HPC CW4000 Water Chiller

[Spooky]

Well the purchase of a new tube meant my large water tank was no longer going to be much use for cooling so I was looking at buying a decent chiller. A few weeks back Ian & Andy at Awltech had a new laser delivered that came with a CW4000 from HPC. I spent a bit of time with them and noticed that the chiller was doing a rather good job of keeping temperatures stable on their 150 watt RECI so decided that would be the one I'd go for.

Chris sent down the CW4000 and it was unpacked and set next to the laser. Very easy installation, just two pipes to push on to the labelled hose tails and a connection for a water temperature sensor (note: some machines don't have this facility)

As it arrived:

One simple electrical plug from the chiller to the wall (IEC socket type) and it was ready to fill.

This is where the 4000 is very different, it has a large 175mm diameter clear lid directly onto the top of the unit and covering the visible water tank. Very useful if like me you don't check your water levels when things get busy. The cooling gas rings are again visible in the water tank so you can both see the state of your water and the water levels.

Filling is achieved by simply lifting off the lid!

What did surprise me was the very small capacity of the tank, I filled it then started the chiller then added more water to bring the levels up (remember the tube waterways hold quite a bit) under 4 litres was all it needed in total! (De-ionised is really cheap to buy but hey, 4 litres is better than buying 120 litres for my normal tank).

A quick shifty around the unit showed that the front panel is held by two finger clips that allow access to the front of the chiller radiator for cleaning (again very useful) and a washable filter is installed on the inside of the door.

My only concern I must admit was such a small water volume would struggle to keep the temperatures down to an acceptable level (the big body tubes like to stay at 21-22 degrees, more than that will shorten their life by quite a bit) so I fired up the machine and started cutting at 75% power over times from 10 minutes to 35 minutes. (75% on a tube with a 180 watt peak is a LOT of latent heat).
The chiller was set to keep the temperature at 17 degrees with an upper limit of 19 degrees and all through the cutting cycles it never struggled to keep within these limits with outside ambient temperatures between 26 and 30 degrees.

After giving it some thought it made sense to have a small water tank, it takes far less energy to reduce the temperature of 4-5 litres than it does to try and cool 100 litres so the efficiency is excellent. Big water tanks are great if you have no chiller (it takes a lot longer to heat up) but in this case the small tank works very well.

General impressions:

Overall this unit is pretty compact, it has handles on the side for moving it (it's not that heavy but handles are always useful) and it's performance for the cost is amazing! they cost considerably less to buy than the CW5000 units and handle the big body, high power tubes easily. This one is fitted to one of the most powerful, newest design tubes available and if it can cope with that then you will have no problems with anything smaller. Of all the chillers I have owned and used this one seems to be the best all round value and gives the highest performance of any of them, when compared to a £1,000 TECO I was using this model beats it easily on both cooling capacity and stability.

Would I recommend it? based on what I have experienced so far, very much so,it's quiet, it's a great price and performs very well.

Available @ £395.00 (+VAT) currently from

http://hpclaser.co.uk/index.php?main_pa ... ucts_id=10

best wishes

Dave

NOTE: The settings for the chiller can be easily changed on the front panel, they are pre-set though at the factory so unless you really need to change them it's probably best to leave well alone.