Film-Tech Forum ARCHIVE: Kinoton PK60D Coolant Needs

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Posted by John T. Moon II (Member # 1694) on 06-07-2003, 10:26 PM:

I need some advice from the knowledge base from the members on Film-Tech. I have a number of Kinoton PK60D projectors with 5k lamphouses at my location here in Las Vegas. These projectors have a Water/Glycol cooled gate. Due to an error by the console manufacture, unbeknown to me the cooling system was running on 2 of my projectors 24 hours a day 7 days a week for a year. Then of course the pumps quit working at almost the same time within a few days of each other.
The gate uses 2 White Delron strips and a Skate of other Black material. The Delron strips start to get tacky and melt to the aluminum. The film then starts to run into the aperture plate and scratch. [Mad]

Needless to say this is not the best situation for the film, projector, or the projectionists. The pumps run so quite you can not hear them or even see if they operate.
The pump, tank, hoses etc. was supplied by Big Sky. I went on a hunt to replace the pumps. I went to a few hardware stores and specialty stores. They all needed to know how many Gallons Per Hour the pump put out. I called the Console manufacture. They could not tell me how many Gallons Per Hour are required for the proper cooling. I called Kinoton, they did not know, Big Sky did not know.
So, with all the knowledge out there, with a 5k lamp and running a Water/Glycol mixture, the pumps I can buy are rated in Gallons Per Hour: What is the amount of coolant in (Gallons Per Hour) required in this application for proper heat removal? I have repaired the wiring problem so the pumps won’t run 24/7. I am currently running a pump which is pumping 350 Gallons Per Hour.

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 06-07-2003, 11:45 PM:

I don't know how many gallons per hour the original pumps pump, but you could measure it by pulling the return hose off of a working pump's reservoir and timing how long it takes to pump a gallon into an empty pail.

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 06-08-2003, 01:10 AM:

The original Kinoton water cooling system is specified at 2 l/min. The lifting capacity should be 3 bar, the refrigerating capacity 2500 W or 9000 kJ/h.
That would be 120 l/h or just 30 gallons. The original system is quite small, but it works. I have also seen installations with much larger pumps, but mainly for 7 KW.
Can you post a picture of your system?

These values can be found in the manual, by the way. Maybe you should call your vendors again and thank them for their wonderful support...
I can send you the manual. Would you like to have the German, French or English version?

Posted by Richard Fowler (Member # 893) on 06-08-2003, 01:42 AM:

Micheal, since he is using a PK-60D mounted on what appears to be a Big Sky console package he probably has a 8 - 10 gallon tank with no refrigeration capablity with a submersible water pump....with no interlock capability to the projector in case of pump failure. If he is unable to get the pump from Big Sky, there is the industrial supplier - W.W. Grainger - located in most major U.S. cities.
Richard Fowler
Kinoton America Inc.

Posted by Dennis Benjamin (Member # 1137) on 06-08-2003, 02:20 AM:

Actually, our projector heads sit on a Neumade console system. (Meaning the 5K lamphouse is Neumade not Big Sky). :-)

Posted by Richard Fowler (Member # 893) on 06-08-2003, 02:48 AM:

Stand corrected [Wink]

.....I know Crown uses Neumade consoles; just fixated on the Big Sky water cooler.
Richard Fowler
Kinoton America Inc.

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 06-08-2003, 03:38 AM:

What difference does it make? Neumade, Big Sky, the water cooling is for the projector head, not the lamphouse. Of course, different lamphouse constructions lead different amounts of heat towrds the gate, but it can`t make THAT big a difference.

Posted by Bernard Tonks (Member # 809) on 06-08-2003, 04:00 AM:

John T wrote,

quote:
The pumps run so quite you can not hear them or even see if they operate.

One cinema I worked in had Westar (Century) water cooled projectors. Fitted in the outgoing pipe was a glass dome that had a white ball floating about, so that you always knew there was water flow. Just an idea! [Wink]

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 06-08-2003, 06:33 AM:

Is your cooling system two units, one round watertank with a flat top, and a box-shaped cooler or is it just one small box-shaped knee high unit?

