[Amps] Water cooled amp question

[Will Matney]

Stan,

Do you have any websites your looking at for complete coolers? If so, please send the links and I'll take a look. I would suppose the tubing and or fittings are most likely 1/4" or 3/8" pipe size? I doubt 1/2" but a possibility. Lets take a 500 amp water cooled mig gun. They cool the nozzle, gas diffuser and thus the tip using one of those Bernard coolers. Those guns see way more heat I'd bet than that tube will ever see. It's radiator is nothing more than one the size of a large heater core in a car. Matter of fact, they use the same motor to drive the pump and the fan blade in some models. Over on Northern Hydraulics, you can find several small pumps that will do what your wanting, both with and without a motor. You want a neoprene type impeller as they self prime easily. The small hand held one I mentioned earlier, a friend of mine bought for about $60 and drained an above ground pool with it so it's got a good amount of head pressure as it was pulling from 4-5 feet deep. One trick is to mount the tank over top of the pump so it will be force primed. For the tanks, I bought those heavy Rubbermaid, dark gray colored rectangular tubs which were about 5-10 gallons in size when I built those mill coolers. I can say that the steel does get hot when your hogging out a large piece (shavings were red hot) and those coolers never got warm from it. The snap on lids are thick and will support the pumps weight. I made cutouts for the fittings and used PVC types. Since it's hot outside where your at, you could burry the tank itself under the ground leaving the top exposed. Or, place the cooler in another room, in a basement, or in the garage, etc. Another thing you might want to look at are those pre made mill coolers by Little Giant. They have a pre-made plastic tank with the pump installed. They put out a good flow, I'd say what you need as they're used for flood cooling large steel blanks while being machined. Matter of fact, they have fittings and valves plus the tubing where they sell these. Try ENCO for these or Granger. They will handle all kinds of different coolants too. With these, you'd only need to add a fan and radiator if it was needed and it may not be. Especially if your tank is large enough and the lines have a good length to them to dissipate the heat. For a shock hazard, you could build a small fault detector to shut the power down if the water showed a current of a dangerous amount. Just put a probe down in the water and measure the potential to ground. There could be some type of coolant you can run besides water which would be better, I don't know. Another way to make a radiator without a fan is to use a second tank full of water. Put a coiled copper tube (coil) down in this tank and run the incoming water through this coil first then back to the reservoir tank to be pumped back to the tube.

Will

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On 3/4/05 at 9:14 PM Stan C. wrote:

>Thanks to all that have replied so far to my question about cooling a
>water cooled tube. It seems like I might be trying to over do my system.
>It is just that from Eimac's web site the say not to use copper parts,etc.
>Also that the water into the tube can not be over 50 deg.C (about 122 deg
>F). As the heat exchanger and water tank will be outside,this kinda
>worries me. As it gets 115+ deg.F here in the summer quite often. That is
>cutting it close....as the say the water should be about 35 deg.C into the
>tube. As for pumps I have been looking at Gen-X aquarium pumps. They make
>some nice units for about $150.00 that will flow about 20GPM. So???? I am
>still just woundering about a self contained water chiller,but they are
>very pricy. And what size do I need? I have been looking at a 6000 watt
>model. Put I can not find out if that will cover the heat of the 3CW5000.
>Common sence would say yes,but I would like to know for sure.
> 
>Thanks again to all,Stan
>
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