Tramp Oil Removal Systems

Tramp oil is a chronic issue in any machining operation. Slideway lubricants, hydraulic fluids, and spindle oils invariably find their way into your coolant sumps and central systems, contaminating your metalworking fluids. Over time, this leads to decreased coolant life and tool life, increased misting, oily machines, and poor workpiece finish.

Tramp oil also makes your sumps an ideal home for bacteria. That doesn’t just mean foul odors and dissatisfied machinists with “operator dermatitis.” As tramp oil accumulates, those bacteria breed, changing the chemistry and pH of your coolant. Lower pH reduces the effectiveness of the emulsifiers meant to stabilize the oil in water-based coolants. This causes the coolant to stop performing correctly, increasing tool wear while decreases part quality. Bacteria also do double duty when it comes to corrosion: They first feed on the corrosion inhibitors in your coolant and then excrete corrosive organic acids, salts, and hydrogen sulfide. Your machine tools and workpieces invariably suffer the consequences.

The problem is that each kind of coolant can react with each tramp oil differently. And this interaction can change over time. Some coolants reject tramp oil, leading to “free oil” floating on your sump’s surface. This can be addressed with an oil skimmer. But other coolants tend to emulsify the oils, making them more challenging to pump out of your tanks. This requires a tramp oil separator, coalescer, or centrifuge. Some coolants will reject tramp oil for a time, and then eventually begin to emulsify it. This is why filtration systems that seem to work may start to mysteriously fail. Increasing the frequency with which you discharge and charge your coolant or mixing the coolant richer at each top-off can minimize tramp oil contamination—but that gets expensive fast.

There are many interlocking pieces to this puzzle, creating a unique challenge—and you cannot meet unique challenges with a few generic filtration solutions.

Custom Filtration and Purification Solutions

We’re dedicated to a process-oriented approach that extends tool life and increases part quality while driving down costs. Our team has decades of experience with non-disposable media filtration, centrifuges, tramp oil separators, and other filter strategies and technologies. We bring together people who understand equipment, fluid separation at a fundamental level, your coolants and metalworking fluids, and your machining processes and industry. That team looks comprehensively at your facility, processes, and fluids. It then works with you to find the right intervention, use the right technology, and match it to the proper application.

But we don’t just install a system and walk away. We can go one step further than anyone else: We can install a team in your plant to run and to daily manage all your central systems, sumps, and tramp oil filtration technology. Your in-house Trucent team will handle coolant purchases then monitor and maintain those fluids at appropriate levels and concentrations. When they’re spent, we dispose of the fluid with minimal negative impact to your business and our world. No one else offers this level of comprehensive service to coolant management and tramp oil removal.

Every solution begins with a conversation. Contact us today to start that conversation and find a better way to capture tramp oil contamination in your machining operation. During your free on-site consultation, our engineers will walk your entire process, sampling fluids at every tank and essential juncture, to minimize or remove failure mechanisms and capture contaminants wherever they may creep in.