I have several lasers both from OM tech. A 50 and a 80 watt laser. Now the larger laser on long jobs can’t cool on the simple 5 gallon bucket with pump and even the lower priced chillers do not actually chill…they are just simple heat exchangers and if the room air is warm well they don’t cut it.
However I wanted to avoid the 500.00 refrigerant chillers if possible simply because…well…I don’t want to spend the money if I can avoid it.
What I came up with works so well I could run a 120 watt laser on it and for less than $110.00 bucks.
Now the caveat is you have to be able to run cool water from the tap and evacuate it (drain) for most maybe this won’t work but I am on a well so water is no issue and the water is cold. If you live in say Phoenix well this won’t work as I lived there and the cold water is 90 degrees.
The simple solution was to get a stainless steel wort chiller for beer. Has to be stainless steel as copper will delam copper ions in deionized water and make it partly conductive over time. Stainless won’t.
I got A 50 foot stainless wort coil chiller that fits perfectly in a 5 gallon bucket. comes with tubing and stainless garden hose fittings to attach in and out lines. Again this simply acts a heat exchanger…water runs through the coil submersed in your sump and pulls out heat.
I used two of the pocket style garden hoses for water in and out. Since I have my shop in the basement I have water lines from the pressure tank for cold water and then I run the waste out through a hose to the outside for now.
Eventually I will plumb it from the PEX water lines above my laser and drain into the house drains but for now this was 20 dollars for two 50 foot pocket garden hoses to test.
How does it work…well water never raises above 68 degrees even under long runs 2 hour runs) at 75% power.
You do not need alot of water flowing through the chiller…just a slow trickle works fine…but my well water is 58 degrees. If I had standard city water of 70 degrees it would probably stay around 70.
Anyway this may work for a few people that have the option of using cold water from the house and can also drain it out. Again the chiller itself was like $70.00 and two expandable pocket hoses were 20 bucks at the off price outlet store. Thats it…no more overheated sump.
Now long term I have a 120 volt water solenoid that I will plumb in so that water runs through the chiller once the laser is turned on ( plugged into the AC outlet on back of laser). I will have a simple flow control valve to adjust water flow so that I can easily change flow if needed but really thats so I can set it as slow flow as needed. Water heat exchangers do not need a fast flow much like a car radiator…slow enough to have contact time. I could even very easily get a temp controller and plug the AC solenoid to open and close at a set temp…which I may do. Thats easy peasy…all available on Amazon or your online supplier of choice.
SO this may be an option for a few people who want a chiller than can actually chill a bigger laser, have access to cool water in and waste out. Certainly vastly superior to the simple $150.00 air heat exchangers and with cold water supply as good as a chiller.
Waiting on Amazon parts…