| Fluid ounces per minute (fl oz/min) | Cubic millimeters per minute (mm³/min) |
|---|---|
| 1 Fluid ounce per minute | 28413.0625 mm³/min |
| 2 Fluid ounces per minute | 56826.125 mm³/min |
| 3 Fluid ounces per minute | 85239.1875 mm³/min |
| 4 Fluid ounces per minute | 113652.25 mm³/min |
| 5 Fluid ounces per minute | 142065.3125 mm³/min |
| 10 Fluid ounces per minute | 284130.625 mm³/min |
| 20 Fluid ounces per minute | 568261.25 mm³/min |
| 25 Fluid ounces per minute | 710326.5625 mm³/min |
| 50 Fluid ounces per minute | 1420653.125 mm³/min |
| 100 Fluid ounces per minute | 2841306.25 mm³/min |
| Reference | Fluid ounces per minute (fl oz/min) | Cubic millimeters per minute (mm³/min) |
|---|---|---|
| A domestic shower | 316.756 fl oz/min | 9000000 mm³/min |
| A kitchen tap | 351.951 fl oz/min | 10000000 mm³/min |
| A garden hose | 527.926 fl oz/min | 15000000 mm³/min |
| The Amazon river | 4.41346 × 1011 fl oz/min | 1.254 × 1016 mm³/min |
The fluid ounce per minute is a unit of volumetric flow rate equal to one imperial fluid ounce passing a point every minute. Its symbol is fl oz/min. At 28.413 millilitres to the ounce, a minute at this rate delivers a small glass, which places the unit among the deliberate, controlled flows of food, drink and light industry.
Beverage dispensing is its steadiest employer. A post-mix drinks tower is set so that each nozzle delivers a fixed number of fluid ounces per minute, and the ratio of syrup to carbonated water — commonly one to five — is maintained by matching the two rates. A coffee machine's brew rate, a beer line's pour rate and a juice dispenser's throughput are all quoted this way.
Small dosing and metering pumps in food processing carry the same units. Flavourings, colourings, brines and preservatives are injected into a product stream at so many fluid ounces per minute, and the ratio to the main flow is what determines the finished recipe. A pump that drifts by five per cent changes the taste of every package made that shift.
Cleaning and chemical injection follow the same pattern. A dairy or brewery cleaning system meters detergent and sanitiser into circulating water at a rate in fluid ounces per minute, chosen so that the concentration in the loop matches what the supplier specifies for the temperature and contact time being used.
Laboratory and pilot-plant work in Britain and the Commonwealth still meets the unit in older equipment and older standard methods. Rotameters graduated in fluid ounces per minute remain in service, and a technician reading one must remember whether the scale is imperial or American, since the two ounces differ by four per cent.
For orientation, 60 fluid ounces per minute is one fluid ounce per second, 35 fluid ounces per minute is about a litre per minute, and 160 fluid ounces make an imperial gallon. So a dispenser running at 32 fluid ounces per minute fills a gallon in five minutes exactly.
One fluid ounce per minute equals about 28.41 millilitres per minute, about 0.02841 litres per minute, or about 0.01667 fluid ounces per second.
The cubic millimetre per minute is a unit of volumetric flow rate equal to one cubic millimetre passing a point every minute. Its symbol is mm³/min. It measures flows so slight that a whole minute yields a volume the size of a coarse grain of salt, and it exists because a great deal of precision engineering happens at exactly that pace.
Electrical-discharge machining is the classic user. A wire eroder cutting hardened tool steel removes 20 to 100 cubic millimetres per minute, and a sinker eroder finishing a mould cavity may remove less than one. The rate is the whole economics of the process: a die that takes eight hours to cut cannot be quoted like one that takes eight minutes, and the removal rate is what separates them.
Grinding and honing are described the same way when the tolerance is tight. A creep-feed grinder roughing a turbine blade root runs at hundreds of cubic millimetres per minute per millimetre of wheel width, but a final spark-out pass approaches zero by design, because the last few micrometres must come off without heating the workpiece.
Adhesive and solder-paste dispensing lives here too. A dot of adhesive on a circuit board is a fraction of a cubic millimetre, and a dispensing valve laying a bead is programmed by rate so the bead stays the same width as the head speeds up and slows down around corners. Underfill, conformal coating and potting are all specified in this unit or its microlitre twin.
Biology and medicine borrow it for slow perfusion. Organ-on-a-chip devices, microdialysis probes and slow-release implants move fluid at single-digit cubic millimetres per minute, and cerebrospinal-fluid production in an adult is about 350 to 500 millilitres a day, which is roughly 250 to 350 cubic millimetres per minute — a useful reminder that the body itself works at this scale.
Sixty cubic millimetres per minute is one cubic millimetre per second, and a million is one litre. Put together, that means a flow of one cubic millimetre per minute would need almost two years to fill a one-litre bottle.
One cubic millimetre per minute equals 0.001 millilitres per minute, about 0.01667 cubic millimetres per second, or one microlitre per minute.