TIG torch water cooler on the cheap??

I think what you did was noble. It probably would have worked great with a heavier pump and no bleach. I think a radiator in the loop will help too.

Thanks! If nothing else I learned some stuff!

Originally I did have a radiator in the loop. I harvested a small one from an old air conditioner but the crappy pump I have couldn't push the fluid through the long length of small tubes even after priming and all that. The outlet would be only the smallest trickle back into the reservoir. I was gonna buy one of those Procor pumps but at the time didn't want to spend the time and money to engineer it.
 
To all Use distilled water and do not use automotive antifreeze-it contains coagulants to stop small leaks and will gum up your Tig torch. Order some coolant for tig welding and it will save your pump.

All the best

J
 
I am using air so far. I'm a welding hobby guy. We have good water which would work very well in a total loss scenario but plumbing that in would not be conducive to portability. A friend uses a bucket with success. By the time I get solenoids, plumbing fixtures and wires with connectors, I think I'm money ahead to buy a $450 Everlast which matches my welder. I have some of the stuff in the scrap pile but the time it would take to get a system setup that I could personally be happy with has a lot of value to me. This is my take and is in no means intended to be critical of any DIY solution in fact, I rather enjoy reading and thinking about it. I like my 9 torch but it gets too hot to handle comfortably pretty often and I seldom weld beyond 150 amps.
 
Here's what I did many years ago. My new-er welder came with a professional cooler. The capacitors are not related to the cooler... Power factor correction for the welder.
 

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Oh, and I haven't had any trouble with automotive anti-freeze; I used it in both coolers.
 
Here's what I did many years ago. My new-er welder came with a professional cooler. The capacitors are not related to the cooler... Power factor correction for the welder.
The cooler looks like an automotive heater core.
 
Good eye! Its a heater core for a postal van. I got it from a surplus place.
 
Oh, and I haven't had any trouble with automotive anti-freeze; I used it in both coolers.

I've been working with coolers, torches and hoses a bunch in the past year or so and have found several newer torches that looked perfect, but had hoses that were crumbling internally leading to restricted flow, or no flow at all. They were all big name brand torches/lines and had the more expensive super flex cables. They all had one thing in common....automotive antifreeze was being used in them. I've even found them where you could run your fingers along the hose and find spots that there was so little rubber left it would collapse with light finger pressure....really weird. The bad thing is that the rubber crumbles into this sand like stuff that plugs up the smaller passages in the torch head and it turns into almost concrete...no way to clean it out that I've found using wires, rods, acid, etc.

I think there is something in automotive antifreeze that attacks certain kinds of rubber...probably the more expensive, supple kind based off what I've seen.

Years ago I was working with an engineer at Ford on a project and he told me that when the first deicing windshield washer fluid came out they found that it was causing a chemical in the rubber tubing that goes out to the nozzles to leech out and it was caustic to paint, so they were getting warranty claims for paint peeling off nearly new cars. They ultimately had to change the rubber compound to avoid the problem....after spending millions of dollars repainting car roofs. I think something like that might be going on with the torch hoses....I'm still trying to research it more.

I've gone through something like 20-25 coolers now and there has only been one other issue and that was a cooler run with tap water where the radiator developed pinholes in the copper tubing after a flush. All the others have been fine except the handful that were used with automotive coolant. It's not definitive, but certainly suspicious!

I normally use a 50/50 mix of this Cantesco coolant with bottled distilled water and that makes it good for down to about -15F. The price varies (Amazon doing it's thing) between $16 and $25 per gallon, so even for a big cooler you only need a gallon or two. It's a few bucks more than automotive antifreeze, but a lot cheaper than having to replace a torch that fails. They also have versions that are meant for higher temps and those are less expensive....you probably don't have to worry about single-digit temps there!

 
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