A fluid situation

La Grange is a quiet, peaceful, friendly little community located in the heartland of The Great State of Texas. Texas is well known as being the home of Big Oil, the Dallas Cowboys and great BBQ. Many are not aware however, that Texas also has a large manufacturing base, producing parts for industries ranging from energy to aerospace and everything in between.

Mico Machine Co., established in 1978 and located in La Grange, Texas, as a small family oriented job shop, has grown into a manufacturing powerhouse. It produces high quality, precision machined aircraft components for the aerospace market.

“By implementing the latest technology that the manufacturing industry has to offer, it has brought Mico Machine from the small company it once was to the company it is today,” says Casey Kulhanek, vice president of Mico Machine. “We strive to continually improve our process, and invest where we can. It’s the only way to stay competitive in today’s market.”
 

History of coolant issues

In March 2013, Mico Machine was experiencing serious coolant related issues with a full-synthetic metalworking fluid.

“We were having major issues with rust formation on our Toyoda 650 and Makino A71 and A81 milling centers,” Kulhanek says. “The rust was becoming such a problem that eventually our Toyoda horizontal tool changer and gear box froze up completely. This cost us about $70,000 in parts and labor to repair, as it was totally unsalvageable. This dollar figure doesn’t include the four weeks of down time that this cost us as well. With both figures combined, we estimate the total amount to be more than a $150,000 loss.”

Rust was only one of the many issues facing Mico Machine. Mico must machine a wide range of materials to make parts for the aerospace and defense industries, so various tool life and productivity related issues can arise.

“We machine a lot of aircraft grade aluminum, exotic metals such as Inconel 718, 6AL4V titanium, 17-4, 15-5, and 13-8PH stainless steels as well,” Kulhanek explains. “We’ve been struggling with poor cutting performance, marginal surface finishes, and productivity issues with our prior fluid on most, if not all, of the materials we machine.”
 

Reaching out for help

Kulhanek desperately surfed the web for coolant suggestions from other shops and “what became apparent to me was Blaser Swisslube was always in the top three recommendations. I found several posts by one of the applications engineers from Blaser, so I called him to see if he would be willing to help us out.”

Mico’s fluid use was high. Based on the number of machines, the applications, and the work, Mico Machine switched to B-Cool 755.

Blaser Swisslube Area Manager Roger Martinuc notes, “The situation was pretty bad at Mico when we initially surveyed the shop. Not only were the machines rusted badly, but the smell in the shop was pretty unbearable. They were going through substantial fluid concentrate due to biological issues; about 495 gallons of concentrate per month. This was due in part to cleaning and disposing of the cutting fluid every two to three months. This doesn’t take into account the lost production time due to the machines being idled for cleaning.”

There also were some machine operators and maintenance personnel with contact dermatitis issues, which they strongly felt were related to the fluid they were using, Martinuc explains. “It has now been eight months since the implementation of B-Cool 755, and these issues are now resolved.”

Analysis of Mico’s coolant costs and usage has also shown a dramatic decrease; from 493 gallons of concentrate per month, to only one 55 gallon drum of B-Cool 755 per month. This is a substantial cost savings, even considering that the price per gallon of the Blaser coolant is more than twice the price of their former metalworking fluid.

“Our tool life and productivity have also increased,” Kulhanek states. “Our tooling costs have dropped a little more than $51,000, just in the last eight months alone. Our productivity has increased as well. An excellent example of this is a reoccurring Inconel part we run every month. This job run consists of 40 parts of Inconel 718. We could only machine 7 to 10 parts before the tools were completely worn out and had to be changed. Since we started using the B-Cool 755, we can now run the entire lot of 40 parts without having to index our inserts. As a matter of fact, the cutting tools showed only minor flank-wear, which to us is incredible.”

Mico Machine has yet to dispose of any of the B-Cool 755 to date. The company also invested in a SmartSkim coolant recycling system based on Blaser’s recommendation.

Kulhanek states, “We plan on implementing a coolant recycling program to help reduce our coolant costs and consumption even further.”

Increased cutting performance and improved shop conditions weren’t the only improvements noticed at Mico Machine.

“What’s been a relief for us is the rust formation has stopped, and we’ve noticed that the B-Cool seems to be cleaning up the machines and removing the old coolant residues as well,” Kulhanek explains. “We’re very pleased with how things have turned out. Our machine operators like it, our maintenance crew likes it. Along with the tool life and productivity improvements we’ve seen, the Blaser product is leaps and bounds above what we were using before.”

Blaser Swisslube
www.blaser.com

Mico Machine Co.
www.micomachine.com

About the author: Brett Reynolds, CMFS, is senior applications engineer for Mico Machine Co. and can be reached at 845.294.3200.