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  1. #1
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    Sep 2014
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    123

    Cheap Water Chillers!!!

    My water bucket and inline radiator was working great for the winter but as the warmer weather came in even with the AC running i was getting higher temps that i wasn't too happy with. So i started digging around eBay and came across a STEAL of a deal!



    There is a seller on eBay with a whole pile of these things, its a ThermoTek T252P thermoelectric chiller. It uses 10 45w Peltier's inside, i found a few mentions of these on another forum but i haven't been able to find much info on these otherwise. The seller i bought mine from is CTR Surplus, but if you search for ThermoTek T252P you will find them. They have a bunch of them listed for $74.95 or best offer, i made an offer of $50 on one that was listed as powering up and working but the air dryer doesn't work. It has two sets of fittings on the side, water in and out and air in and out, the air side apparently can be used to dehumidify. The only problem with this one seems to be the fan for the air dryer side isn't working, could fix it with a $10 fan but since i don't need the air dryer side who cares!!

    The water side on this one works great, i ended up setting it to 18C and it keeps the laser around 64-65 degrees while cutting under full power. I ran about two hours on cutting and the water temp coming out of the tube never got over 68 degrees. As for the pump in it, its got a better pump then any of the pond pumps i tried in my bucket cooling system. It will empty the reservoir in less then a second when the pump kicks in. It has a low coolant shutdown and displays Check Fluid on the display, i had to pulse it on and off a few times while filling the reservoir to get it keep circulating, then i worked the air out of the system and topped it off.

    Another really nice feature is the water fittings are valved CPC fittings, so you can disconnect the coolant lines and not loose and coolant or get any air into the laser tube if you need to move stuff around. Also makes it easy to flush the system by plugging a drain tube into the output port and just use a larger container and a funnel to keep filling the reservoir as it pumps through the system. I run a mix of RV antifreeze and distilled water, in testing this unit before installing it on the laser i made a loop of tubing and plugged it into the unit to flush and fill it and run it to circulate a while, by the smell of the reservoir it was running straight glycol in it. It WILL get down below freezing, i ran straight RV antifreeze in it and dipped a loop of tubing into a bucket of water and it started freezing the water to the outside of the loop.

    For the cost of these i might buy another one for other uses and to keep on hand as a spare, beats a $1500 water chiller in my book. You can also find these tested and working in good shape on eBay for around $250-300 if you don't want to buy a potential fixer upper, but for what CTR is selling them for if you got one with bad Peltier's or some small issue you could easily rebuild it.

  2. #2
    Join Date
    Oct 2015
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    96

    Re: Cheap Water Chillers!!!

    Now he have prices like this chiller is made from gold. 381.01$+$998.59 shipping to Ireland.
    Polish @ Éire

  3. #3
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    Sep 2014
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    123

    Re: Cheap Water Chillers!!!

    Quote Originally Posted by abyss View Post
    Now he have prices like this chiller is made from gold. 381.01$+$998.59 shipping to Ireland.
    Still plenty of cheap repairable ones i just took a look, hes got 6 or 7 of them for $74.95 plus shipping, and i see a couple in the $180-200 range plus shipping as well.

  4. #4
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    Jun 2014
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    777

    Re: Cheap Water Chillers!!!

    Ive used a fridge. drilled a couple of holes in the side for the pipes and placed a tank in the bottom with 5mtrs of inlet pipe coiled above it. Works great. Cost one used fridge @ £40 and doesnt rely on fans 40 watts or so of cooling power, plenty for a water cooled spindle.

  5. #5
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    Apr 2004
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    733

    Re: Cheap Water Chillers!!!

    I grabbed one for $50+$20 shipping. Thank you for the info, I appreciate it a lot. This will certainly keep my 5 gallon bucket of water cool. For my 2.2kw spindle and 40watt laser.

  6. #6
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    Sep 2014
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    123

    Re: Cheap Water Chillers!!!

    Quote Originally Posted by Jon.N.CNC View Post
    Ive used a fridge. drilled a couple of holes in the side for the pipes and placed a tank in the bottom with 5mtrs of inlet pipe coiled above it. Works great. Cost one used fridge @ £40 and doesnt rely on fans 40 watts or so of cooling power, plenty for a water cooled spindle.
    I tried that, worked great for short jobs, but anything over say 20 minutes and the water temp would start climbing. Takes a lot to cool water thats coming into the fridge at room temp. I thought about using a chest freezer to attempt the same thing, but then i found these chillers.

  7. #7
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    Sep 2014
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    123

    Re: Cheap Water Chillers!!!

