Milling machine chips

I have a decent amount of aluminum chips building up from machining.
I have a feeling that melting these down would result in a large amount of it lost to dross.

I think I can reduce that issue my melting these in an electric foundry.

there will also be the issue of cutting fluid on them, they would have to go into the crucible first, adding them to a melt would have the potential for a steam explosion. I think the residual dried cutting fluid will do little other than smell bad.

Has anyone tried this before?

 

I can get my hands on about a dozen of those large recycle buckets of chips from my friends haas lathe. He has a never ending supply of the stuff as the machine runs 18hrs a day making hydraulic parts. I've offered to cart them out to the dumpster for him if that tells you anything. My advice, chuck em!

I did walk off the other day with a bucket of end cuts. Another free endless supply. If I was really desperate, I'd melt this down long before screwing with chips.
Remember, Cast to Cast. Find some cast aluminum wheels, bust them up and use them. Extruded alloy is not the same as cast metal.

 

dont mess with chips especially if they have had cutting fluid, huge shops recycle their own chips , by placing then in a Hydraulic briquette machine, which does just what it sounds like, it makes chips into pucks , loose ships will give you tons of dross, they will smoke, and cutting fluid almost always contains sulfer which messes up almost all alloys ,

Oh if they are aluminum, your metal will be insanely gassy

V/r HT1

 

I keep running into wheels that are forged (not cast.) Unfortunately, they are similar to extrusions. Sometimes it is hard to tell how they were made.
Robert

 

This. Other aluminum alloys suck for casting.

 

Yes they do. There is plenty of scrap cast aluminum floating around without have to resort to melting down chips.

 

And you can buy good aluminum ingots from member master53yoda. He melts down engines and transmission housings in a reverb furnace. I have bought 3 or 4 boxes from him. Excellent product that is ideal for casting. Ships quickly. Sell the chips and buy ingots. Easy! I see you are in BC. Shipping might or might not be an issue. Art will know.

Contact him here or on ebay. https://www.ebay.com/itm/182166261652?hash=item2a69f48f94:g:0kgAAOxyLm9TBrNJ

Denis

 

I have been resisting the aluminum extrusions we scrap at work. Long time ago I tried to cast extruded aluminum, it wasn’t successful.

this next project it going to be cast with 100% “Wheelium” I just cut up 3 aluminum car wheels.

The milling machine swarf

 

Thanks!
I’ll hit him up. There is a lot of hidden cost and time in a trying to “cut corners/“save money”

HT1 thank you for pointing out that porosity will be an issue. Even if I try to wash off the residual coolant there will certainly be a lot of crap added to the melt.
I have found that turning it into ingots first seems to help remove some garbage, but then it’s a couple melts to clean up the material, losing some to dross each time, it quickly becomes better to buy good raw material from the start....

not sure I have enough chips to sell, I’ll check that out too.

 

I just shove my aluminum chips into a 5 gallon bucket and stomp it in. I have a friend with a scrapyard that I horsetrade with and give it to him along with my other bits and pieces. Reclaiming them in the furnace would be a bit like milking a mouse: lots of effort with very little return. I would expect that your material as well as what Jason showed is probably extrusion alloy anyway. That said, non heat treated cast alloy like 356 is really gummy and no fun on the mill. I’ve found extrusion alloys to be far more cooperative, so if you want to cast round stock or blocks for general machining you may want to consider it.

Pete

 

This is new to me, so extrusions melted down may machine better that melted wheels?

I use flood coolant and have had good results machining melted down wheels, but if it melted down aluminum poles works I have access to a lot of that. I’ll give it a try

 

Talk to two guys and you may get two opinions. Here's mine:

I have done a modest amount of machining of 356 straight from the foundry---no T5 heat treatment which does improve its strength and machining charecteristics. It is not a ton different than machinning 6061 T-6. There are a fair number of members who have done a lot of machining of cast 356 (I can think of some pretty nice intake manifolds as an example) with excellent results. Were I to chose between the ideal material to cast and the ideal material to machine, I would chose casting optimaization as casting is heavily the more likely trouble causer. There is a reason for the saying "cast for cast" and the general acceptance of that saying as conventional wisdom. I think wheelium is likely to cast better and machine fine. Especially if you just give the casting a little post casting cook time to improve it---T5.

Denis

 

I have a couple blocks that I prepped for a project that has been shelved for over a year now. I cast those, cleaned them up and put them in an oven for 5hours at 350f in an oven.
I am not sure if this improved the machinability, but they machine very well, not gummy at all, good chip breaking and a excellent surface finish. This could have a lot to do with sharp end mills and flood coolant.

 

This is a conversation worth having (for me). I'm a self taught bare novice when it comes to machining. Others here are much more experienced and better equipped than I. I do all of my work on a South Bend 9" and a Clausing 8520 mill. I primarily use carbide tooling and try to stick to the book for spindle speeds. On the mill I'm limited on my feeds to "turn slow, turn fast, or turn real fast". I worked on a project just this weekend milling identical small parts of a non critical nature taking a .030 cut off the top. The first 8 were cast from window frame and posed no issues. The last 4 were wheelium and I spent more time picking metal out of the flutes than running the machine. I generally have the same experience on the lathe with chips welding (or not) to my inserts. Even with filing I notice a big difference in loading.
I am not using coolant or heat treating and at this time dont really have the need or desire to. I could, and that might improve my machining performance, but my experiences above generally dictate which type of alloy I use for a particular project.

Pete

 

Pete,

If you are not blowing (compressed air stream as an absolute minimum and Noga mister as a big step up) or using flood coolant, welding chips is inevitable. I’d expect it to be a bit worse on cast aluminum compared to 6061. But, I would expect problems to quickly appear when making cuts in either. Even using a chip brush soaked with cutting fluid and brushing out chips and applying fluid (simple diesel or WD40) will make a big positive difference. But, you gotta prevent welding somehow. On short simple stuff I just use the chip brush and cutting oil. On more serious work the mister blasts the chips out of the gullets, applies cutting fluid, and cools the part. Koolmist is an effective, cheap, safe, vegetable-oil-based, cutting fluid, for example. https://koolmist.com/. A gallon is diluted in water and will last most of us for several years.

Denis

 

Thanks for the feedback guys.
Sorry Kent. End of hijack.

Pete