My Lincoln TIG is in my garage and I need to come up with a antifreeze/coolant combination that will work well for the Lincoln cooling unit. Anyone have suggestions of what brand or kind of antifreeze? I do know to use distilled water.
Many thanks,
Jerry
Here is a link to ArcZone and their recommendations for setting up a water cooled torch. They strongly note not using antifreeze in a cooling system for TIG torches.
There is a commercial product but we use recreational vehicle antifreeze in our wire feed water cooled guns. Sometimes in the winter the shop drops to freezing temperatures overnight. The RV stuff is non toxic intended for water tanks and such so spillage is not a concern. Randy
Check with Miller they sell Antifreeze for tig units that is user friendly to your pump ... About $20.00 a gallon you do not cut this with water ... Thanks Tom
I know the red and blue people push their own magic mix, but right now I can't see what it is about auto anti-freeze that would cause problems (other than warranty). Either the "for aluminum engines/radiators" or "regular". What is so delicate about the pumps ? $20 a gallon for the pre-diluted seems like a rip off.
Automotive antifreeze includes coagulants designed to plug small leaks. I pulled this sentence from ArcZone's web page.
Camping World has RV antifreeze that they say is safe to use in fresh water RV systems. It sells for $4.00 a gallon. I checked its composition and found that it contains propylene glycol.
Camping World has RV antifreeze that they say is safe to use in fresh water RV systems. It sells for $4.00 a gallon. I checked its composition and found that it contains propylene glycol.
Thanks Luke, I had either forgotten about the coags or didn't know that (-: The other thing that the auto anti freeze folk boast is thermal conductivity, but I doubt that it is that much lower in the RV stuff. Other threads on home made water coolers have said that 3 gallons or so in a 5 gallon bucket will barely get warm unless you're pushing BIG current at 100% duty cycle all day long, so I guess if the pump circulates enough and the reservoir is big enough the thermal conductivity isn't likely to be an issue
That is definitely a new one on me. Any other sources you are aware that supports such information? I'm just curious as it seems very unlikely.
John
That is definitely a new one on me. Anyone know of any other sources that would support such information? I'm just curious as it seems very unlikely.
John
wow, did I pick the right day to check this group. I need to clean out and refill my Miller Coolmate 12. The local welding place only sells the pre mix stuff and I don't want to buy 12 gallons of that. When I got the machine new, about 17 years ago...., it came with a little bottle of white stuff, about a pint maybe a quart I'd say. I mixed it with 12 G of D-water and ran it for years. The fluid was white in color and changed to clear after a few years.
Several years ago I flushed it out, and found a white film on the bottom. So I put in a new anode rod and refilled it with 20% auto antifreeze, fluid started out green and is now clear.
What happens to the color?
I did have a hose fail but that could be due to age and not the antifreeze.
I'm thinking of going with 20% Prestone LOW-TOX, this is propylene glycol based instead of ethylene glycol based.
I used to work in the semiconductor industry before our rat bastard CEO closed us down and moved the plant to asia, and we used auto antifreeze in the machines there that were pushing 50,000 watts of RF to etch wafers. Many years of trying all kinds of expensive stuff, and standard antifreeze at 20% worked the best.
From what I've seen "water wetter" is just a small bottle of acid that cleans all the metal surfaces so the water/AF can transfer heat better. A guy I worked with used it. It did drop the temp in his street rod 20 degrees and if you looked inside the rad all you saw was shinney brass.
So, anyone have input on the life expectancy of TIG torch hoses, did my hose fail from age or antifreeze?
remove 333 to email reply. Thanks, Randy
Torch hoses last about 10 years or so. The new super flexible silicone ones may last longer.
Lincoln's web page info for their Cool ARC 40 water cooler.
Do not use automotive antifreeze with rust or leakinhibitors.
Welding-Direct
Don't make the mistake of using automotive "Anti-Freeze" in your welding or cutting equipment. You'll could end up with damaged bearings and clogged torches.
