Spinroyd, we have a coolmate 3 cooler on our Syncrowave 250 and the pressure pump in that is a Procon pump made by the Standex company.
Made in Murfreesboro, Tenessee. It is rated at 55psi and is a clamp on arrangement. There are also some numbers punched into it which are:
595 10523.
It's a great water cooler which has never got hot.
I hope this info helps and keep us all posted on how you go, as a lot of us are interested in price effective water recirculators.
Regards Andrew.

Spin,

We also employ Miller Coolmate 3s with good results. With one cooler servicing as many as 4 Tig Machines in a line we prefer to run miller factory coolant <glycol>. I can only remember one pump replacement required in my years of using them. The setup for us gets the ultimate complement.. "We don't even think about them" until some boob forgets to turn it on <usually me and I now have a daily checklist> or lays a hot electrode on the power cable!

If your homespun rig actually has a chiller all you will require is a positive flow thru the torch. Remember that its not pressure your looking for, only a positive flow to carry away the heat to your chiller. When a torch does overheat for some reason or you puncture your cable the last thing you want is high pressure behind it eh? This last point is particularly important for you Spin if you buy a pump and install it. If the pump you install is adjustable don't let your hose get rock hard with pressure.

For those who aren't so fortunate as to have their machines hooked up to refrigerated drinking fountains; sometimes a length or coil of copper pipe between the pump and the machine can serve in assisting a cooling system. What is a radiator but a bunch of pipe where the heat conducts away? In locations where water is not an Issue <think Govt.> I have seen Tig torches with water just run from a spigot thru the machine and then allowed to drain outside into er….um the environment.

The Miller brand coolant remains deionized longer than regular antifreeze or water and has the added benefit of reducing corrosion within the system. The drawback of course is that it costs money, needs to be changed periodically and when you do get a leak you will need to deal with glycol. <Ladies please read the MSDS>.

And for a last piece of free advice; Once you have installed a water cooled Tig torch, "Always run the cooler no matter how small the job" This is especially true for AC operations. Most torches have copper tubes within the torch head that are safety wired to the plastic torch hoses, Now if the copper gets hot fast from welding operations with no coolant flow it will expand and stretch the safety wire. When the copper cools it contracts but the safety wire having been stretched will not and you will get annoying and production robbing torch leaks.

Happy welding

Lawrence

Dear "Spin";

You are certainly an innovative individual to do what you're doing. My first GTAW cooler cooler consisted of a brass garden hose "Spigot" soldered to my coolant hose and heavily alligator clamped to the power supply. When the hose was turned on, the water flowed through the torch and was allowed to drain on to the driveway behind the shop. The city water supply I was connected to was about 25 psi. As evident by this "Rig" I was being cheap, but so was water. The torch was a Chemtron 425, and I pumped 300A into it for hours on end. This wasn't the safest approach, and I wouldn't recommend anyone else try it, but it worked. Weeks later I recieved my water bill and decided that I hadn't budgeted for that when I bid the job. My next GTAW cooler, similar to yours, was made from water fountain parts.(Halsey Taylor) But mine had no resivoir. In vain I chugged the last glass of V-8 vegetable juice from the fridge, and proceeded to silver solder in inlet and outlet to the quart size metal container.(Have you ever smelled burning tomato juice?) The pump came from the soap dispenser on a commercial carpet cleaner, and provided a scant 5psi. The cooling system was then filled with a 50/50 mix of automotive antifreeze to keep from boiling the contents of the beverage can. This time I was using a weldcraft WP250 and spent several days welding aluminum scaffold at a steady 225-250A. Two years later the old unit was still working fine, but had provided sufficient income to retire it for the better designed Bernard unit.
The point is that I feel your setup will work fine as long as you work safely, and do as I suspect you will and apply the same innovative spirit to your work.

Best wishes;
Chris

Can anyone say the maximum temperature acceptable for the water at the inlet to the torch?

Bill