Honing Oil Purification & Centrifugation

Bad honing oil can create havoc well beyond the honing step of your production process. When that metalworking fluid stops performing, it doesn’t just lead to lousy cross-hatching, quality assurance headaches, and scrapped parts. Once particulates start spiking past the upper control limit, you have cascading failures:

Your honing oil ceases to perform as a lubricant and coolant. This decreases tool life and can even alter the metallurgy of your workpieces. Costs spike when particulates spike: you either tolerate scrapping more work or live with the downtime that comes with dumping your metalworking fluid, cleaning your filters, then recharging the system. Even then, you’re still going to have unacceptable quality inconsistencies.

Old Honing Oil Filtration Strategies

Most of the time, if a plant is struggling with its honing oil, it comes back to its filtration strategy. Many filtration systems still rely heavily on simple magnetic separators. Separators built on older, outmoded designs chronically underperform and grow increasingly unreliable over time. They can only grab fines down to 30µm, while most production settings need to get down to 1µm.

Few older bar magnet separators have even basic self-cleaning features. As particles accumulate on an old-style bar magnet, they diminish the magnetic field and decrease the separator’s capacity to catch ferrous particles. The only remedy is manual wipedowns that often get skipped during periods of high workload or tight production schedules. As a result, manufacturers struggle to maintain appropriate honing oil purity levels.

A Deep Appreciation for Filtration

Oil-based lubricants, like honing oil, are significantly cheaper to purify and recycle than to purchase every time they degrade. To keep your honing oil performing as intended, Trucent develops custom and turn-key separation/purification solutions. These include permanent in-process installations, mobile in-plant skids, and mobile oil trucks that travel to your site to separate out contaminants, filter, and purify your oil. 

Our process is straight forward:

First, we work with you to agree on a specification for your fluid’s particulate contaminants, water removal, and additives. Typically, these specifications are based on SAE (Society of Automotive Engineers), AGMA (American Gear Manufacturers Association), or ISO (International Standards organization) classifications. They might include viscosity, additives such as rust and oxidation inhibitors, anti-wear agents, extreme pressure, etc.

Next, we develop a strategy with you to segregate and collect different contaminated oil types on an ongoing basis, to prevent cross-contamination. Based on the standard life of your oils or continuous laboratory testing, we create a purification schedule. Our filtration and purification process allows us to maintain your industrial oils at your desired ISO cleanliness code, and guarantees the lowest water content in the industry. We’ll also analyze your oil and return it to its original OEM state through an additization process. (This analysis is necessary, especially if heat and water cause oxidation of your oil.)

Finally, we issue a report that documents the results, before returning the oil to your system for reuse (upon your approval).

Going Further with Filtration and Purification

We can go further than anyone else to minimize or remove failure mechanisms wherever they may creep into your machining operation.

Lots of companies will install filtration technology in your plant. We can install a team to manage all your filtration technology on a daily basis. Your in-house Trucent team will handle fluid buying, then monitor and maintain those fluids at appropriate levels and concentrations for your applications. When your fluid is spent, we’ll dispose of your coolant and honing oil with minimal negative impact to your business and our world.

The results: Top performance in your plant, every single day, hassle-free. No one else offers this level of comprehensive honing oil service.

Every solution begins with a conversation. Contact us today to begin that conversation or schedule a no-obligation on-site consultation. We’ll find a better way to keep your honing oil running clean.