Cooling fans

[5440]

I never liked the idea of on demand cooling fans. It's just one more thing that can fail and kill your machine.

In theory maybe but the practical side is Miller has been doing this this without issue for years

Many large utility power transformers often use 1 or 2 stage fan cooling to increase capacity and have been doing this for decades. If that principle never worked then we would not have power to run our machines.

[performance]

In theory maybe but the practical side is Miller has been doing this this without issue for years

Many large utility power transformers often use 1 or 2 stage fan cooling to increase capacity and have been doing this for decades. If that principle never worked then we would not have power to run our machines.

Yeah, and their duty cycle is pitiful on most of their units too...in many cases when they went to fan on demand, their duty cycle crashed by half. Just noticed an early dial arc the other day and the duty cycle was 50%. Now, its barely 20 if I remember right for the same unit.

[everlastsupport]

I know where you are all coming from, shops do get quite nasty with all the material in the air. Imagine, we breath a lot of that too.

As a habit, like safety checks before welding and cutting. I try to keep all our welders/cutters off the floor by 2.5+ feet (seems the lower stuff collects more), keep them covered when not in use (most of the time), never point grinders/chop saws/etc in the general direction. On occasion (think it's in the manual or on the forum) a "lite" blow through with clean dry air.

A filter box "might" work (still not recommended), but it would need to be course (catch almost nothing unless treated it) and probably need to be much larger than the welder. But like said you could damage the machine.

On demand, would add to cost and not be really "on demand". As you weld, it would pop on, when you stop welding, the heat sensors would keep it on (like post flow) for some time to get the heat sinks cooled down (that is to keep our current duty cycle and not damage the final drivers).

Our internal fans are a little on the loud side, but more than 70% of my tools are much louder (grinders, cut-off, chop saw , saber saw, saws-all, etc). I also myself leave our welders on for 5-10 minutes after welding just to let it cool down to an idle state before shutting them down.

[zoama]

My new 250ex has a much lower tone than the 256 it replaced. The 250 is not exactly quiet but it doesn't have that hairdryer sound of the older machine. I like the new design.

[sw2x]

You know what would really be nice!!! Use the W300 and throw a couple ports on the face of your welder and install some water cooling blocks.. Won't need fans in the welder at all...

[zoama]

You know what would really be nice!!! Use the W300 and throw a couple ports on the face of your welder and install some water cooling blocks.. Won't need fans in the welder at all...

You would still need some airflow to cool the boards.