Why does everyone ignore the coolant concentration on their machines?

I was checking out a job at a shop in Cleveland last month and saw three operators just topping off their coolant tanks with straight water. My old mentor drilled into me that you gotta use a refractometer to hit that 5-10% mix, otherwise you get rust and bacteria. After two days, their parts started showing tool wear marks and the smell was awful. Has anyone else seen shops skip this step and pay for it later?

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rowan26224d ago

Oh 100%, I've watched a shop go through a whole sump full of $5k spindles cause the guys running the manual mills just kept adding water. A $50 refractometer would've saved them a fortune in coolant and tooling in like a week.