Water Cooler (homemade)

Guys,

A lot of people have questions about a water cooler. We have a water cooler capable of cooling our units quite well. Its price is $350.00 right now. However, I think we are running low on stock. All of the PowerTig Units over 200 amps have water cooled torches. They will be fine to operate for short lengths of time with about 100 amps or so with air cooling only. However, you will find that the torch soon gets quite hot. Well, we have devised a quick and economical solution for you. Now, remember to keep the water connections tight so you don't want water spraying everywhere because water and electrical products don't like each other. (Ignore the pool of water in the picture:rolleyes:) A simple garden hose with a discharge hose on the other side of the circuit can keep your unit running cool until you fork over the money for the nice cooler. This is an old-school setup, and has been done by pros this way for years. Exercise some common sense and caution when you are hooking up the torch to water, of course.

The braided line is the water inlet line. The discharge line is the large line that connects directly to the terminal lug with the little side PVC line coming out at a right angle.

The pictures should be self explanatory. But post here if you have further solutions or questions.

OK, I had to make one too. Sales department is gonna be all over us Monday.

The closed loop system is nice but this looked like fun and cheap. Picture of my adapter included at the end. I used it today and it work very well.

Tapped into a barbed brass hose fitting (5/16" OD I think it was) with a male 1/4 NPT barb, it works great. I did have a 1 drop "drip" every 20-30 seconds.

Mark, the 6010 rods worked fine on the PowerTIG 250 LX in DC pulsed mode, I will try straight DC tomorrow. Sticky little rascals until you get the hang of them.

So a plain old 1/4 inch straigh barb fitting is what fits in the hose from the torch? I have a miller 1a watermate cooler that I am using with the 250ex that is in on the way here so I need to get some adapters together. The cooler has LH female ports so I will have to go from that hopefully through a quick coupler into the torch.

No,
I believe its a 1/8 . Right now, its been about year since I did it, but I don't think its a 1/4"