    Quote Originally Posted by jfong View Post
    I grabbed one for $50+$20 shipping. Thank you for the info, I appreciate it a lot. This will certainly keep my 5 gallon bucket of water cool. For my 2.2kw spindle and 40watt laser.
    Ahh you must have been the one that bought the other working unit with a dryer failure. I was sorting through to decide on buying another one, that one caught my eye because i'm sure it works just fine except the dryer. He has another one that says it powers up but goes into watchdog, i might make an offer on that one, from what i can tell playing with mine the watchdog can be defeated.

  8. #8
    Join Date
    Apr 2004
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    733

    Re: Cheap Water Chillers!!!

    Quote Originally Posted by kb0nly View Post
    Ahh you must have been the one that bought the other working unit with a dryer failure. I was sorting through to decide on buying another one, that one caught my eye because i'm sure it works just fine except the dryer. He has another one that says it powers up but goes into watchdog, i might make an offer on that one, from what i can tell playing with mine the watchdog can be defeated.
    That would be me. Hopefully the dryer is the only thing bad. FedEx says it will arrive on Friday. I'll update the thread once I get it installed.

    I never used a chiller, does this compare at all to the cw5000 types selling for about $350? Right now I'm just throwing in frozen blocks into the water. Anything is better than that. I forget to take them out and freeze them again.

  9. #9
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    Feb 2007
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    31

    Re: Cheap Water Chillers!!!

    Quote Originally Posted by jfong View Post
    That would be me. Hopefully the dryer is the only thing bad. FedEx says it will arrive on Friday. I'll update the thread once I get it installed.

    I never used a chiller, does this compare at all to the cw5000 types selling for about $350? Right now I'm just throwing in frozen blocks into the water. Anything is better than that. I forget to take them out and freeze them again.
    You MIGHT find a CW3000 for $350, a CW5000 will be close to twice that.

  10. #10
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    Jun 2014
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    Quote Originally Posted by kb0nly View Post
    I tried that, worked great for short jobs, but anything over say 20 minutes and the water temp would start climbing. Takes a lot to cool water thats coming into the fridge at room temp. I thought about using a chest freezer to attempt the same thing, but then i found these chillers.
    What was you running through it? Laser and spindle? You want a fair volume of water in the fridge and you want it where the salad tray usually is, right at the bottom where it's coolest. It takes quite a few watts to heat a large volume that's in a fridge and a undercounter size fridge with a descent size compressor... A drinks fridge isn't going to do it. I run two spindles, one 1.5kw and another 2.2kw all day everyday from a single fridge. The coiled pipe certainly helps cool the water before it hits the sump and being an 8x4 machine there's 20mtrs of pipe there the heated water has to travel through before it hits the sump which probably helps a little. On a smaller machine one could just leave a coil of pipe outside the fridge.

    Don't get me wrong it does warm up a little to cool instead of chilled, not measured the temperature but neither spindles so much as get warm which is all that matters. Infact I have to turn it down in cooler weather to avoid condensation on the spindles.

    Lasers might be too much for a fridge, I don't use laser so have no idea. We do lots of wood work and we tried a peltier cooler which took one snif of dust and that was that. Fridge has been much more reliable. A freezer!! Aside from the risk of freezing the water, condensation on spindles is massively bad, find your collets and nut will rust. Your only taking heat away your not aiming to chill the spindle too.

    Running summer coolant anti freeze in the deionised water helps with heat transferral. Some people claim they get gunk from it in pipes but mines been running 2 years same fluid which is a ratio of like 1 part anti freeze 2 parts water and pipes still crystal clear.

  11. #11
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    Sep 2014
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    123

    Re: Cheap Water Chillers!!!

    Quote Originally Posted by jfong View Post
    That would be me. Hopefully the dryer is the only thing bad. FedEx says it will arrive on Friday. I'll update the thread once I get it installed.

    I never used a chiller, does this compare at all to the cw5000 types selling for about $350? Right now I'm just throwing in frozen blocks into the water. Anything is better than that. I forget to take them out and freeze them again.
    Ok first off... comparing these to a CW3000 or CW5000 is TOTALLY WRONG...

    The CW3000 and 5000 are nothing more the an over glorified radiator with a fan, water pump, and reservoir. I had a CW3000 taken apart, and i saw pictures of a 5000 taken apart. They ARE NOT ACTIVE COOLERS.... If you want the same performance as one of them get a couple PC radiators and some fans and a PC cooling water pump, it would cost you $150-200 for the same thing as those cheap POS's... I had a CW3000 for a while, it started rusting inside the water tank so i took it apart to clean it out, and there ain't much inside! There is a water flow switch, which only works on days when the earth is at the right rotation to the sun and the magnetic ju-ju comes into collidance and your tin foil hat is on straight... LOL... Yeah they suck. I had to modify my CW3000 so it actually worked out of the box, and then its nothing more then a radiator and a fan for the cooling, no compressor, no TEC's, nothing.

