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Vortex Cold Air system: anyone using?

I have a customer that loves it, but it sucks air like crazy. Need something like 15+ cfm just to run it. It does come out very cold. It is somewhat loud as well.

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I've used them for dry machining of hardened (40s-50s) steel since basically forever.
Not sure they are that much better than a regular air blast and they do work the air compressors very hard so money spent to run.
They do help keep the part and cutter temp under control which helps with size control.
I've tried them for grinding and found them here of no use at all.
Grind I do wet since I'm setup for that. (strange, I machine all dry or min lube and then I grind all under very big flow flood)

Seen some used for cabinet cooling. IMO, this is a terrible waste.
There has been quite a few threads about these over the years here.
Moving a lot of air on a milling cutter is always good to prevent re-cutting chips. If cold gun or compressor output temp is a question not usually separated.
For sure a cold gun is better than nothing but maybe just an air nozzle without the big loss that comes out it's butt is just as good?

I do use them but I'm not sold on them and wonder if I'm wasting money on making air.
Bob
 
Anyone using the Vortex Cold Air systems, and for what, and has it been successful?

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they blow cold air, kinda of noisy. if using minimum cutting oil it blow fumes away and cools part. my experience good to have one in shop if machine not made for flood coolant and using minimum cutting fluid/oil and need air to blow away smoke
 
I used one on a surface grinder taking off a few thousandths dry. We used to resharpen punch press tooling and tool life wasn't very good on the resharpened tooling. Tried out the Vortex cold air gun, it kept everything nice and cool and tool life definitely improved. But yes, they can eat up compressed air. Depending on what you are trying to accomplish, they also make the vortex tips that cut down on cfm usage and noise but still keep a strong blast of air where you need it, but without the extra cooling effect. Something like these:

Air Nozzles-1201
 
I used to use one a lot for dry grinding tooling that was mostly for stamping dies. A little bit noisy and they do use a lot of compressed air but our air compressor was 4,500 HP so no big deal. The hose and tip would get frost on them if I let it run for more than about ten minutes. Not nearly as good as flood coolant but still much better than just compressed air.
 
Well since your question was open ended about for what..... I'll be light on details as it was done on a classified project. It was used to keep electronics cool. But we did not waste air. We used nitrogen. It worked well.
 
Recently I used ours for machining soft urethane. I tried chilling the bar in dry ice and alcohol but could not get into the machine and press cycle start fast enough. I put the Vortex tube on lathe and gave the part a minute to ice up then press cycle start with the cold air continuing to chill the part. Made an impossible job easy.
 








 
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