I used to barely clean my flood coolant tanks, now I scrub em every 2 weeks

For like 8 years I just let the sludge pile up until the pump started sputtering. Then last March I pulled a tank on a Haas and found this nasty black slime coating everything, smelled like rotten eggs. Took me 4 hours with a scraper and a wet vac to get it clean, lost a whole shift of production. Now I drain, scrub, and refill every other Friday morning, and my coolant lasts way longer with zero smell. Anyone else have a nasty tank story that made you change your ways?

3 comments

3 Comments

patricia_gonzalez1mo agoMost Upvoted

It's funny how one bad experience can flip a switch in you. I feel like that's the way it goes with a lot of things, not just shop maintenance. Once you see what happens when you let it slide, you never want to deal with that mess again.

seth_shah1mo ago

Yeah, I used to think it was no big deal too, but that totally flipped.

lilya761mo agoMost Upvoted

Used to be the same way on a Mazak horizontal. After one anaerobic bacteria bloom that ate through my way wipers in a week I started skimming the tank daily and dumping a biocide shot in before every long weekend.