Canola v corn oil

weo

weo

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Hello all. I'm told I need some new canola oil to heat treat my 15N20/O1 blades. I can get 5 gal corn oil for a lot less, is there a difference? (Canola won't break the bank, but being unemployed makes me want to watch my pennies.)

Thanks

as always
peace and love
billyO
 
I think the biggest difference will be in the life of teh oil. Canola seems to be more stable due to the low acidity. Other oils will go rancid faster. Corn oil may not be cheaper if you have to replace it more often. That is one of the less mentioned advantages of commercial engineered quench oils. A pail of Parks#50 may cost a bit, but will last 5 or 10 years.
 
Got the canola, thanks.
I already have the Parks #50, but read earlier that it's a bit too quick for the O1. No?
 
Yes, too fast for o1. Any vegetable oil will do for o1. Pre heating, and agitating, particulary in the very first quenching stage is recommended, as always.
I suspect that the differences in quench performances between different canola brands/batches would be just as broad as the differences between different kinds of seed oils. I'd get the cheaper one you can put your hands onto.
Actually, if the oil gets rancid or else i won't swear it would get worse regarding quenching... it could get faster or slower and still not so dependable as when fresh in comparison to a real quench oil.
 
KnuckleDownKnives, I read the research paper on quenching properties of vegetable oils. Thanks for posting that link!

To summarize the report, there isn't enough difference in quenching properties between vegetable oils to be significant. For our purposes, it looks like the smoke point and flash points are more practically significant. Don't want any fires!

A couple of other observations in the report were interesting. One is that heating the vegetable oil slows down the quench rate perceptibly. Enough that this could be used for crack sensitive steels. The other is that blending vegetable oil with commercial mineral oil based quenchants can alter the properties. In general vegetable oils are faster than the commercial quenchants they tested.

Fascinating information!
 
Here's the abstract from the first paper referenced.

The compositions of canola, soybean, corn, cottonseed and sunflower oils suggest that they exhibit substantially different propensity for oxidation following the order of: Canola < corn < cottonseed < sunflower ≈ soybean. These data suggest that any of the vegetable oils evaluated could be blended with minimal impact on viscosity although compositional differences would surely affect oxidative stability. Cooling curve analysis showed that similar cooling profiles were obtained for different vegetable oils. Interestingly, no film boiling or transition nucleate boiling was observed with any of the vegetable oils and heat transfer occurs only by pure nucleate boiling and convection. High-temperature cooling properties of vegetable oils are considerable faster than those observed for petroleum oil-based quenchants.

What caught my eye is the reference to oxidation. Antioxidants can slow the breakdown of vegetable oils. I wonder if adding an antioxidant to veggie oil would make it last longer? I'll bet it will.

Clove oil and ascorbic acid are good antioxidants. Maybe they could be added? Don't know if the heat from the quenching process will break them down though. Something else for research!
 
Considering all of the above, my opinion is that the best combination of quench speed, oxidation(breakdown), and cost would be canola oil.

If the steel is prone to cracks during the quench, the first step would be to heat the canola before quenching,mthe second would be to get a slower, commercial quenching oil.

At least, that's my takeaway from these research studies.
 
O1 is semi air hardening in thin profiles, 15n20 likes medium speed quenchants. Canola is the fastest of the vegetable oils. For about the same price as canola, you should be able to find some medium speed engineered quenchants, available in gallon sizes. There isn't really such thing as too fast really, it is more that the faster the quench, the more problems you create. There is a minimum speed for full hardness, faster than that doesn't help, but it doesn't necessarily hurt, it just increases the probability of having problems like warping.

So what I am saying is use canola if you like, but you may have more problems than if you used a medium speed engineered quench oil. I can't imagine that whatever vegetable oil you are currently using isn't fast enough to harden your laminate, so if you are just looking to save money, go with what you got. If you are gonna spend money, get something engineered for the task.

https://trugrit.com/index.php?main_...d=6052&zenid=00cfaa1db162ef4c73f3e923c2df92ac
 
i get canola locally for about $6 a gallon and no shipping, best bet for the occasional user. I wish the two research papers had used the same testing standard as some of the commercial makers use so we could see an apples to apples comparison of speed. can't find any more info on the commercial oils used in the second link. I have been using canola at 110F - 120F with O1 for several years and have had no issues. the thinnest O1 I have worked with is 1/32"(0.03") and still needed to oil quench to black then iced plates to get max hardness.
 
The takeaway seem to be that all veggie oil seem to be pretty fast.

The observation that blending alters quenching speeds makes me wonder if a canola/mineral oil blend could be used for fine tuning? My money is that it can!!

It would be great if we could come up with home-brew replacement for expensive quenching oils!
 
Just from personal experience, canola works very well for O1. I heat it to around 90 - 100 degrees and haven't had any issues with cracking or failing to harden.
 
15n20 LOVES parks 50.
 
If you already have Parks 50, why not just use it on the O1 and do an interrupted quench to slow things down?

(I don't have any experience with O1 so this is a question, not advice)
 
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