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Beginner machinist question??

Yeah.. gear oil hasn't been great as a cutting oil in the past lol

We change the 9" pumpkins in the rearends of our racecars so that we turn the RPM we want our engine builder/wallet wants at tracks w/ different lengths/straightaway speeds (ideally, we want to run the transmission in the 1:1 ratio so energy isn't wasted turning gears unnecessarily; rule books don't always allow this) so I end up w/ a lot of hardly used gear oil by the end of an entire season (looking at the schedule for this season if I were to run, at least 32 litres that have maybe 30 minutes of use on them w/o testing/practice days).

In that context, gear oil to use as a lubricant is way cheaper than cutting oil ;) :D (forget that not using the proper oil dulls bits, wastes time, etc.)

Is there anything that I CAN reuse the gear oil for?
 
Well, cutting oil also last forever if you use it to say add to a tap or when drilling or stuff like that. Very little use. Generally you use the best you have as going cheap and breaking a tap can get expensive really quick.

As for almost like new gear oil it depends on "how new is it" really. I would use it for say some lubrication, maybe lathe gear train (not head-stock) or lathe ways. There simply is not that much use for rather heavy oil in the shop. Light oil, yes more use. Also the oil is a bit used so I am unsure about content of metal flakes in it.

Also 32L of oil is quite a lot, if that is all heavy oil. If it was say ISO 32 it would not be that bad - my surface grinder takes more then 20L of oil for example. A lot of other tools also can use ISO 32. But heavy gear oil? Fuel for melting metal?

I guess you could try to dilute it a bit with ISO 22 oil or something. Equal parts ISO 22 and say ISO 90 gear oil will make ISO 56.

Conservation oil? I.e. for oiling of machines in storage? Again 32L would cover... a lot of machines.

Maybe you could formulate your own cutting oil, i.e. add to this ISO 90 gear oil additives found in cutting fluid. 32L of cutting fluid would last for a while.
 
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