yes, It's done all the time.

A friend of mine used a cold water storage tank(30-35 gallon?) and added a pump to circulate the water through his TIG rig. It holds enough water to keep it cool. He also added something to the water to keep it from freezing. It seems to work fine for him.
just a thought for a cheaper alternative,
John Wright

Great. I thought this would work. The guy at the welding shop said I would ruin the torch by doing this, which didn't make any sense. He couldn't tell me what pressure the expensive cooling units run at and didn't really have a good reason why it was bad other than the tap water was "too cold" and would crack the torch. That sounded a bit lame to me, copper inside the torch won't be cracking.

I'll probably give this a try then. Thanks for the help.

The user manual/directions that used to be put in with a new water cooled tig rig had a diagram for that very hook up. Hook it to the faucet and stick the return from the torch in the drain. As far as the pressure goes, the water can be regulated with the faucet valve. Doesn't take much, just enough to cool the torch. If it starts to get warm open the valve a little more.

I'm so cheap I built my own torch radiator. I was repairing boat propellers full time.I got a heater core out of a car. Put a squirrel cage blower on one side of it. Used a pump out of one of those backyard fish ponds. Literally used the stainless kitchen sink for the resevoir. Of course, I plugged the drain. The only fabrication was the sink lid that everything is bolted to. If I had a place to post pictures you could see the thing. It's been working fine for about fifteen years.

Yes, but! The water is used as a conducter and must be properly grounded. There are instructions with most wet torches on such a set up.

When I first started using a water-cooled torch (Esab HW-20) several years ago, I took a female hose fitting and brazed a small diameter tube on to it so that I could attach a length of 1/4" I.D. polyethylene tubing to it. This tubing had a small diameter tube connector on the other end that allowed connection of the torch's water inlet hose to it. The water return line was connected in similar fashion to another length of polyethylene tubing that ran to the yard outside of my workshop. The 30 to 50 psi coming from my faucet was more than enough to push cold water through the torch. It worked well enough so that I used it for a while until I finally got a real welding cooler.

Ken

There is also a Water Solenoid Kit that lincoln sells for $53 if you are interested. Its on their web site.