Posted by John T. Moon II (Member # 1694) on 06-08-2003, 08:53 AM:

The cooling tanks are about 2 1/2 feet tall blue barrels with 2 hoses and 1 power cord coming from the top of the tank. The hoses attach directly to the projector head and the power cord plugs into the console. That's all there is to it.
I had VERY limited documentation with the projection systems when installed. I could not find any specifics on the cooling needs when I searched my documentation on site.

Posted by Gordon McLeod (Member # 33) on 06-08-2003, 08:59 AM:

Those are the same ones Strong supplies
They use a little giant garden submersable garden fountain pump
It woun't hurt to put too much water through them

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 06-08-2003, 10:15 AM:

This is the water circulator that we manufacture in our shops. It is made fomr a 10 gallon drum, Teel pump amd other misc items. It also includes a radiator with a muffin fan blowing through it to keep water temperatures at a reasonable level, basically what ever the booth is cooled to. Unlike the Strong circulator...if ya want to call it that....whos water just keeps getting warmer and warmer and......but then again the X-L water cooling is worthless anyway so why should their circulator be any better????

Running 4 lamps on DP-70's the cooling plates never get more than warm to the touch even after 6 shows! Our cost to manufacture these is less than our cost on the Strong circulator.
Mark @ CLACO

Posted by Dave Macaulay (Member # 813) on 06-08-2003, 10:20 AM:

(repeat what Gord said)
A garden supply place should have Little Giant submersible pumps or you can order from Grainger. Get a magnetic drive model, there isn't any shaft seal to fail and they usually last longer. They cost a bit more but it is worth it. When the seal fails the water gets contaminated with the cooling oil from the motor cavity - nasty mess results.
Aquarium supply places also have submersible pumps. Eheim from Germany is the best brand, but the Chinese ones are OK.
Try to get one with a solid plastic housing, the Little Giant ones with painted aluminum cases corrode like mad in Glycol solution.
Almost any model except maybe the smallest will do the job, the gate doesn't need much flow at all to keep from overheating to the point of damage.

Posted by John Walsh (Member # 168) on 06-08-2003, 10:39 AM:

This is the tank in use a John's projection room:

Posted by Richard Fowler (Member # 893) on 06-08-2003, 12:30 PM:

The 8 gallon blue tank was the type we used to build water circulators, prior to myself joining Kinoton......only ours did not look as crude and based on what I see, our unit was built for safety.
Richard Fowler
Kinoton America Inc.

Posted by Michael Schaffer (Member # 1204) on 06-08-2003, 01:51 PM:

Here is what the "original" pump - I am not sure if they still install it, I haven`t seen it in a long time - I was referring to looks like:

In real life it is metallic blue.

Posted by John Walsh (Member # 168) on 06-08-2003, 02:47 PM:

Wow.. I don't even want to guess how much that costs.... [Smile]

Posted by Steve Guttag (Member # 268) on 06-08-2003, 05:52 PM:

Lamphouse variances don't make much that much difference in heat eh? I just got back from running a 16mm show on 5KW lamps...try that with most lamphouses and you will get goo coming out of the projector...not so on a Kinoton.

The picture that was just posted (above) is the old style LWK. It is similar to Mark's in that it has a radiator with a fan blowing on it to actually cool the water.

That is no longer the current Kinoton version...the current one is the LWK-20 and is a little blue brick that holds about 1.5 gallons of coolant (water/lubricant/inhibitor mix). It does a passible job of keeping the system cool, especially with such a small amount of liquid but the damn things are TOO noisy.

Steve

Posted by John T. Moon II (Member # 1694) on 06-09-2003, 09:23 AM:

Even if the LWK-20 is noisy at least you know that it is running. The blue tanks we use are impossible to hear even if you are right next to them with everything off and they are running.
The question remains, what is the proper amount of cooling needed in Gallons Per Hour for the Kinoton PK-60D gate using a 5k lamphouse?

