Cooling is very important in welding operations, if done improperly costs can quickly add up. Keeping welding equipment properly cooled provides the following benefits:
- Uniform quality spot welds and the prevention of hot or mushroomed tips.
- Longer weld tip life, decreasing equipment down time.
- Maximizes uptime, by preventing SCRs from overheating.
Options for cooling welding equipment
There are a variety of ways to keep welding equipment cool, our chillers are just one of them but they have a very big advantage in certain applications.
City water cooling
Using city water to cool welders is probably the lowest upfront cost option to cool TIG welders. The problem with this is that it can quickly become costly with high water and waste water bills..
Recirculating Coolers
Recirculating coolers will combat the problem of high welding cooler water usage and sewage, but on larger systems coolers are often not enough.
Process Chillers
Process chillers are like recirculating coolers in the sense that they are both closed loop and do not waste water. The difference is process chillers have compressors and refrigeration circuits that will provide cold water on demand. This makes them much more reliable than recirculating coolers. Recirculating cooler’s effectiveness are dependent on ambient air temperatures, process chillers are not.
When to use process chillers?
While it is possible to use process chillers in every welding application, they are the best value cooling option in the following scenarios:
- Near 100% cycle rate or very high usage welding equipment. – Process chiller is able to provide uniform and reliable cold water to minimize tool wear and downtime.
- Multiple TIG, MIG, or MAG welders – If your shop uses multiple welders it is possible to consolidate all of your chilling requirements into one centralized chiller that will ramp up and down based on demand. This is best for high frequency welding when a reliability and consistency are important.
- Robotic welding operations – Larger high usage welding equipment like robotic spot welders often have water cooled transformers and water cooled rectifiers that are also used. If properly sized a process chiller can provide ample cooling for robotic welders and their auxiliary equipment.
- Resistance Welders – Sufficient flow is critical in operating efficiently. Most machines require 2 or three gallons per minute of water per cooling circuit. These machines are thirsty. And with the rising cost of water, a recirculating process chiller quickly becomes economical. Types of resistance welders include: Spot Welding, Projection welding, Seam Welding, Butt Welding, Flash Welding
Our process chillers are available from ¼ to 300 tons cooling capacity. If you would like additional information about the cooling capacity of our process chillers please visit our air cooled chillers page or call 1-888-863-7389.