Water Chiller Alarm

[jondale]

So my water chiller (CW-5000) alarm went off today and it is not pumping water anymore.  I have drained and changed the water.  I can force water through the chiller in both directions easily so there doesn't seem to be any blockage.  I suspect the pump has gone out?  

When you turn it on now the alarm light comes on and it constantly beeps.  The LED screen just blinks on and off.  No pumping.

Has anyone run across this and found a fix?

[Steve Baker]

No, I've never had that problem.

Have you got a multimeter? Can you measure any voltage on the connections
to the pump?

That might help to understand whether the pump itself is broken - or the
circuitry that drives it....maybe you get REALLY lucky and there is some
kind of internal fuse that's blown!

Another suggestion - if you look online (sorry, I forget where, but you
can find it with Google) you can get the manual for the CW-5000 and
somewhere in there there is a way to get the thing to do a hard reset and
reinstate factory settings...that may do something.

-- Steve

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-- Steve

[Jondale Stratton]

So I'm going to update this for posterity.

When I first turned the unit on the LED display strangely blinked on and off for around 5 minutes.  At that point the compressor would kick on and the display would go to normal with no error message.  The pump never kicked on however.  Here is a video of the blinking.

http://youtu.be/bBY_tFPaSp4

After some searching I found the manufacturer responds on some forums and asks people to email them at mark...@teyuchiller.com or mark...@teyu.com.cn

I emailed them and described the problem.  They asked for my serial number and directed me to measure the voltage as you mentioned.

They offered the two following images to help describe how/where to measure it:

​

​

I did so and my voltage was as expected.  They said my unit was still under warranty so they are going to mail me a new pump but I need to pay shipping.  They were going to replace the pump and power supply if the voltage measured wrong.  Shipping is around $30 USD to the USA.  It might be cheaper to just buy a new one if you could find it locally.

I think the pump and power supply are the points of failure on these things.  For the CW-5000 specifically, the pump is product number P2430 and you can source this at places like aliexpress it looks like if you wanted to have a backup around.  I'm not at home at the moment so I can't check the other part numbers.

[Steve Baker]

Many thanks for the update! I think it's really important that, as a
community, we understand as much as we can about the "black box" parts of
our systems, for which we have no schematics and spotty handbooks.

Also, the chiller is fast becoming the most expensive part of the system
now that laser tube prices seem to be falling...it's only a matter of time
until someone decides to build a decent one from easily sourced parts. A
motocycle radiator, a box fan and a water pump ought to be able to do the
job...but to save the laser tube in the event of problems, you'd probably
want a flow rate and temperature measurement system. Arduino-compatible
temperature sensors are $6 each, a reconditioned motorcycle radiator is
around $100...dunno what the pump would cost.

-- Steve

Jondale Stratton wrote:
> So I'm going to update this for posterity.
>
> When I first turned the unit on the LED display strangely blinked on and
> off for around 5 minutes. At that point the compressor would kick on and
> the display would go to normal with no error message. The pump never
> kicked on however. Here is a video of the blinking.
> http://youtu.be/bBY_tFPaSp4
>
> After some searching I found the manufacturer responds on some forums and
> asks people to email them at mark...@teyuchiller.com or
> mark...@teyu.com.cn
>
> I emailed them and described the problem. They asked for my serial number
> and directed me to measure the voltage as you mentioned.
>
> They offered the two following images to help describe how/where to
> measure
> it:
>
>

> ​
>
> ​

[Jondale Stratton]

The pump I mentioned before you can get for $40-60 from china it looks like.

I believe the temp control part of the chiller is part number WH7016D but not 100% positive. Maybe someone that has access to theirs can check that.

I don't know about making my own from scratch.  I'd probably choose to buy the chiller anyways.  But documenting these parts and identifying the possible failure points that are cheap enough to have a backup around seems like a good idea to me. 

[Steve Baker]

> ...documenting these parts and identifying the possible failure points

that are
> cheap enough to have a backup around seems like a good idea to me.

Definitely!

We had a water leak on one of ours - and it was a pain to fix because of
the weird mix of hose sizes and thread pitch - it took several trips to
Home Depot to finally realize that we needed to use a propane gas hose
adaptor to replace a plastic connector that had cracked because water
pipes (in the US, at least) have the wrong thread pitch.

As our business starts to get more serious, having a laser cutter down for
a week or two waiting for parts become an extremely expensive matter. We
just lost a Geckodrive stepper controller - it only cost $150 to replace
it - but having one laser cutter not working for 4 days is expensive when
it can be earning $1 per minute while it's running!

We're starting to realize that we need to keep a stack of spare parts for
our machines - but knowing which parts are most likely to fail is tricky.

-- Steve

Jondale Stratton wrote:
> The pump I mentioned before you can get for $40-60 from china it looks
> like.
>
> I believe the temp control part of the chiller is part number WH7016D but
> not 100% positive. Maybe someone that has access to theirs can check that.
>
> I don't know about making my own from scratch. I'd probably choose to buy
> the chiller anyways.>
>
>
>

>> > ​
>> >
>> > ​

[jondale]

I forgot to follow up on this sooner.  They sent me a new pump.  Replacing it was just connecting tubing and reconnecting wiring.  It is back to working like a champ now.  I believe I'm going to keep an extra pump around so there's no downtime next time.