After ordering in November, my Onefinity Foreman has arrived and I am just now unboxing the spindle setup that I ordered at the same time. I have a huge pile of boxes getting ready for this weekend’s assembly project.
I live in South Texas and, while we don’t have winters here like some of y’all, It does get below freezing in my unheated metal building a couple of times a year. How do I keep my water chiller from freezing up and potentially cracking the lines? Is there a sanctioned solution other than putting antifreeze in the chiller?
That is the solution.
The advantage of antifreeze is that it lowers the freezing temperature and raises the boiling point, creating a wider usable area.
Something else to be aware of is the need to warm the spindle up, get those creative juices flowing. Incrementally raising the rpm, and having the chiller on at this point would be counter-productive. From 6k rpm to 24k it should take 20 min if used regularly. Depending on temp and period of inactivity, could last up to an hour or 2. More details on the process could be found here
In Northern Michigan I use the orange multi-vehicle pre diluted 50/50 antifreeze. The pre diluted is recommended as it already has all the anti microbial and anti fungal additives.
We absolutely encourage questions… no judgement here. We all started out as newbs and know that respectful replying goes a whole long way to encouraging the love of this hobby.
technically if you don’t have to have a chiller you could just hook a hose up to an inlet and let the water run through it and out onto the floor and that would remove the heat from the spindle. Don’t think you would want to do that. We are currently doing that at my work since our industrial chiller has a bad compressor.