My TIG water cooling is done from the household water supply so I can't say I have checked into this very deeply.
The more I read into this the more bogus it sounds, they say you can use tap water in a once through and down the drain system.. There is more "stuff" in tap water to clog a system than in any antifreeze I know of. Tap water conducts electricity too. What effect does the chlorine in the city water have?
Sounds more like they want to sell their product.
I still wonder why my antifreeze solution changed from green to clear. Maybe I need to look at it more than once every five years.
remove 333 to email reply. Thanks, Randy
In message , John writes
We have used commercial antifreeze designed for cars and we find they eventually block up the pumps with a gummy material.We sell Hypertherm coolent to our customers which is Glycol/Demineralized water mix,However this might be too expensive for home use.
Water Wetter(TM), the Red Line product, does not contain acid. It contains a surfactant (sodium dioctylsulfosuccinate - I love the way that rolls off the tongue :-)) and a corrosion inhibition package. This surfactant, also sold under the Aerosol OT trade name, is noteworthy because it holds the record for reducing the surface tension of water the most. Reducing the surface tension allows water to wet surfaces better (more molecules of water in intimate contact with the surface), so it "makes water wetter" and improves heat transfer. Another product, with perhaps a better anticorrosion package (at least according to a professional mechanic friend who has been using it to keep cars cool in Phoenix for 30 years), is RMI-25. This does seem to also do a great job at solubilizing the slime or film that builds up as antifreeze gets old. I've been using RMI25 for about six years now, starting when I replaced the radiator, and the inside of the radiator still looks brand new. His web site is
Whatever marketing person came up with the name "coolant" for antifreeze was a genius as far as boosting sales, but they were telling the "big lie" and repeating it until people believed :-). Ethylene glycol has a much lower heat capacity than water so for the same liquid flow it will carry away much less heat. I run about 30% Prestone in the winter, with RMI-25, which gives me freeze protection down to about 0-5 deg F, and distilled water/RMI-25 in the summer (I push a turbocharged V6 pretty hard and need the engine as cool as possible for detonation resistance). Testing on a hot summer day where the engine temp started out well above the 160 deg F thermostat showed about a 10 deg F drop by adding RMI-25 to the 30% Prestone (and about the same for sodium dioctylsulfosuccinate at the .5% level in a different test), going to distilled water alone gave another 10-15 deg F drop (I didn't let this sit overnight and rust :-); just did the test), and adding RMI-25 to the distilled water gave another 10 deg F drop or so.
I really don't know if the silicate anticorrosion package used in the green automotive antifreezes will build up in a tig torch or not; I know it does slime up a little in the engine/radiator. I've heard so many stories of the orange antifreeze sludging up that I wouldn't try it for this even if it does use a different anticorrosion recipe. I can't see where RMI-25 would be problem for the torch and pump, and it will help keep all the lines clean if you do run antifreeze, or you can buy propylene glycol for $32/gallon at
Well, back to lurking and learning - thanks, guys for the great info.
-- Regards, Carl Ijames carl.ijames at verizon.net
UPDATE: to a really old thread. Cleaned out the coolant tank on my Radiator
WOW, just looked this is from '05. That means the A/F was in there over 6 years. I think I'll keep better track of it.
Going to use 20% antifreeze with distilled water again. I worked at Lucent Tech. for 17 years in the maintenance department and using straight ethylene glycol and DW is a bad thing. Glycol is corrosive and without the corrosion inhibitors in antifreeze it does really nasty things to aluminum, copper and steel. In the end we started using automotive A/F and most if not all our problems went away.
As for the propylene glycol, I was using Prestone Low-Tox in my cars for a number of years and had repeated water pump failures. Prestone no longer sells the stuff, so I have no faith in P-G based A/F.
Maybe I'll try some of the RMI-25 stuff and see if that helps stop the aqua scale build up.
Remove 333 to reply. Randy
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