Posted by Larry Shaw (Member # 388) on 06-09-2003, 12:02 PM:

The exact amount of water flow in this application is not terribly critical. Kinoton assumes its own coolers will be used. Their smallest cooler is rated at 2.0 l/min (.53 gal/min). So any flow of cooled water at or above that will be sufficient. Using non-chilled water is not reccomended, but if done, presumably some higher flow rate wiuld be required, although the value of just heating the water in a tank is questionable.

The list price of the LWK-20 cooler is $998, but then again it actually cools water.

Posted by Bruce McGee (Member # 131) on 06-09-2003, 05:59 PM:

Mark:

The radiator on your unit looks just like the heater core I just installed on my Ford truck. What a good idea!

Bruce

Posted by Mark Gulbrandsen (Member # 72) on 06-09-2003, 07:49 PM:

Bruce,
It is a heater core, can't remember what its from though. Assumming the booth is air conditioned thats about as "hot" as the water gets!
Mark

Posted by Jim Spohn (Member # 1547) on 06-10-2003, 02:25 PM:

I use a coolant pump that is rated at 100 GPH and it does a fine job...Jim

Posted by John T. Moon II (Member # 1694) on 06-10-2003, 06:05 PM:

Thanks all for the great replies! I knew there was some help out there. [Smile]

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 06-11-2003, 12:19 AM:

Coincidentally, just this afternoon I replaced the tubing on the water cooler on the Century water pumps -- at least it has a decal on the switch box that says Century. They needed replacement because they were never filled with anything but tap water and were all gunked up a variety of organic growth coating them. Couldn't be good for the tubing around the gate.

I called a supply house that shall remain nameless and got a price of 7.50 per foot. PER FOOT. I went to a local hardware supply and found the exact same diameter and thickness but with the added advantage of a support webbing that was imbedded on the outside surface. I asked what that was for and the guy said so that it won't bend and cut the flow. It was 39 cents per foot. As far as I could tell, it is identical to the tubing that we were using.

Ok, now what's this Glycol mixture? How much water to Glycol are we talking about? Will it stop algae and stuff from attacking the plastic tubes and living in the tank? How about that stuff they use in aquariums to stop unwanted algae growth?

These tanks we've been using, by the way, have nothing more than a hefty submersible pump that sits on the bottom. It looks just like the one in my fish tank, only a bit bigger and it has a cap into which you can put a piece of filter material. We dump in ice cubes at the beginning of the evening from the ice maker and the water never even gets luke warm.

As for how big a pump is needed -- isn't it all dependent on the size of the hose and the nipples? No matter how big the pump, the water flow will always be limited by the inner diameter of the tube it has to be forced through, no? Yeah, you can get a big pump and that will get the pressure up, but only to a point, after that, something will give -- either the plastic connectors or the tubing itself will just burst, I would think.

Frank

PS -- Bernard, I was just thinking that very same thing today -- how to get a small ball to float in a tube to show that water is really flowing. The tank has a neon indicator on top, but of course that tells me practically nothing. Thing is, the tube has a rather small inner diameter and you would need to have a strainer in the "flowometer" lest the little ball get up into the projector. [Eek!]

Posted by Daryl C. W. O'Shea (Member # 1303) on 06-11-2003, 12:53 AM:

Fluid turbulence will usually eat through your piping long before something bursts. So you could think everything was just fine for months before things start to leak.

Posted by John T. Moon II (Member # 1694) on 06-11-2003, 08:50 AM:

We used 40% Glycol and 60% De-Ionized or Distilled water to prevent the gunk factor. In 1 year we have had no growth or gunk in any tank.