    The CW5000 i saw torn apart looked the same inside as the 3000 just bigger reservoir, bigger radiator and bigger fan. Unless i'm missing something i didn't see active cooling them either??

    Those units will only cool the water down to room temp, thats it, so if your room is say 74 degrees and the water coming out of the laser is higher it will cool it down to room temp, but thats it.

    These ThermoTek units are a CHILLER, not a cooler. They use Peltier's to actively chill the water, not just cool it to room temp. You can actually refrigerate below room temp with these. I ran my laser again tonight, cut about three hours at 10mA and the temp of the water coming out never went above 65 degrees, the temp going in was roughly 61 degrees with the ThermoTek set to 16C. I was playing around with it and just kept setting it lower and lower to see if i could push the output water to below 68 and its clearly quite capable of doing that!! Only a 4 degree difference between the manifold temp of the chiller and the output temp after running through the tube while cutting. That's pretty darn good! My CW3000 that i had could only get it to room temp, so it would sit around 73-74 degrees, sure it kept it at room temp regardless of cutting length as long as the room was also kept cool, but that's just not acceptable because the warmer the tube is the shorter the life.

  12. #12
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    Sep 2014
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    123

    Re: Cheap Water Chillers!!!

    I was just running my laser through it, i've gone through about four different cooling systems in the last year. A fridge, a CW3000, a 240mm PC radiator and fans once i found out the CW3000 was nothing but a radiator with a fan and a pump and reservoir and the reservoir started to rust and put crap through the lines. I can see the fridge setup keeping up with a spindle easy, that's a great setup for that use, the laser puts a lot more heat into the coolant, i don't know the actual wattage we are talking about here in terms of thermal transfer to the coolant but it sure will heat up a 5 gal reservoir of water pretty quickly, maybe an hour cutting time tops before your going over room temp without adding ice.

    I run antifreeze in mine to, its the pink RV antifreeze which is propylene glycol, from what everyone told me the regular auto antifreeze is ethylene glycol and it can have growth in it, normally not a problem in an automotive use because of how hot the coolant is in a car, but at room temp setting for a long time apparently it can get growth when exposed to light. I've been running a mix of RV antifreeze and distilled water for just about a year now, no problems whatsoever, it does slightly stain the plastic tubing but thats no big deal.

  13. #13
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    Jun 2014
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    777
    Quote Originally Posted by kb0nly View Post
    Ok first off... comparing these to a CW3000 or CW5000 is TOTALLY WRONG...

    The CW3000 and 5000 are nothing more the an over glorified radiator with a fan, water pump, and reservoir. I had a CW3000 taken apart, and i saw pictures of a 5000 taken apart. They ARE NOT ACTIVE COOLERS.... If you want the same performance as one of them get a couple PC radiators and some fans and a PC cooling water pump, it would cost you $150-200 for the same thing as those cheap POS's... I had a CW3000 for a while, it started rusting inside the water tank so i took it apart to clean it out, and there ain't much inside! There is a water flow switch, which only works on days when the earth is at the right rotation to the sun and the magnetic ju-ju comes into collidance and your tin foil hat is on straight... LOL... Yeah they suck. I had to modify my CW3000 so it actually worked out of the box, and then its nothing more then a radiator and a fan for the cooling, no compressor, no TEC's, nothing.

    The CW5000 i saw torn apart looked the same inside as the 3000 just bigger reservoir, bigger radiator and bigger fan. Unless i'm missing something i didn't see active cooling them either??

    Those units will only cool the water down to room temp, thats it, so if your room is say 74 degrees and the water coming out of the laser is higher it will cool it down to room temp, but thats it.

    These ThermoTek units are a CHILLER, not a cooler. They use Peltier's to actively chill the water, not just cool it to room temp. You can actually refrigerate below room temp with these. I ran my laser again tonight, cut about three hours at 10mA and the temp of the water coming out never went above 65 degrees, the temp going in was roughly 61 degrees with the ThermoTek set to 16C. I was playing around with it and just kept setting it lower and lower to see if i could push the output water to below 68 and its clearly quite capable of doing that!! Only a 4 degree difference between the manifold temp of the chiller and the output temp after running through the tube while cutting. That's pretty darn good! My CW3000 that i had could only get it to room temp, so it would sit around 73-74 degrees, sure it kept it at room temp regardless of cutting length as long as the room was also kept cool, but that's just not acceptable because the warmer the tube is the shorter the life.
    Not a laser person but still peltiers kick off as much heat as they do cool, so you operation relies on what is a chinese fan so no idea of quality and is dust sensitive. If I was to use one of these again I'd replace the fan with a quality 48v one and build it in a filtered enclosure with its own independent fan.

