Seasonal Cooling Water Adjustments for Induction Power Supplies

Heat Treat Today recently released the latest round of 101 Heat Treat Tips in the fall 2019 issue of Heat Treat Today (click here for the digital edition). One of the great benefits of gathering with a community of heat treaters is the opportunity to challenge old habits and look at new ways of doing things. The Heat Treat Tips is another opportunity to learn the tips, tricks, and hacks shared by some of the industry’s foremost experts.

Ryan Neiss of Taylor Winfield Technologies

Today’s Technical Tuesday features a tip on Induction Heating that missed inclusion in the magazine, but it’s significant enough to get its own headline. From Ryan Neiss of Taylor Winfield Technologies, we bring you “Seasonal Cooling Water Adjustments for Induction Power Supplies”.

If you have a heat treat-related tip that would benefit your industry colleagues, you can submit your tip(s) to doug@heattreattoday.com or editor@heattreattoday.com.

Heat Treat Tip: Induction Heat Treating

Seasonal Cooling Water Adjustments for Induction Power Supplies

A proper preventative maintenance plan is critical to the performance of induction heating power supplies. One of the main culprits of downtime is reduced water flow and water quality. While water quality is a very important topic that must be maintained within the OEM specifications, this tip is going to address the importance of seasonal water adjustments.

Water flows through the inside of the power supply cooling critical devices, like power semiconductors, capacitors, transformers, buss, etc. If the temperature is not adjusted for seasonal climate changes, many users may experience water condensation inside the power supply cabinet. This is not a good situation, because the uncontained water can drip into places where water should not be and potentially cause severe damage to the power supply. Depending on how much water damage there is will determine the amount of production loss and costs of this easily preventable mistake.

The temperature setpoints for your cooled water source must always be above the temperature dew point in order to prevent condensation. Most weather apps have current dew points, relative humidity, and temperature. Additional climatic resources for predictive planning include noaa.gov and ashrae.org.

Here’s a simple approximation of the dew point temperature from temperature and relative humidity (only apply if relative humidity is above 50%).