Sunday, July 18, 2010

Upgrade Cooling water System for Water Cool Spindle

My spindle cooling water pump gave up on me!
No, I didn't fry my spindle along with it :)
I was so glad I had the reservoir made out of transparent plastic container! Saw that the water flow was reduced to a trickle when I started up the pump 2 weeks ago...

After some leg work, found a nice submersible pump. It was a love at 1st sight! black aluminium body, stainless steel impeller & shaft, 415V/3 phase, 1/10 horse power (75 watt) , capable of 2m head but didn't indicate the flow rate... & the best part was its has a RM250 price-tag! well within my RM300 budget! I love it so much that I couldn't care less about the flow rate...
I only need 350 ml/min which I recon a lovely pump of this specs will surely achieve.

Another pleasant surprise to find the shop next door carry some heavy-duty PE tanks! So I just got hold of a 16 liter tank, I choose it as it look about right size to keep the pump stable...

More leg work to find some extra 6mm tubing, connector, reducer, 4 core wires, an on-off switch, some screws, washers, pp tubing tape...
Took a nice Sunday morning in cooling rain to tie everything up nicely...

Open up all the necessary opening for mounting the pump, fit the reducer at the outlet,use up some 20m of 6mm pneumatic tubing to go along the cable chain,  I like the pneumatic tubing as it has stiff tube wall, it is light weight & the glossy finishing eye-catching... & some fittings to go along...

Tie up the electic cable, switch, got the motor direction correct & ready for a test.

The pump fills up a 1 liter paint can in 2 minutes 45 seconds, so a healthy 363 ml/min. consider the amount of work it has to get through some 30m long tiny 6mm tubing... an improvement over my old aquarium which was 300 ml/min at its best...

Ran the motor with the spindle running for over an hour & everything is cool & nice! This industrial grade outfit will serve me trouble-free for a long time...

Total damage? RM276... yeah... don't believe everything written on the price tag.... LOL

I would conclude this upgrade a complete success!

What next?
I can' really see the water level despite the translucent tank wall, will buy some of car radiator coolant to give a distinct color to it & give better corrosion protection to my pricy spindle. If it still doesn't work, I'll die the coolant with ink :)

Friday, July 9, 2010

CNC Hobbyist Club

I love to meet new faces, make new friend. Made more than a few friend around the world through participating forums of various kinds.
Since I started this blog, I received a few mails showing interest in CNC hobbyist activity. Hence, inspired the idea of forming a local CNC Hobbyist Group as a platform for like interest individuals to get together over Teh Tarik session, maybe set up a forum, a Facebook Group or something...
Curious to know how many might be interested... & see if the number warrant any action...
You can respond through the posting comment here
or
email to me Tinkeringken at Gmail dot com

Any comment & suggestion are welcome.