The SOCIETY OF MANUFACTURING ENGINEERS (SME) delivered my January edition of Manufacturing Engineering today (pictured). The magazine is now rivaling the TLT publication for cool factor, but remains slightly more difficult to navigate.  I asked them if I could post it for our Readers. When they failed to return my call, I took that to mean they had no objection. So here it is. We bring it to your attention because it includes the article "GREEN COOLANT TECHNOLOGY ADVANCE" by Patrick Waurzyniak. Brutally honest, the author addresses the technical advancements and competitive status of vegetable oil based coolants.   That news is good. He also addresses the current cost of these products, and that news remains bad. Still, there seems to be offsetting performance improvements, and the products remain popular in Canada. The semisynthetic coolants are the more successful products at this time. Cimcool, ITW Rocol, Chemetall, and Master Chemical are mentioned as active in development of green coolants.  There is much more to read, so give it a click, courtesy of SME.

Not so long ago, having a "Green" coolant meant that either you were buying it from Castrol, or that it was horribly contaminated. As recently as 15 years ago, coolant salesmen were promoting their coolants as so environmentally safe that you could poor them down the drain. That could only have been true if you diluted them with clean water and then immediately dumped them without ever using them. Having been an End User of that era, I can tell you that the salesmen's BS back was enough to violate any modern emission standard today. I like to believe that the availability of mwf training, such as from STLE and SME, has greatly reduced the car salesman approach.