Welding Tips and Tricks

I bought my first TIG cooler today and it is a pretty basic unit. seems to have an inlet, and outlet, a port for adding more water/coolant, and a power plug. there is no on off switch, no flow alarm, on/off switch, nor any other bells and whistles. I get the basic operation I think: fill with coolant, purge the lines, and make sure it is turned on and flowing when welding. Am I missing anything? Are there any tricks or tips I need to be aware of?

so long as it is pumping tig cooler coolant (or distilled water with algae eliminator) through the lines at the proper pressure, it's pretty much idiot proof.

If it's in a location that doesn't get below freezing, straight distilled water is fine. I use t.v. or automotive antifreeze. I'm convinced that the whole don't use auto antifreeze thing is a wives tale. 25 years as an auto mechanic, I've seen coolant flow through pinholes smaller than anything you will find on a tig torch

soutthpaw wrote:If it's in a location that doesn't get below freezing, straight distilled water is fine. I use t.v. or automotive antifreeze. I'm convinced that the whole don't use auto antifreeze thing is a wives tale. 25 years as an auto mechanic, I've seen coolant flow through pinholes smaller than anything you will find on a tig torch

Agree
50/50 last 20 yrs
added sight glass on the return

Thanks guys. my water cooled torch should arrive midweek this week. Can't wait to give it a whirl.

I heard you should use De-ionised water because it doesn't conduct electricity.

Mick

weldin mike 27 wrote:I heard you should use De-ionised water because it doesn't conduct electricity.

Mick

Distilled water works just fine

Pure water is not a conductor of electricity.

It's only impurities such as magnesium, iron, calcium etc that cause conduction.

So distilled, demineralized, deionized are OK, BUT, remember that water will affect its surrounds, and start dissolving metals that it comes in contact with (pump body?), increasing the ion concentration, and thus eventually becoming conductive.
Ranger

There is a product called, "Low conductivity antifreeze" made specifically for welding coolers and water-cooled plasma cutters (and other applications). Automotive antifreeze is rather conductive, assuming all metal parts are grounded to prevent electrolysis in the system.

Does this matter? Not really, if you're welding DCEN all the time. Even with HF start, it will take a long time for coolant conductivity to have any effect.

If you're welding HFAC constantly, it's a different story, and you'll regret choosing tap-water and auto antifreeze. I smoked three torches in four weeks before I realized the rental company that supplied the machines used friggin' Prestone and tap water.

Steve S

I thought to be a good idea to have a cooler too so i made one myself , with aluminum plates 2.5mm ( europe ) and a pump
of 50 euro 45 dollars aprox . So I thought to use a auto antifreeze coolant . After a while i noticed a terrible algea and green
thick residue that was very hard to remove ( i used ultrasonic bath ). So i must advice you to be aware of cheap antifreeze
auto coolant . I have never seen something so terrible . Now i use distilled water and in the first chance i will buy the proper
tig coolant .
Esenti

I myself use RV antifreeze. Good to -25' on sale at Walmart for $2.97 per gallon, compared to the low conductivity products for 10X the cost that are only good to +20. The RV seems cleaner than automotive antifreeze which they claim has coagulants to plug small leaks in the cooling system.
My shop stays heated (wood stove) most of the time, but there will be days it's not. We get a few days every winter down around -30' and a lot of days where it might stay -20' for a week straight. So far so good.

After spending a day researching this I decided on distilled water and DEX coolant. There are a thousand different opinions on this. Distilled water for sure if you mix your own. A gallon of DEX antifreeze was seventeen bucks so I'm not sure you shouldn't just use the stuff that was made for it. I have a home built unit and uses five gallons so it is cost prohibitive for me. After all I read the only negative thing I heard about was what Jody mentioned in one of his vids about using tap water.

I know this is an old post but I just took some time to do some testing on antifreeze of a couple different varities.
Note these were all checked at 68* so a temperature correction was not required.

Low conductivity antifreeze (Miller equivilent "Starbrite"): 117 uS/cm (microSiemens/ cm)

RV antifreeze- Ethylene Glycol base (Tractor Supply): 127 uS/cm

50/50 Automotive Ethylene Glycol(Peak): 2654 uS/cm (New)

50/50 A/M after 6 monthes in a plate heat exchanger: 3312 uS/cm

Incoming city water to the plant: 355 uS/cm (up to 1000 acceptable)

Water downstream of the 2 softners: 224 uS/cm

Distilled water: 13 uS/cm

Deionized water: .55 uS/cm

I know most people would have to take the word of the manufacture and I looked online and nowhere that I could find does it state what Miller's conductivity actually supposed to be. I found some stuff made for cooling computers online that stated that their's had a conductivity of .36 uS/cm.

