Massive Water Chiller

[Stewie007]

Alright..... I've designed it.... I've bought the parts (95% of them)... and soon I'm FINALLY going to start building it.

I decided to place it into a chest, and given that its a water cooled chiller its a particularly busy design. Here's to hoping it exceeds my expectations. For the record, I've got both controls and REFRIGERANT! No excuses this time. ;-)

Pictures to be uploaded shortly.

[Stewie007]

Most importantly! Refrigerant!!!

[Stewie007]

The first two are the receiver. Its a Ref. Research Model 1947. I picked it because of its horizontal mounting. It fits well with my design.
It has a 2.7lb holding capacity. It would be three, but with 507 a .9 multiplier is recommended.

After that is the TXV, which is a Sporlan SBFSE-A-C. The evap temp minimum is -10F which is good for my design. I got this one because the strainer can be changed without having to remove the valve. I took a pic of the sight glass and the drier, but they're nothing special.....

I decided to use a better check valve with this unit. Its much easier to assemble without concern of melting any seals.

I'm using hotel pans as my reservoirs. They're stainless steel, and not aluminum. Though I don't anticipate any corrosion problems, I'll still protect all joints with a special coating to prevent any water contacting the connection.

[Buckeye]

Stewie is at it again !!

[tool_462]

/awaits the awesomeness sure to follow

[Stewie007]

I just hope that this time I get a finished product.... LOL

I swear.... if anyone were dependent on me............ :p

I gotta finish up cleaning my trombone slide and I'll post more pics :p

[Stewie007]

I acquired two new radiators, although I'll still be using my 120mm Triples. I had to wrestle them from that plexi mansion I made, and as a result they lost a lot of paint.. (mainly to me scraping it off). I'm going to repaint them orange and I'll post those pics after that's done. The two shown are the Tripe 180mms.

After that there are some structural channels along with a single 0.5" tube for the suction line. There are some aluminum channels for the 180mm support stands, and some structural channels to offer some support to the base which will run 25" x 52"... I know... its big. That's largely due to the reservoirs and pumps, and the overall necessity for an accessible system.

I've probably shown pictures of the pumps before, but I've included one anyways. I love these things... Bloody monsters. hehe

[Stewie007]

Lets see... This is my favorite piece out of all of the rest. I don't know why, I just really like the look of this thing. Its a crappy cell phone pic, so nothing is readable... Its a Tecumseh HGA9468ZXA. I had the darnedest time finding one of these. I have an odd obsession with unique pieces of equipment, and this one is definitely quite unique.

[Stewie007]

I don't know why I bothered, but I took a picture of both the Run and Star Caps.. I marked them just in case I get some kind of stupid idea... like wiring them to the wrong part of the circuit. Its pretty obvious, but sometimes I can be indecisive... The downside is I've got to find a housing for them that is somewhat reliable.

Below that is the oil separator. Its a Temprite 340 that I got off of ebay. I remember a while ago someone recommending I place an oil separator on my design, so I bought it. The only part I'm missing is a solenoid valve for the return. I'd rather use a capillary line, but it has to be a solenoid due to the pump down design.

Moving on, the next one is the solenoid valve responsible for cutting flow to the evaporator to initiate the pump down. I had to size the port to 3/8 inches to match my refrigerant line. I realized that in my haste the last time the port size on the solenoid that I had used was 3/32 and that certainly would be a problem.

[Stewie007]

I changed the design of the heat exchangers slightly because I didn't want to use a machine shop to drill holes in 4" caps. Though, I may have made my job more difficult by using 4" x 2" reducer couplings. The idea was that I could file the stops down and slide the inner 2" pipe through the entire fitting. However, these DWV couplings (much cheaper) are made of some pretty dang hard copper. Still, I'll make it work. I didn't bother taking a picture of the 4" and 2" piping, its nothing special...

Anyways, the heat exchangers are pretty much utilizing the same vortex flow. However, both will be round coils in shell. The last evaporator was a sort of self made thing that in the end I didn't really like. The down side is, I have to find out how to bend 1/2" coil to fit inside a 4" pipe. I figure heat will be involved, but I'm not sure how its going to work. I have some practice pieces, so we'll see.

[Stewie007]

These solenoid valves are somewhat cheap, but they're only for water. One of them is Normally Open, and the other is Normally Closed. This way, I can connect them to the same circuit and one will be open while the other is closed. I will place them so that the default configuration is de-energized for safety reasons. They will only be energized when bypassing to the radiator shroud coil according to a timer. They're crappy pictures. The one with the larger nut on the coil is the N/O valve.

[Stewie007]

I got my hands on a proper temperature control. This one is a J/C System A419. The thermal well is a freaking monster. Its a LOT bigger than the picture made it look. I didn't pay much attention to the specs. It'll be connected to the reservoir via a threaded coupling; which is fine.

