... bar oil.. atf.. 10w30.. etc. the regularthread oil I use seems to be about a 30w or so.. o bar oil and similar work nice..

soundguy

 

[MD3]

Add some kerosene to the oil. This will make a big difference when working with Aluminum.

MD3

 

[/pine]

Look for a product called 'Rapid Tap'...it is readibly available on the Internet from numorous suppliers...it is a superior product for cutting soft metals

[Correction] the same company actually makes a product called 'A9'

Relton Chemicals specifically for aluminum

Relton Chemicals

 

[Transit]

Cutting and liberating oil are different, look at the names. If there were no difference there would be no need for anything special. I use cutting oil for plumbing, steel, copper, brass.

 

[Ken_CT]

S78wingrider, what size die are you using, and how many threads are you cutting? If you are only cutting a couple of smaller threads by hand, pretty much any oil will work, but if you are making many threads, and/or larger threads, you may want to use an oil similar to those already mentioned. My father used to tell me (many years ago), oil is cheaper than dies.

 

[SPYDERLK]

I am not familiar with treading aluminum. Is it a forging operation?
larry

 

[JerryK]

Believe it or not, a squirt bottle filled with a 50/50 mix of liquid hand soap [dish soap OK] and water works great. I worked in a tooling/robot center back near the end of my work years, and that is what we used. Would not be any good for a machining operation where lots of holes are drilled/tapped in place for hours, but for the odd hole/thread it works just as good as store bought... It is fair with alu and copper and better than tapping oil [which is usually too thin] , years ago we used lanolin hand cleaner for alu/cu... You are not putting something on the drill or tap to lube anything. It is mostly for cooling and keeping the metal from sticking to the drill/tap and to helping the removed metal to 'flow' out away from where the real work is being done. [which you can call lube if you want]