  14. #14
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    Sep 2014
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    123

    Re: Cheap Water Chillers!!!

    Quote Originally Posted by jfong View Post
    That would be me. Hopefully the dryer is the only thing bad. FedEx says it will arrive on Friday. I'll update the thread once I get it installed.

    I never used a chiller, does this compare at all to the cw5000 types selling for about $350? Right now I'm just throwing in frozen blocks into the water. Anything is better than that. I forget to take them out and freeze them again.
    One more thing i forgot to mention, go order your male water fittings for it. It doesn't come with anything. They are CPC, aka Colder Products, male valved 1/4" fittings. I got mine from a water/marine parts place online, they weren't too badly priced, like $6 each plus shipping. McMaster Carr also has them but my local vendor didn't have them in stock so i was going to order them online but the shipping was more from MC.

  15. #15
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    Sep 2014
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    123

    Re: Cheap Water Chillers!!!

    Quote Originally Posted by Jon.N.CNC View Post
    Not a laser person but still peltiers kick off as much heat as they do cool, so you operation relies on what is a chinese fan so no idea of quality and is dust sensitive. If I was to use one of these again I'd replace the fan with a quality 48v one and build it in a filtered enclosure with its own independent fan.
    This chiller has two 120mm fans, and its filtered... No worries. Its even a removable washable air filter on the fan input. And yes, they do kick out a fair amount of heat, but, as long as the laser tube is cool i don't mind. The fridge was just as bad in heating the room, and the CW3000 was just as bad, at least with this Thermotek it has such a strong pump in it i can put it in the opposite room and run the water lines through the wall if i wanted. Right now its sitting so the heat from it is pulled off by my room fan, with the AC running in here i don't even notice it.

  16. #16
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    Jun 2014
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    777

    Re: Cheap Water Chillers!!!

    That certainly sounds better that they have considered filtering in that model. And running in a separate room is definitely a good idea.

  17. #17
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    Sep 2014
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    123

    Re: Cheap Water Chillers!!!

    Its a nice filter on it, no worry about it sucking in junk. The connections to the water lines are really nice having those CPC fittings, lossless coolant connections if i need to unplug the lines and take the chiller outside to blow out dust buildup on the removable filter, or even just to move stuff around to service it, change the coolant, etc.

    I'm thinking of running the lines through the wall to the next room if it starts heating it up in here, but so far i can't even tell its running, i have 2 3d printers in this room also so the AC is always running to cool me off. The last modification i'm planning on making is getting some insulation to put on the water lines just to further improve their isolation from the room temp and them bundle them up nice so its just an umbilical from the laser down to the chiller, make it all nice and tidy.

    I had my 240mm radiator in the coolant return line when i started running the ThermoTek, i have since removed it, testing with and without the added radiator inline was was not making any difference, well maybe a half a degree difference in the water going in and out of the radiator unless i placed the radiator in front of the AC. So it wasn't worth keeping that inline. Its just the ThermoTek cooling it now, finally have my cooling system done!

  18. #18
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    Apr 2004
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    733

    Re: Cheap Water Chillers!!!

    kb0nly,
    Thanks for the info. I'm really glad now to have purchased one.

  19. #19
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    Oct 2015
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    96

    Re: Cheap Water Chillers!!!

    Quote Originally Posted by kb0nly View Post
    Still plenty of cheap repairable ones i just took a look, hes got 6 or 7 of them for $74.95 plus shipping, and i see a couple in the $180-200 range plus shipping as well.
    Can you send me a link to particular auction, please? From any reason I have NO cheaper offers than ~$380+998delivery.

    (See https://photos.google.com/share/AF1Q...ZJcWpUSnZPa3F3 - this is what I have, sorted by lowest Price+P&P)
    Polish @ Éire

  20. #20
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    Feb 2016
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    381

    Re: Cheap Water Chillers!!!

    Cheap and cheerful do it yourself version I saw a while back worked really well and cost around £30 or $50 to build. A refrigerator salvaged from a refuge tip, shelves removed and a 40ltr plastic container of distilled water and Mono Propylene Glycol stored inside, two holes drilled through side and container cap for the piping and a salvaged central heating pump for circulation, space versus cost, the guy had used this with a 100w Co2 laser for last 7-8 years and it works like a dream.

    Cannot think of a simpler or cheaper way to make a chiller that works and extremely cheap to run!

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