Was about to get a toy- then I did some research...

[NeoMorph]

I take it you use an air cooled radiator in your lounge then so it does not ruin the carpet

Funny you should say that. A radiator leaked all over my hall about a month ago. Had to throw out the carpet.

Seriously though... it’s the same with water cooled PCs. It’s freaking great when it works but in a CNC it has to deal with the carriage moving back and forth. If you have an all metal CNC you don’t worry if you get a leak. You fix the problem and wipe up the spill. With a wood base CNC it’s going to swell the wood and we all know how it’s going to affect accuracy after that. It means replacing the spoilboard, having to resurface etc. It’s faff you can do without if you use air cooled spindles.

But like I said... if I ever build a metal based one I’m going for an auto-change water cooled, pneumatic drawbar spindle... they kick ass (watch Marco Reps on YouTube).

Edit: Regarding my worry about leaks... I’m slightly OCD about things going wrong after year 1 where pretty much everything did go wrong. The controller was going beserk every so often, the axes would randomly stop working, I had to keep uploading grbl because it was getting corrupted. Drove me nuts.

Took ages to track down... the cause was a link of LED strip lighting that was in my enclosure. It was only after reaching into the CNC the one time that I notice the lights were pulsing randomly in one corner. I thought to test it with another of my 12v psu blocks and hooked it up... and killed ALL the lights in my enclosure. Turned out I used a 24v one instead of a 12v and caused the lights to come on, do some freaky stuff before flaring any dying.

But ironically killing those lights fixed my CNC... it’s run smooth as silk since. I did have to buy some more lights but it’s running fine so it’s money well spent.

So yeah... I tend to still worry a lot.