"A mans gotta know his limitations" said a wise man. I find out the limitations of some of my techniques and tools whilst building a fairly hefty 16-tube core 4-inch product condenser for myself.
Your videos on shotgun condensers are hands down the best on the internet. Not only are they neat and amazing work but the attention to detail like inlet positioning, thermometer angle and shielding, across your videos is invaluable. I must also mention the relief in hearing someone pronounce “solder” correctly lol. Thank you sir.
G'day Dark', Thanks for the kind words, been a bit of a crappy year work-wise, nice to get some encouragement. 😊 Yeah the soder/solder thing hurts my ears too, ... not the end of the world tho' heh. Happy Distilling!
Can you tell me about the chilling unit you mentioned at the 6 minute mark? I want to buy something similar, but I am not sure what the usual industrial use is, so I've had a hard time knowing where to begin looking. The whole video is great and very informative, by the way. Thanks.
How about doing a video on silicon bronze TIG brazing ? I've tried to do it a number of times and can't get it to work. My welds don't flow very well, they aren't lumpy, but they aren't as smooth as yours either. If I turn up the heat on the torch, I burn through. What might I be doing wrong ? Great content !
Heya Kev, Thanks! Picking up reliable silicon bronze brazing has opened a number of doors, … sexy copper sight-glass T's with stainless ferrules are on the list now. :o) Yep, birds are both doing well thanks. Have also added a twelve-year old ex-pig-hunting dog (she was a tracker/bailer) to the family, … lovely old girl with a beautiful nature that belies her background. Hope you and yours are all doing well too my friend!
Hi, Amazing craftsmanship. I believe your videos are some of the best distilling equipment builds on TH-cam. What size kettle do you run with this condenser? Cheers Daniel
G'day Daniel, Thanks for the compliment! I try my best, sometimes things don't go so well, got a vid I have to edit together soon on a hellishly frustrating commercial job I was working on that didn't go so well to start with. I've run this on my 200L/6kW kettle running tap temp water and it had no problems. I'll be running it on my newer 700L kettle soon, -with chilled coolant being pumped thru it there should be no hassle with that either. Happy Distilling!
What amps do you run with silicon bronze and does it have the same feel and characteristics of 316/304 ss wire or does it flow and weep like solder... thanks... great video... I love learning by someone else's experience..cheers😍😎
Heya Michael, It does flow to an extent but in quite a viscous fashion than solder. Sili-bronze beads up much more like a weld than flowing everywhere like a solder. I find it much more controllable. I use more amperage brazing silicon-bronze than I do with stainless TIG welding but this is usually on account of one of the brazed components being a large chunk of copper that wicks heat away. You also have less time over target so you are running alot faster. Brazing 2" stainless ferrule to 2" copper tube would probably be around 60amps. 4" ferrules and copper tube maybe 110-120 amps. I've had large copper jobs (15kg copper and brass components) where I've had to outsource the sili-bronze work as I ran out of grunt with my 185amp TIG unit. Happy Distilling.
Question for you: when you weld the water inlet/outlet fittings on the stainless jacket, how do you fit them up to the tube? Do you drill a larger hole than the diameter of the fitting and pass them partially though or do you contour the fitting to fit the outside curvature of the 4” stainless tube so there’s no gab? If so, how do you contour the fitting? Thanks so much. Awesome work!
G'day fella, Thanks! I've done both before. For the smaller sockets, 1/2" or so I drill a hole the same size as the threaded bore and then curve fit one end of the socket with a file/grinder. For bigger sockets, 1" , 13/4" and up I tend to drill a hole same OD as the socket . Two considerations for me are whether I'm pre-assembling the core - in which case I don't want anything occluding the inside of the jacket and/or whether the socket penetrating into the jacket will interfere with the cooling tubes which on bigger condensers with larger 1" + sockets is not usually a problem. Plus curve fitting a massive heavy bsp socket is time comsuming. Either way its necessary to get the best fit you can to get a good result. The better the fit, the better the weld. Happy Distilling.
21.1 GigaWatts!!! (at 88MPH) But in all seriousness, if a well built ø2¨ x 24¨ condenser can knock down 4500-5000 W of input power, a ø4" x 36" has over 6 times the volume so a proportional amount of cooling power. I'm making a lot of assumptions about internal surface area of the cores of one versus the other and that the relationship is linear (which it's not), but you could probably make the estimate of 30,000 watts of knockdown on the high end....which is nuts! I don't know how the big commercial setups are powered, but 3 x 10,000W is a lot of angry pixies.
Look up "tube rolling " on you tube. Jeff Hammond has a good video. There no welding necessary. They do this a lot with various heat exchangers. Thanks for you video
G'day Beetle, Will look him up now, ... I did a larger exchanger in copper last year that turned into a freakin nightmare, ... I ended up fabricating out of stainless just to get the client something to start working with definitely need better technique for larger diameter in copper. Happy Distilling!
Thanks fella! Strangely enough I've been running a 1200mm long 2" diameter gatling condenser for the last year or so and this guy has been gathering dust on the shelf. Happy Distilling!
Can't remember sorry, product is called "Solarflux", is a powder you mix with methylated spirit to form a paste you paint on the back-face of the weld. Not as pretty or clean as back purging but an ok shielding method.
