Just Add Water

The water cooling has been added to the high speed spindle through the red tubes in the picture. This is phase one where I will be using a reservoir with a sump pump behind the bench.. This should let me operate for maybe an hour or so. I don’t have any idea how much and how fast the water will warm.

The next step in the water cooling will be to add a closed loop system with a radiator to move the heat out into the ambient air rather than store it in the water tank. But first I need to determine through running and testing how much heat per hour is produced by the spindle in my type of operation.

I will be in the 10K to 24K speed range for many hours of continuous wax milling. I suspect spindle loads will be very low but only through running and testing can I design an adequate cooling radiator system.

Next is the spindle three phase wiring and power connection, followed by programming the VFD. If all goes well the spindle should be operational in a few more days.