Laserscript user forum

Hello,
I have been reading about keeping temps down for the good of the tube and need a bit of info!
When running flat out, what sort of heat removal capacity is required? It looks like I will be using some osrt of TEC / Peltier arrangement, but need to know what cooling capacity so I can choose the correct parts!

I can do basic water/air cooling, but this will not keep the temps at 20 degrees, I already have some watercooling gear here for PCs, so I have half of what I require.

I only discovered the problem after scrapping quite a bit of material. Have a look on ebay for drinks chillers, I picked up a pair of chillers for £15 and they work like a dream. They have a small fridge plant and a very nice stainless steel heat exchanger, the condensor is compact with a small cooling fan and theyre pretty much silent in operation. With one unit I could keep temps below around 24 deg C during continuous operation (greater than 8 hours, with two units it cycles on and off on the thermostat at whatever temp you set (15 deg C). I too looked at the peltier route but a sizeable power suppy is needed and theyre not dramatically efficient.

Chis at HPC does of course supply a very nice chiller which will do the job too.

J

What sort of drinks chillers? Pub ones, or the water ones? I am wondering how well I can vent the heat using PC watercooling gear. I already have a 360 Rad here, and that is cooled by 3 120mm fans.

we use the water ones. Very efficient.

As Maz said, water ones they were mains fed drinking fountains, the bottled water ones should be OK too.

Heres a few currently on ebay, not quite like the ones I bought but they should dive you an idea.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/ACIS-WATER-PURIFI ... 5643377899

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Foster-Counter-To ... 27b9e567c1

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/Water-Cooler-Main ... 45f9e8dae3

Regards - John

I tend to cut about 5 hours at a time , if the temp starts to get high ( or if im going to be doing a lot of cutting of plywood at higher power ) i drop a couple of ice cubes in the tank,it seems to work fine and keeps it nice and cool.

Problem with quite a lot of them is that they are no where near me! I have found one seller selling 3 nearby, so hopefully I will win one! Otherwise I will be trying to air cool it. I do plan on using a 25 litre drum I just happen to have here as a reservoir, so it will take a while to warm all that up (I hope!)

PhillyDee wrote:Problem with quite a lot of them is that they are no where near me! I have found one seller selling 3 nearby, so hopefully I will win one! Otherwise I will be trying to air cool it. I do plan on using a 25 litre drum I just happen to have here as a reservoir, so it will take a while to warm all that up (I hope!)

I too have done the ice cube idea to get the temps down, I don't think the sudden temp change is good for the tube tough. The downside with water capacity is once it is heated up you then have to get rid of the heat and it will take some time. A cooling plant or total loss water system are the best ways in my humble opinion.

J

The temperature change with ice cubes will not be a problem , the temperature changes quite slowly, ive used it quite a bit and we use it quite often on small distillation setups in the lab with glass condensors when vaccum distilling to knock temperature sof condensate down rapidly

StarLoc Adhesives wrote:The temperature change with ice cubes will not be a problem , the temperature changes quite slowly, ive used it quite a bit and we use it quite often on small distillation setups in the lab with glass condensors when vaccum distilling to knock temperature sof condensate down rapidly

I suppose it depends on qty of water 'v' quatity of ice? The only point I was making was that trying to keep to stable temperatures is preferable to adding ice to cool it.

J