Water Circulator for Tig Welder

MO

Link to more cooler information
Link

Link to more cooler information
Link

Link

The Grainger part number for my pump and motor is 7P089

It is just for home use. I never even thought of the water faucet. I am taking a class at the local college for TIG right now, and they have running water for cooling. For as much as I would use it at home, that might be a better deal. I will have to look into that more. Thanks for the all of the info. Appreciate it.

MO

The only problem with water, tap or treated, is that it will scale inside the torch pipe and eventually plug the torch head as thats where the heat is concentrated. We have this problem on commerical chillers for AC and we use a treated monitored water supply.

You can use a swamp (evaporative) cooler pump, about $15 at Wal-mart, with antifreeze and this works well. The anitfreeze will have the chemicals to stop the scale and will cool better than water.

T_Bone

Do you just put the antifreeze in a tub and then recirculate it? Is there anything special (other than the pump) you need to do this? I didn't think about the rust and scale - but should have. This sounds better because my water is very hard to start with.

Mo

As I stated it depends on what amperage your welding at and the length of welding time depends how much cooling capicity you need. All of the commerical units are rated for 500amp plus so they design there systems to handle that but how many times does the normal commerical/home shop use that amperage?

They also have to consider a flat run or if your welding 20ft above the tank. Each 2.31ft equals 1psi of resistance or about 8.65psi at 20ft. Again what is "your" typical usage? More height = more psi the pump needs.

At higher pressures, antifreeze can raise it's boiling point to a limit. EG based is about 240*f where PG based is about 320*f for a given amount of pressure. Now were into considering cavitation at the torch head and is a simular problem that diesel engines face with pitting of the cyl sleeves. Most of the long life EG based coolants do contain stop leak but shouldn't be a problem in this useage. They still make the standard EG coolants tho if that is a concern.

RV antifreze is not designed for high heat applications and would be more prone to the cavitation problems. T_Bone

Link

Yep about 10gal, depends on the amps and weld time, is needed at 50/50 mix with a lid so it doesn't evaporate as fast and I would use distilled water for the mix. 10gal should be sufficent for most welding needs if not a truck heater coil with a fan works well.

T_Bone