Posted by Dave Macaulay (Member # 813) on 06-11-2003, 09:06 AM:

There isn't any need for a lot of flow, a huge pump will only cause trouble. Within reason the higher pressure won't be a problem but it's a waste of energy, and a leak changes from a slowly spreading puddle into a shower all over the equipment at higher pressure.
Choking off a high capacity pump with a restrictive load (the Simplex gate cooler has some extremely small tubes for example) causes cavitation on the rotor. This can destroy the rotor fairly quickly.
Don't use a positive displacement pump like a gear pump, these are made to move a fixed volume of fluid per revolution and the pressure can become high enough to burst hoses or pop off connections with restrictive plumbing. An impeller pump is the way to go. Any fountain or aquarium pump should work.
The new type Century coolers are just a blue plastic drum with a submersible pump. The photo shown here looks like a knockoff made from a wine-making carboy and would work the same as the Century model. There is no "cooling", the water gets warmer during use.
This works fine for almost any projector, the water gets somewhat warm during a day's shows but cools off again overnight. For special venue projectors or running very hot lamps non-stop you want active cooling (like Kinoton) or a unit with a radiator and fan at least.
You don't need to chill the gate. being "hot" isn't a problem - film damage is not an issue until something is quite hot indeed - the film is only there for 1/24th of a second and the image area is going to get mighty warm in that time anyway if you have a hot enough lamp to need water cooling! You want to have the gate cool enough that the base and emulsion won't get hot enough to be soft or sticky as the film moves through. Any gate temperature where you can touch the gate for a second without getting a burn should be OK.
The older Century coolers with the pump motor visible on top and the metal tank have a problem with evaporation. The fluid must be almost up to the overflow hole before the pump is actually submerged, so you have to check and fill the things regularly or it's not pumping anything. The pump is happy and quiet, the light is on, and all looks well except there ain't no cooling happening nohow.
I've seen this several times, and my conclusion is that if it can go long enough like that for the water to be an inch below the pump without any overheating-related problems, then the system didn't need water cooling anyway.
Active cooling or radiator/fan systems have the advantage of a closed coolant system, other than that (and the actual "cooling" if you need it) there isn't a big difference. The open tank ones all get skanky after a while, dust and fungus and who knows what (you DO have a booth washroom, right?) gets into the coolant and coats the hoses, clogs the pipes, builds up disgusting jelly goo on the pump and tank - yuck. Glycol helps a bit but is messy itself. A closed system stays clean. Using a bit of glycol or water-wetter inhibits the fungus stuff, and since very little crap can get in the coolant stays fairly pure.
Glycol reduces the cooling ability of water, so we're using it only as a preservative. Active coolers may need glycol to avoid freezing in the chiller unit... otherwise it's a waste of money, messy and poisonous, and an all-round negative IMO. Water-wetter is supposed to improve the cooling ability of pure water. I dunno about that, but it does keep it from getting fungusy and it turns the water a cool pink colour. Only a few ounces per gallon is used so it won't affect the actual thermal performance of water like glycol at 50% does. Closed systems with distilled water and water-wetter don't need any cleaning or water changes, and the hoses stay clear and one can usually see there's flow as some bubbles usually circulate. You can get tiny plastic balls that circulate freely and show that there's flow.
Water Wetter

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 06-13-2003, 01:42 PM:

Water Wetter -- now available at Pep Boys auto supply.

Posted by Bernard Tonks (Member # 809) on 06-16-2003, 11:46 AM:

Frank,

There are hundreds of web sites, so these must be easily available almost everywhere.

Water Flow Indicators

We recommend installing a visual flow indicator on every water circuit to give the operator confirmation, usually by a simple spinning rotor, that water is flowing. Use flow indicators without switches when an interrupted supply will not cause damage or when the component has its own coolant alarm.

For water-cooled components critical to the vacuum (diffusion pump, turbo pump) or those possibly damaged by flow failure (e-beam source, sputter gun) use a water switch with the indicator.

Suitable for Liquids or Gases
Highly Visible Ball in Domed Glass Housing
No Parts to Wear
Two Material Combinations Available

Posted by Frank Angel (Member # 248) on 06-17-2003, 10:50 PM:

Bernard, WAY cool! I am going to get me a few of these.

Frank