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The day my coolant went from green to pink
About two years back, I was running a big job on our old Haas VF2, the one with the leaky door seal. I topped off the coolant tank with our usual green stuff, the generic brand from the local supply house. Came in Monday morning and the whole sump looked like someone dumped a bottle of Pepto-Bismol in there. I mean bright, bubblegum pink. I thought the machine was bleeding. Turns out, the new guy on nights, trying to be helpful, saw the low level and added a gallon of the pink synthetic coolant we use for the Swiss machines. He didn't know they don't mix. For the next three months, every part that came off that mill had this weird pink tint, and the shop smelled like a candy store mixed with oil. The boss made us run it until the next tank clean-out just to teach us a lesson about labeling containers. Anyone else ever had a coolant cocktail disaster?
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susanm568d ago
Was the pink tint just on the surface or did it actually stain the material? I've seen coolants leave a film that wipes off, but if it soaks into porous metals or certain plastics, you're stuck with it. That's the kind of mistake that turns good parts into scrap because a customer won't accept something that looks wrong, even if it measures fine. The boss's lesson about labeling is cheap compared to eating the cost of three months of weird looking work.
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