- Joined
- Oct 4, 2011
- Messages
- 727
I saw a cold air gun at a tool show some time back being used to cool plastic chips during cutting. I finally cot around to looking into these things and found a few DIY sites for them. The best one I found was http://ottobelden.blogspot.com/2010/12/another-home-made-ranque-hilsch-vortex.html
So over the Easter break I decided to build one to see how it went and surprise it worked.
I didn't do pictures during the build since I had no idea if it would work. But I followed the layout from the website so you can see whats inside for there. The shop today was 72 F measured by my multimeter.
The cold end measured at 11 degrees F. I got it down to 7 degrees at one point.
The hot end was 97 degrees F and got up to 104 degrees. I have a large compressor and this puts a load on it. About the same as a cool mist system does. I tried the cold gun on the mill and cut some lexan at high rpm. I saw a marked chip improvement while running the cold air.
I think the guy underestimated the cost. All total from Lowes it was about $30.00. I had some of the parts but that was the real cost.
Kind of a cool project. Has anyone else used or made one of these?
Jeff
So over the Easter break I decided to build one to see how it went and surprise it worked.
I didn't do pictures during the build since I had no idea if it would work. But I followed the layout from the website so you can see whats inside for there. The shop today was 72 F measured by my multimeter.
The cold end measured at 11 degrees F. I got it down to 7 degrees at one point.
The hot end was 97 degrees F and got up to 104 degrees. I have a large compressor and this puts a load on it. About the same as a cool mist system does. I tried the cold gun on the mill and cut some lexan at high rpm. I saw a marked chip improvement while running the cold air.
I think the guy underestimated the cost. All total from Lowes it was about $30.00. I had some of the parts but that was the real cost.
Kind of a cool project. Has anyone else used or made one of these?
Jeff