Summary:
This article mainly explains the necessity of laser cutting machine winter maintenance, the basic principles and methods of maintenance, how to select antifreeze of laser cutting machine, and matters needing attention.
• You can learn from this article:
learn about the skills in laser cutting machine maintenance, refer to the steps in this article to maintain your own machine, and extend the durability of your machine.
• Suitable readers:
Companies who own laser cutting machines, workshops/individuals who own laser cutting machines, laser cutting machines maintainer, people who are interested in laser cutting machines.
Winter is coming, so is the holiday! It’s time for your laser cutting machine to take a break. However, without correct maintenance, this hard-working machine may 'catch a bad cold'. MimoWork would love to share our experience as a guide for you to prevent your machine from damage:
The necessity of your winter maintenance:
Liquid water will condense into a solid when the air temperature is below 0℃. During condensation, the volume of deionized water or distilled water increases, which could burst the pipeline and components in the laser cutter cooling system (including water chillers, lasers tubes, and laser heads), causing damage to sealing joints. In this case, if you start up the machine, this may cause damage to the relevant core components. Therefore, paying more attention to laser chiller water additives is super important for you.
If it bothers you to constantly monitor whether the signal connection of the water-cooling system and laser tubes are in effect, worry about whether something is going wrong all the time. Why not take action in the first place?
Here we recommend 3 methods to protect water chiller for laser
Method 1.
Always make sure the water-chiller keeps running 24/7, especially at night, if you ensure that there will be no power outages.
At the same time, for the sake of energy saving, the temperature of low temperature and normal temperature water can be adjusted to 5-10 ℃ to ensure that the coolant temperature is not lower than the freezing point in the circulating state.
Method 2.
The water in the chiller and the pipe should be drained as far as possible, if the water chiller and laser generator are not used for a long time.
Please note the following:
a. First of all, according to the usual method of the water-cooled machine inside the water release.
b. Try emptying the water in cooling piping. To remove pipes from a water-chiller, using compressed gas ventilation inlet and outlet separately, until the water cooler pipe in the water substantially discharged.
Method 3.
Add antifreeze to your water chiller, please choose a special antifreeze of a professional brand, do not use ethanol instead, be careful that no antifreeze can completely replace deionized water to be used throughout the year. When winter ends, you must clean pipelines with deionized water or distilled water, and use deionized water or distilled water as cooling water.
◾ Chose antifreeze:
Antifreeze for the laser cutting machine usually consists of water and alcohols, characters are high boiling point, high flash point, high specific heat and conductivity, low viscosity at low temperature, fewer bubbles, no corroding to metal or rubber.
Recommended using the DowthSR-1 product or CLARIANT brand. There are two types of antifreeze suitable for CO2 laser tube cooling:
1) Antifroge ®N glycol-water type
2) Antifrogen ®L propylene glycol-water type
>> Note: Antifreeze cannot be used all year round. The pipeline must be cleaned with deionized or distilled water after the winter. And then use deionized or distilled water to be the cooling liquid.
◾ Antifreeze Ratio
Various types of antifreeze due to the proportion of preparation, different ingredients, the freezing point is not the same, then should be based on local temperature conditions to select.
>> Somthing to note:
1) Do not add too much antifreeze to the laser tube, the cooling layer of the tube will affect the quality of light.
2) For the laser tube, the higher frequency of use, the more frequently you should change the water.
3) Please note some antifreeze for cars or other machine tools that could harm the metal piece or rubber tube.
Please check the following form ⇩
• 6:4 (60% antifreeze 40% water), -42℃—-45℃
• 5:5 (50% antifreeze 50% water), -32℃— -35℃
• 4:6 (40% antifreeze 60% water) ,-22℃— -25℃
• 3:7 (30% antifreeze and 70% water), -12℃—-15℃
• 2:8 (20% antifreeze 80% water) ,-2℃— -5℃
Wish you and your laser machine a warm and lovely winter! :)
Any questions for laser cutter cooling system?
Let us know and offer advice for you !
Post time: Nov-01-2021