"Bob La Londe" wrote in message ...
On Mar 13, 8:48 am, "PrecisionmachinisT"
wrote:
"Bob La Londe" wrote in ...





"Bob La Londe" wrote in message
...
Ok... I'm still mulling over the possibility of a Hilsch tube on one of
my machines as the coolant and to blow chips away from the cutter. I see
many commercial ones are made out of stainless, but that just isn't in my
plans if I make one. Stainless is beyond my easy working level.

I have some large aluminum bar stock laying around, (left over from
another project) and I was thinking I could turn one out of it. My
quandry is in this. I only ran across a few mentions of heat sinking in
regards to Hilsch tubes. One article said to heat sink the whole thing.
I think they just meant the whole heat separator/exchangers side of it.
It would be counter intuitive to heat sink the cold air outlet tube. I
would think you would want to insulate that. The thing is the physics of
it is beyond me. I get the basics of both principle said to be at work.
It's the details.

I could easily turn heat sink fins on the outside. I just wonder if that
will provide a lower ouput temperature, or if somehow it might reduce the
efficiency of the design somehow?

There seems to be two designs out there. One has a circular passage with
angled holes drilled into the main tube. The other has a lopsided cam
lobe shaped chamber to spin the air. Any idea which one is more
efficient?

They both are terribly inefficient even if you also have a use for the hot
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Well, I have one small machine running flood coolant, but I would
really like to keep the other machine dry for other reasons. I can
build either design for starting the vortex. I had hoped somebody had
already experimented with them and knew which style produced a greater
temperature differential. I've got the plug design figured out to
make flow adjustment quick and easy, and I can use my NCT for checking
the output temps. I figured to just use a bathroom vent with auto
closing louvers to send the hot air outside and let the cold air
lightly pressurize (its not a sealed system) the cabinet.

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Feel free to dink around with it all you want but compressed air should by itself be entirely sufficient unless you are machining low melting temp materials almost exclusively and in an environment where contamination with liquids would also be unacceptable..