air pump cooler??

A

alinwa

oft dis'd member
I've got a guy offering me a "cooler" for my lathe, it's a "vortex" something or other that you hook an airline to. It's got a mag base and no power cord. He claims that you pump air through it, direct the bendy hose toward the work area and it'll FREEZE the area if you let it.... I've never heard of the concept.

comments?

al
 
Wanna buy a bridge? :D

Fitch

Edited to add: It seems they work. I should have researched it before replying, but it sure seemed too good to be true.

Fitch
 
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Well, I actually held the (used) unit in my hands. The fellow's a machinist who's clearing out his stuff. I bought some gauging from him. He says they run over 500.00 new and the unit I looked at seemed to be of decent quality.

I just can't imagine a process which drops the air pressure enough to freeze from room-temp air..........without refrigeration.

Maybe the unit was called "venturi" something but I recall it to be "vortex"...

al
 
Vertex Air Cooler

We use a few of these where I work. They are use on high RPM (10-20,000)
spindles. When machinining at high speed it is important not to put a thermal shock into a carbide endmill. The air blast from a Vertex air coolers prevents this. Furthermore no coolant is used. These operations are usually at our shop are in 40-45 Rockwell 'C' parts at feed rates that exceed the rapid traverse rates of machines made just 20 years ago. A rigid spindle and set up are a must. Our applications are done on a full 5-axis movement on high end machined parts. For home use or hobby type applications the benefits would not be as significant but would keep cutting edges cool.
 
Al,

Go here to see how they are made and how to make one if you wish:
http://www.visi.com/~darus/hilsch/
Here is what Wiki has to say about them:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vortex_tube

They are real air hogs but do work. One application that I think they are used for is to cool PC boards and panels in real hostile environments. Another is to test automatic chokes and thermostats, you have hot and cold available from one source. They can be tuned to give a higher yield of slightly cooler air or a lesser amount of much colder air.
They have applications in machining where "wet" is not an option.

Get one and tell people that you invented a device that seperates the fast (hot) molecules in air from the slow (cold) molecules. I'm mean....

Jay
 
they work

The same concept was use long ago to test chokes on automotive carborators. Will get a lot colder than I thought.
 
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