Anyone using the Vevor CW3000 water chiller for their water cooled spindle?

  1. Where did you place your cw3000? If you can share pictures that would be great.

  2. Do you use anything other than water in the chiller?

  3. What size tubing do you use and how did you determine how much legnth you needed?

Thank you in advance.

Brian, I have a spindle on order and it should be here in a month or so. So I can only share some plans.

I have looked at the Vevor CW3000 and took note of it as a likely candidate for my setup. The specs say it has a lift capacity of 10 meters. That is likely way overstated since it is Chinese. That said I plan on putting mine under my table out of the dust and the lift would be about 1.5 meters maximum.

I am imagining the length of the cooling tubing I would use in the neighborhood of 8 feet. Just enough to come out from underneath the table to an overhead trolley then to the spindle. I will match the tubing diameter to the spindle’s coolant connections and adapt to the cooler as necessary. The Vevor specs say that the coolant connections on the cooler are 10 mm OD.

I plan on using automotive antifreeze mix in mine. A good automotive coolant has anticorrosion and antifoam additives in it.

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Hi
I am interested in why people are heading down the cooler route is it because you are in a hot climate?
I am UK based and run a 1.5KW water cooled spindle running 1/4" down cut bits cutting English oak and ash up to 30mm thick generally cutting profile shapes
The spindle runs probably 3 or 4 days a week for around 5 1/2 to 6 hours each day
I use an enclosed tank containing 30 litres of 50/50 high quality automotive antifreeze and deionised water located under the work bench pipe runs are 8mm tube around 12ft flow 12ft return with a lift of 5 ft and a flow indicator is mounted near to the 10" touch screen. The pump is a basic aquarium submergible pump set at about 75% of its possible output the pump is fed from the same mains feed of the VFD so once that powers up the pump starts and the coolant flows in the 6 months I have been running this setup the coolant temperature has never got more than a couple of degrees above ambient, I do check periodically with a temp probe and long term I may install a coolant temp sensor along with a flow sensor but its a nice to have rather than a must have
Hope my set up may be of some interest or comparison, I did consider a chiller setup and if I was having coolant temp issues then I would still look to go down that route

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I have this unit, and it works fine, one issue you may find is that the plastic outlets on the back are designed to take a large I/D tube than those which come on the spindles.

I live in the North of England where it’s moderately cold and can get a frost in the morning and my machine is in the garage so I used a 1:1 automotive anti freeze with distilled water just to be on the safe side.

The pump is fine and the audio alarm is loud enough so I can hear it above the machine running.

The spindle doesn’t remain cold, it does warm up slightly but the cooler definitely stops it from getting hot, as I once discovered when I forgot to turn it on.

All in all I am quite pleased with it.

I use 10mm o/d tube with 8mm i/d

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Dave how warm does your spindle get? Mine never feels at all warm, I will be using the machine a lot over the next few days so will take some temperature checks on the spindle out of interest.

It only ever get a little warmer than the initial chill on the steel in the morning, perhaps 2 or 3 degrees

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Darren,
It is a matter of convenience and function for me.

I can buy a CW3000 for $139 delivered direct from Vevor here in the US. It comes with the reservoir, pump, controls/alarm, and fan/radiator all in a neatly packaged unit. It is sealed/spill resistant and ready to go. BTW, the reservoir capacity is only 10 liters but the claim is that it will operate close to room temperature.

Dave, the one from Vevor, delivered from Los Angeles claims to have brass nipples. I don’t know if that is a feature on the 220V version or not. It may well be smoke and mirrors from the Chinese supplier!

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You cant go wrong at that price my tank pump and bits and pieces would be heading close to that i must confess i didn’t even think of going down that route I now get the feeling that there may be a some more investigation and purchase subject to convincing management (wife)

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Alan

Mine was ordered from Vevor website here in the UK and its got plastic outlet pipes on

Regards
Dave

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I have an OMTECH CW3000 on my k40 laser cutter and it has metal nipples; not plastic and I don’t believe they are brass either.

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Ken,
It is interesting that they all look alike! How’s yours held up? Are you happy with the flow and does it cool the laser adequately?

I thought that they all looked alike as well, I bet they are all made in the same Chinese factory.

So far so good. I’ve had it for almost a year with no issues. I don’t use it a whole lot, I make sure to keep my laser at around 20% power or less and my longest cut was maybe a half hour, but the temperature never goes up more than 2 or 3 degrees C. I strapped it to a small $4 Harbor Freight dolly and I’m happy with it.

Dave, I think you’re right. Or perhaps there’s more than one factory since they steal from one another! I dug into spindles manufacturers recently and found out there are several that are making the same knockoff of the 2.2kw ER20 that we are all familiar with. There are some quality differences in the spindles near as I could tell. But who the heck knows!!

Problem is not many people want to pay for or possibly can afford quality products. Problem is when those quality suppliers disappear because we are all buying Chinese we are going to be left with cheap crap with no support or backup.

And that’s why I’m saving for a German Spindle and have just purchased a Prusa printer rather than a cheaper one.

My two penneth, now I’m getting off my soap box,

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On a more up beat note, following our recent discussions on Spindle temps and cooling I ordered these from Amazon this morning cost about $1.00 each.

I am going to see how they work over the weekend.


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Just an update, The temp gauges don’t really work, its difficult to really see the difference in colour.

Back to the drawing board

Dave

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Can glycol be used instead of water ?

I use automotive coolant in mine. I particularly like having the anticorrosion additives in it.

Just remember that stuff is very poisonous and attractive to pets.