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Air tools and oilers?

Wisconsinite

Wisconsinite

Red Skull Member
Joined
May 19, 2020
Member Number
132
Messages
884
Loc
Milwaukee, WI
Who is running an oiler in their air lines for their air tools? I just picked up some higer quality units, and want to keep them happy. The manuals are asking for 1 drop per 10 cfm per minute. The die grinders use 40 cfm, so they want 4 drops of oil per minute. Currently, I MIGHT give em a drop or two prior to use, but nothing during use.... WWID?
 
We never oil a thing at work and we have small angle grinders going on 10yrs old.

No oil in the lines and only a little water.:homer: The oil would cause issues with production and each line has 50 tools that get serviced infrequently.

At home I give them a drop or two whenever I’m done using them, again, water.

YMMV
 
I dont use my air tools much, but I dont think I have ever oiled any of them. I dont recommend ignoring tool maintenance in such a pitiful manner, just saying I suck at keeping up on that and they still run fine 20 years later.

For reference, dry air colorado. Air has little moisture to begin with either to contribute to compressed air or for moisture to sit and rust equipment. That condition probably aids my ability to abuse my tools and not have dramatic failures.
 
I had considered using an air line oiler, but none of my air lines are dedicated to tools, so I just oil them a few drops each time I pull a tool out of the drawer.
 
Oil air tools, LMFAO, I'd hate to spoil my tools... they might..... might get some oil once a year. I have one grinder with a 3" cut off wheel going on 40 years old and it's probably only had oil a few times, and it gets used all the time.
 
I’m a weekend warrIor type, so air tools might get used once a month. I put a few drops of oil in them before using them. Try not to overdue the oil otherwise I get spray out the exhaust.
 
Oil the tool as you need it. An auto Oiler will wreck any paint job and anything in the future you might need clean dry air for.
 
I hardly use them anymore but I just put a couple drops down the whole before I use my air tools. I use to use air tools a lot at my old job, that place would accumulate insane amounts of water in the lines. A lot of us would run a fuck ton of wd40 through our impacts and drills about once every 6-8 months to clean them up, sometimes they would get disassembled but wd40 usually did the trick.

I would stay away from oilers if you plan to run a plasma.
 
Dan said:
A lot of us would run a fuck ton of wd40 through our impacts and drills about once every 6-8 months to clean them up, sometimes they would get disassembled but wd40 usually did the trick.
Click to expand...

How did you do this? It sounds interesting. I have a few old tools I would like to try this on. Just dump some down the air fitting?
 
Wisconsinite said:
How did you do this? It sounds interesting. I have a few old tools I would like to try this on. Just dump some down the air fitting?
Click to expand...

Yep. We had the spray bottles and would pour it into the fitting until it started overflowing then hook up the air and hold it wide open. You can see the wd40 and black gunk spraying out of the exhaust. After about 15-30 seconds of running the air tool it would clear up for the most part. Repeat once or twice, if that didn't clear it up the tool would get torn down and cleaned - I'd say 9 times out of 10 it worked though.

It's messy so have a piece of cardboard or something handy for the exhaust to spray on.
 
If its been sitting for a while give it a few extra cycles. Good luck:beer:
 
you know those pointy quart bottle caps that come on gear oil and shit?
toss one onto the cheapest bottle of ATF or p/s fluid or 0w20 or aw32 or whatever you've got
there's your air tool oil (gun oil, too)
hold the tool upside down, pull the trigger and squeeze the bottle in there

for frequency, I generally just do it when it starts to get a little weak, or I run into something that it doesn't want to move

Don't worry so much about it
 
Dan said:
Yep. We had the spray bottles and would pour it into the fitting until it started overflowing then hook up the air and hold it wide open. You can see the wd40 and black gunk spraying out of the exhaust. After about 15-30 seconds of running the air tool it would clear up for the most part. Repeat once or twice, if that didn't clear it up the tool would get torn down and cleaned - I'd say 9 times out of 10 it worked though.

It's messy so have a piece of cardboard or something handy for the exhaust to spray on.
Click to expand...
Been doing that to clean air tools since forever. Repeat until the black shit stops coming out Then OIL it to flush out the wd40.

WD will turn into cheesy brown bullshit over time if left in there alone and gum up the works.

As I said, I like to oil them before putting them away just for this reason with a good turbine or air tool oil.

I like the Zoom spout oilers, good for lots of stuff.

Highside Chemicals · Zoom Spout
 
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