Quote Originally Posted by NeoMorph View Post
So it’s actually time to start planning a machine from scratch. Spent today looking through water pump requirements as the advice is all over the shop... “use a pond pump it’s the cheapest”... “Don’t use a pond pump ffs”... use a 12v water cooling pump and use a pc dual radiator”... “don’t use small pumps as they don’t pump enough to get it all through the narrow pipe”...”don’t use PVC pipe, use expensive anti microbial silicon pipe”... and on, and on, and on. Made my head spin.

So once I get my spindle I think I’ll set up a system to test actual flow rate and temp. ... and oh sh1t... we just left the EU. *cry*
I've probably fitted in excess of 100 of these spindles and everyone used a 24Vdc fish pond or solar panel type pump in sealed 20ltr container that as a head height of around 8mtr with high duty cycle for continuous running. The flow rate doesn't need to be high because the cooling requirements are low.
To be honest these spindles will happily run for 20-30mins without water and not do any damage. My own machine is a basket case of wires n pipes hanging off it from testing and I'm actually just running water straight from the tap through it and out again into the drain because I destroyed the pump while testing a radiator setup.
Most of the jobs I do on this machine are only short jobs 30-40 mins so I hardly ever turn the water on. Only if the job is over an hour-long do I turn it on. It's been this way for the last 3-4yrs without any issues and I nearly exclusively cut aluminum on it. I've also cut a few jobs where I've forgot to turn the water on and only noticed after 2hrs and while the spindle was relatively hot, the spindle didn't complain. They are tuff little things and will stand a lot of abuse regards cooling. My spindle must be 6yrs old now and nobody could abuse it more than I have and do on a weekly basis.