EDM Fluid

At 08:25 AM 6/9/02 -0700, you wrote:

>But every commercial manufacturer of wire EDM's that I know of uses a
>deionizing bed rather than a still to get the water quality they need.

That's a straw man. I didn't suggest that anyone distills water in EDM
machines, just that distillation is quite capable of producing de-ionised
water to begin with. We had a quartz-based still in a lab in academic
department in which I worked. It produced water in one pass that was
sufficiently clean for sensitive biochemical work, pollution work in fact,
where any impurities left in water would confound experiments studying
those very substances in native water. That BTW is something that ion
exchange resins DO NOT produce; they merely substitute one set of ions for
others.

>This tells me that distilling does not work adequately for the volumes that
>are needed for commercial applications,

Stilling and reverse osmosis are the only ways to rapidly produce pure
water. Ion exchange merely substitutes one set of ions for others.

>and I suspect that the corrosiveness
>of steam on metallic condensers is at least part of the source of the
>problem.

Straw man. I never said they used metallic condensers.

>My main point is that with water based systems, you need the capability to
>scrub large volumes quickly and very thoroughly.

IE, filter. But EDM systems do use water so this must not be a real toughie.

>Oil is much more forgiving in this regard.

No doubt.