The Pressure Control is also a J/C. Its a P70AB-12C for low pressure control. It has a pressure range of 12"HG to 80PSIG... plenty for my purposes. The differential is settable from 5 - 35 PSI, but I've got it set at a few PSI. This will simply be connected to the low side close to the evaporator. Once the temperature sensor cuts off the solenoid, the compressor will pump refrigerant to the high side (hence the need for the receiver). The pressure sensor will be set for a draw of either a slight vacuum, or a negligible pressure of near "0" PSI.

[Stewie007]

Finally, I'm just including some drawings of the design. I am going to try to keep it as close to this as possible. I modeled it to scale such that 1 unit of measure in the program is equal to 1 inch. That way I'll be able to keep to a spec a little bit easier. The chest will be produced later. Given that Saturdays are the only available day to work on this project, it will last for a little while. So, I'm figuring late may or early June for the chest.

I may do some work tomorrow. It depends on what I get done otherwise.

The chest design is meant to contain the unit such that it blends in with the room. I may paint the wood panels white; Just haven't decided. The top will likely be the most difficult piece to build given the shrouds that I will be making custom for ventilation. There will be one difference for sure, the 180mm radiators will pull air in with the fans likely on top. However, that isn't but a minor design change.

The base is missing the designed support channels. I forgot to unhide them when I rendered the image. They will run lengthwise on the base.

[Crabby]

You have some really nice parts, never seen a compressor like that! Looking forward to this build, thanks for sharing!

[Stewie007]

I pulled it off of Ebay and apparently there are still hundreds of them available. Someone had a LOT of surplus. They're still sold in retail, I think. But I think mostly with condensing units.

I tried to get as much as I could off of ebay, but some of it was either not available or of questionable quality/usage.

All I have left to get is an external 12V power supply, a solenoid valve, a few sol. coils, some piping and insulation, and a piece of plywood (that one I'll get today).

I'm going to paint the radiators today and hopefully cut some plastic. I hope I get some time to experiment with coil bending technique....

[n00b 0f l337]

Glad to see this project... again again?

[Stewie007]

Tell me about it..... I never seem to finish anything.... LOL

I was originally going to build it back in 2010. Then suddenly my wife's job didn't work out the way I had hoped. They never gave her enough hours and eventually ended up just cutting her off to a day or two a week.... So it ended up putting a damper on the project until finally this year.

[Stewie007]

Priming the radiators for painting

I'm sure some of the spray will have gotten underneath the paper to the fins, but that isn't too big of a deal. Just so it protects most of the coil from coverage. One more drying cycle and orange we go. ^_^

[Stewie007]

Its a lighter orange than I had anticipated, but I guess that's okay. I wanted a darker orange. But this will do.

[Stewie007]

Alright, now the painting is pretty much finished. I just have to let it dry; which will take some time. I took the paper off of the fins. As it turns out there is only a tiny bit of over spray that got to the fins. Its negligible. I'm quite pleased with the contrasting black and orange. I think it looks awesome, but that's because orange is my favorite color.

After that I did some work on the base by pounding the channels onto the MDF board that I'm using for the base. Then I drilled some holes and secured them. I didn't undersize the MDF quite enough so its over 25 inches unfortunately in width. However, its just a hair off of 52" long. I suppose I could take the channel off and shave it, but I can make it work I think as it is.

52" seems long, but I sized it for a longer chest (given the required width of the machine no matter how long). Plus the reservoir for the chilled loop is a full sized pan so its pretty big. I'm done for the day, and hopefully next Saturday I'll be cutting some plastic to build the shroud and the upper radiator support set. Not to mention the compressor table.

[n00b 0f l337]

That is a very nice orange.

[Buckeye]

Looks good !!

[Stewie007]

Thanks.

This week I'm going to try to find some time to convert the CAD drawing into usable blue prints so I can print them for measurements.

I'm thinking I'm going to be cutting plastic, the metal pieces, and building all of the support structures first. Hopefully I'll be able to do that next Saturday.

[Stewie007]

I didn't get nearly as much done today as I wanted to. The plan was to start at 1, but it didn't work out that wan.

Anyways, I cut plastic and some metal pieces today. Unfortunately, cutting the plastic with the blade on the table saw made for a messy job. The fit could have been better, but oh well.

I got to play with my tools, so that's always fun. I used the table saw to cut them to width, and then my miter saw to cut em to length. The sander was used to clean up the edges. A few shots of the tools, then the plastic. Working alone meant that I couldn't get too many action shots. Makes for a rather boring walk through. Then you can see all of the pieces cut out appropriately and ready for assembly.

I was not as pleased with the cuts... The blade on the miter had way too few teeth and it is pretty old. The metal pieces were easier since I could file them down really well after cutting. The MDF? Well cutting that was like butter; as too be expected. Tapped the channels around the edges, drilled them, and then screwed them in place. Finally, I assembled the legs for the compressor table. The last shot is the point just before full assembly. However, I'm going to need some bolts for that job, as I'm not willing to screw them into the MDF. The table is just kind of sitting on the legs. When I attach them to the base board I'll work out any of the misalignment issues that way.

[Stewie007]