Another thing that should be noted is that if your system is not a sealed system that it will pick up particulates that will over time increase your conductivity by hundreds of uS/cm's. Even in a sealed system the pump and other metal components will add conductivity to the coolant/antifreeze.

I'm the guy who has stated on more than one occasion that we have a system at work that has had used truck antifreeze in it for more than 2 decades and I know for a fact that the 18 series torch that's on it has been on there since 1995 when I started working in the garage. Granted it doesn't weld all day everyday on ACHF either, but I'm quite sure it has many hours on it doing just that because I held that club doing it.

Just some food for thought.

Len

welder $4000 to $10,000
hood $200 to $400
good coolant $25 per gal
no brainer
craig

motox wrote:welder $4000 to $10,000
hood $200 to $400
good coolant $25 per gal
no brainer
craig

I thought you used a cooler to cool the torch ? Just a serious rookie here but what does the welder cost have to do with cooling a torch ? I need to learn something here .

flocko wrote:

motox wrote:welder $4000 to $10,000
hood $200 to $400
good coolant $25 per gal
no brainer
craig

I thought you used a cooler to cool the torch ? Just a serious rookie here but what does the welder cost have to do with cooling a torch ? I need to learn something here .

He is trying to put things into perspective. With the price of all the equipment we buy and the amount we spend on accessories, a gallon of relatively inexpensive $25-30 low-conductivity coolant is not and should not be disregarded. On that note, I need to order one myself. I've been using RV antifreeze (pink one) from wal-mart for the last few months, but then again I don't do a lot of welding, so it's been good so far.

Oscar
thank you
craig

soutthpaw wrote:If it's in a location that doesn't get below freezing, straight distilled water is fine. I use t.v. or automotive antifreeze. I'm convinced that the whole don't use auto antifreeze thing is a wives tale. 25 years as an auto mechanic, I've seen coolant flow through pinholes smaller than anything you will find on a tig torch

10 years of welding aluminum with HFAC tells me NOT to use auto antifreeze.

Your old wife must not have done that much.


Low-conductivity coolant only, if you want to weld aluminum.

The stuff keeps for years, so why not spend the extra few bucks?

Steve S

I have a Miller water cooler that was given to me and I used it for the last few years, it holds 40 gallon of coolant and that adds up to $1000 in Miller coolant. I'm not against using the RV antifreeze that I tested for $4 a gallon in it to save $840.

I looked at the ingredients of both Miller's (Starbrite) and the stuff from Tractor Supply and there isn't much difference. Starbrite has a .1 percent proprietary ingredient and the RV has a .1% denaturent with all other ingredients the same, Ethylene Glycol 55% and deionized water 44.9%. The difference in the conductivity that I noted could be from one container being open longer than the other, as deionized water being starved for ions acts like an absorbant to draw ions in.

I can buy 7 #20 CK torches for the same price as I would have in buying the Miller coolant. I'm not telling anybody what to do, just telling what I've found and what I'm going to do. I just bought a reconditioned Miller Coolmate 3 and filled it up with RV antifreeze yesterday.

Len

Len, unless you're welding in the kiloamp range, why the hell would you have a 40 gallon system?

A 4-gallon system won't ever get warm, and a 2-gallon system (the size your car or pickup has) will do fine at 310A semi-constant.

I will back you up, though... The pink RV antifreeze is low-conductivity (It's simple stuff to keep toilets from freezing), and is cheap.

If your machine is under warranty, however...

Steve S

Steve,
It was in the shop where it had 10 Syncrowave 700's hooked to a manifold that all circulated through it. I doubt that it ever saw a day that more than 2 were actually being used at any given time. It just sat there for years after the shop closed and my boss said throw it out and I took that to mean take it home. I froze a torch on it the first year I had it because the garage isn't heated even though it's in my crawl space that is.

I can run it with much less coolant than 40 gallon since the pick up tube goes to the bottom, but the Coolmate will take over from here so it's not going to see much use again.

Anyways, your package ships out tomorrow with FedEx to the shop.

Len

Braehill wrote:...Anyways, your package ships out tomorrow with FedEx to the shop.

Len

I assume you put that on AP's dime (since you can justify it if needed).

Thanks, again! I'll be nice to have this as hard-copy on file, since our safety guy is "book lernt".

Steve S

Absolutely


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I'm with Motox and a few others on this one, as much as we spend on equipment the only thing I have ever run in my cooler is the Miller coolant or the product that Arc Zone sells. Both have work flawless, I just changed out the Arc Zone coolant that was 10 years old for the miller. The old coolant still looked new as did the filter in the cooler. I use the old coolant for my tungsten grinder Not sure if it makes a difference but my work space is climate controlled maybe that helped the longevity of the coolant???


Pete