The old laser cutters water cooling system was very simple with no monitoring and only consisting of a fish pond pump in a bucket of water. For a while now, I have been wanting the upgrade to a system with flow and temperature monitoring. The new systems use a 5L reservoir water tank and a 12V pump to run the water to the CO2 laser with a flow sensor and 5 temperature sensor. On the side of the cooling system is an LCD that displays the temperatures and warnings when the temperatures rise above a max temperature. If a warning appears on the LCD, a buzzer will sound, indicating there is a problem. The 5 temperatures are located in the reservoir tank, on the motor after cooling and before/after the laser. The motor is all run off the PLEX board.
- The project can be found here: https://tinkersprojects.com/project/laser-cutter-water-cooling/
- The PLEX PCB can be found here: https://tinkersprojects.com/product/plex-controller/