CW-5000 Water Chiller/150watt Laser not cooling properly?

[Brady Whitney]

Hi everyone,

My CW-5000 is running at 19.6 celsius but my laser's temperature reader continues to steadily rise, and very slowly creeps back down while the machine is at rest. Shouldn't my water chiller be keeping the Laser tube cooler than 26+ celsius??

So I have a Boss Laser 150watt HP5598 with a CW-5000 Industrial Chiller hooked up to the machine. I'm running this machine 8 hours a day, 5-6 days a week. I live in Connecticut so it does get rather humid and hot around here, or at least has been so far this year. Now my laser is set up in a partially underground basement/garage.

The instruction manual I got with the CW-5000 don't tell me anything about really working with the machine so I am a bit clueless on how exactly it operates. I was able to figure how to change the setting that determines how much cooler the CW-5000 will be compared to the ambient room temperature. (e.g. Room Temp = 25celsius and CW-5000 set for -10celsius below the ambient temp). Basically the water chiller is running constantly at 19.6 celsius. What is weird is that the water is cool both going into the machine and coming back out? Please help!

Regards,
Brady

[Doug Fisher]

Sounds like your cooler is running OK and doing its job IF it is able to maintain 19.6 and you have the same cool temp water going out of the cooler and then coming back in from the glass tube. Or are you just guessing on this?

How and where does your laser machine measure its temp for its readout? What have you done to verify its temp reading is correct?

How long have you had this laser plus cooler combo in service together? If it has been in your shop working for months, then this is a new divergence you did not see in the past?

Bottom line is we and you need more background and testing information to be able to help you troubleshoot this.

[Robert Bonenfant]

More info would be helpful - I have 5000 Chillers on all of my machines and we run them all at 25C and they work fine. If the water is cool coming out of the machine than you could be alright but you should try to get a reading on the outflow to confirm. Contact Boss and ask them what your chiller should be set at.

[John Lifer]

Brady, I'm not sure that you have the chiller set up correctly. You need to change the settings from the intelligent setting which is Rather ignorant in my opinion to the other setting which keeps the temp at a set temperature. Once I did that, the chiller will come on every 10 to 15 minutes to regulate the temp rather than once an hour or so. And it runs pretty well constantly when heavy lasering. If your chiller isn't doing that then you definitely need to look at settings! The instructions aren't the best, but not too bad. I posted the way to do this elsewhere a while back, if you need help, I'll copy and pm hem to you, let me know.

[Bert Kemp]

What John said and for Robert you might want to lower your temps some 77f is pretty warm and will eventually shorten tube life.jmo

[Brady Whitney]

Sounds like your cooler is running OK and doing its job IF it is able to maintain 19.6 and you have the same cool temp water going out of the cooler and then coming back in from the glass tube. Or are you just guessing on this?

How and where does your laser machine measure its temp for its readout? What have you done to verify its temp reading is correct?

How long have you had this laser plus cooler combo in service together? If it has been in your shop working for months, then this is a new divergence you did not see in the past?

Bottom line is we and you need more background and testing information to be able to help you troubleshoot this.

1) The Laser Cutter has a temperature reader on its main control panel, a separate display screen.
2)I have no idea how to verify the temp reading as I'm unsure exactly what it is reading; is it the temp of the tube's glass, the water, a sensor?
3) I've had this laser since last October '16, but it has only really be running at this pace and consistency since May '17. I've only now noticed the heat building up like it has been. The last time I remember the laser not steadily overheating like this was when I recently changed out the water. I am using distilled water, but it's no different than the water that was in there beforehand.

120" L x 70.5" W x 33" H Boss Laser HP-5598 150 Watt CO2 Laser
CW-5000 Chiller

[Doug Fisher]

About 1:20 into this video he goes through programming the machine. There are others on Youtube if you do a search.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ND0rBX7Jybc

As others have touched on, I really don't like the concept of intelligent mode. Maybe it is good for avoiding condensation? I don't want variability though so I turn intelligent mode off, set my target temperature and then set my allowable temp fluctuation range. Get a dehumidifier if condensation could be a problem.

[John Lifer]

Current controller in this video. Several minutes into it he changes from "intelligent "mode

I think he suggests running way higher than I would, but you can change temps for sure to lower.
As he says, if your ambient temperature in your room stays roughly at same temperature, intelligent mode works well. You may just need to lower set points. Several choices, might be your variation is too wide

https/m.youtube.com/watch?v=Rysbsrs2f48&itct=CAoQpDAYBCITCI64ktaN7dQCF VNdTgod9ZYNTTIHcmVsYXRlZEi3k6f21-DKnjQ%3D

[Matt McCoy]

Have you noticed loss of cutting power or lighter engraving as the temp goes up?

[Dave Sheldrake]

Anything over 23 degrees on a widebody tube will shorten it's life considerably

[John Lifer]

And you know the Boss video I posted had them saying 23 was his setpoint....... Kind of interesting if you ask me Mine's running at 19.5

[Kev Williams]

I don't have a 5000, so I have to ask, how much water do they hold? If not all that much, could be a simple case of the 150 tube is heating the water faster than the chiller can chill it-

What to do about that... 2 chillers?

[Joseph Shawa]

Could be low on refrigerant due to leak or maybe never filled properly.

I use an EcoChiller Plus with my own circulation pump. At one point a larger pump that I was using was heating the water just enough that when the laser was fired for a long period the cooler couldn't keep up. I now have much smaller pump and all is well.

[Mark Canada]

Do you have good throughput of the waterflow? It could be that the chiller and laser are both reading correctly, if the chiller is reading its output and the laser is reading the return line to the chiller. With insufficient flow you might not be moving fluid through the laser fast enough to cool the tube without heating the water up significantly.

[John Lifer]

If the flow is too low the chiller "Should" alarm. I check mine periodically by squeezing the hose and I don't have to cut off flow entirely to get alarm.
As somewhat of a reference point, I was cutting yesterday at 75% power and when the chiller came on at 20, it immediately started dropping the temperature. I could count maybe 10 seconds between tenths of a degree drop. Stopped off at 19 like it should have. While cutting..... Room temp roughly 22-23C