G'day Chris, Pretty sure I silicon bronze TIG brazed the stainless-to-copper in this vid. I used to use the same general purpose liquid flux for soldering stainless-copper as copper-copper. For the stainless-copper application it has to have zinc chloride (will be on the label and will probably mention something about being suitable for stainless steel). Having said that, it is a pain in the butt to copper-stainless solder, the flux burns easily and you inevitably have to clean and restart the odd join - especially larger joins. Brazing works better and once I got the knack of Silicon bronze TIG brazing thin stainless-to-copper I never went back. The plumbing/food safe solder I use is only something like 5-10% Ag. You can get silver brazing sticks that go much higher like prosilver 34T or 45T (34%/45% and cadmium free) but they really need a hotter flame than you'll get outa mapp gas. (OxyAcetylene or similar). Happy Distilling!
Angry Parrot Distillery Thanks mate, my brother in law is a commercial plumber, so he’s been roped in to knock up my parts for me. I showed him some of your vids and he wasn’t 100% sure, so we had to ask. Always look forward to a new vid mate 👍
G'day Prof, Yeah, I have made a few of these commercially now and include partial baffle plates 1/3 and 2/3 of the way along the condenser. Serves a two-fold benefit; 1) forces the waterflow side-to-side across the jacket. 2) holds the tubes inplace so if the condenser gets moved around and shes a real long one, the thin internal tubes can't wobble/vibrate about (and they will when they get this long). Happy Distilling.
Not a very experienced welder or anything so don't burn me, but have you tried using a filler rod with a higher melting temp for the copper to copper internals then a lower temp for the stainless to copper so you don't have to worry about blowing out the previous welds, and or soldering.
G'day fella, that's exactly what I do. High temp stainless-to-stainless I just TIG with stainless filler High temp stainless to copper I TIG with silicon-bronze food grade filler. Copper-to-copper (usually the last stage of anything I do) is low-temp silver-bearing solid wire solder (food/plumbing grade).
Wouldn't affect your product and makes sense to keep the pipes the same size all the way thru. You wouldn't get as many tubes into a 3" as a 4" unless you reduced the size of the cooling tubes. Main thing is that the condenser has the ability to knock down what the kettle/powersource is throwing at it. Happy Distilling!
@@AngryParrotDistillery Should I put the same amount of tubes into the 3 inch, with reduced diameters or put the same diameter as you just fewer tubes. Not sure if it would make a difference. I'm also not sure which would work better to "knock down what the power source throws at it? Thanks!
I shall talk too a radiator shop, because I'm sure they can 'roll' those tubes olnly have too weld the headers in each end first. Then slide the tubes in and then ' compression' roll them.
I bead the tubes on the inside of the baffles nowdays and then peen/roll them on the outside before soldering. Makes a solid mechanical joint prior to solder. Happy Distilling!
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Your videos on shotgun condensers are hands down the best on the internet. Not only are they neat and amazing work but the attention to detail like inlet positioning, thermometer angle and shielding, across your videos is invaluable. I must also mention the relief in hearing someone pronounce “solder” correctly lol.
Thank you sir.
G'day Dark',
Thanks for the kind words, been a bit of a crappy year work-wise, nice to get some encouragement. 😊
Yeah the soder/solder thing hurts my ears too, ... not the end of the world tho' heh.
Happy Distilling!
Beautiful work !
Great video! Thank you for sharing.
Hey you're welcome.
Happy Distilling!
Gorgeous work:-)>
Thanks Bearded! … got there in the end haha.
Yep Silicone Bronze using a Tig welder worked a treat. Gives a neat job too.👍
G'day Mel, … yep - if you have access to one it's a nice option!
Happy Distilling!
i couldn't even afford a pump big enough to run this condenser! massive!
Great Job Garry,
Will try tig with silicone bronze when I build the deflegmator.
How did you get on ?
Do you have paper template for tube lay-out for copper plate? and were those for 1/2 inch diameter copper tubes?
beautiful design. I'm curious, how does a reflux bubble glass compare for end product with this condenser design ?
Can you tell me about the chilling unit you mentioned at the 6 minute mark? I want to buy something similar, but I am not sure what the usual industrial use is, so I've had a hard time knowing where to begin looking. The whole video is great and very informative, by the way. Thanks.
How about doing a video on silicon bronze TIG brazing ? I've tried to do it a number of times and can't get it to work. My welds don't flow very well, they aren't lumpy, but they aren't as smooth as yours either. If I turn up the heat on the torch, I burn through. What might I be doing wrong ?
Great content !
man im so jealous. looks great. hope the birds are doing well
Heya Kev, Thanks!
Picking up reliable silicon bronze brazing has opened a number of doors, … sexy copper sight-glass T's with stainless ferrules are on the list now. :o)
Yep, birds are both doing well thanks.
Have also added a twelve-year old ex-pig-hunting dog (she was a tracker/bailer) to the family, … lovely old girl with a beautiful nature that belies her background.
Hope you and yours are all doing well too my friend!
Yeah, even 20-30x more efficient. You are a smart man.
Thanks! - ex wife would argue otherwise! 🤣
Hi,
Amazing craftsmanship. I believe your videos are some of the best distilling equipment builds on TH-cam. What size kettle do you run with this condenser?
Cheers
Daniel
G'day Daniel,
Thanks for the compliment!
I try my best, sometimes things don't go so well, got a vid I have to edit together soon on a hellishly frustrating commercial job I was working on that didn't go so well to start with.
I've run this on my 200L/6kW kettle running tap temp water and it had no problems.
I'll be running it on my newer 700L kettle soon, -with chilled coolant being pumped thru it there should be no hassle with that either.
Happy Distilling!
What amps do you run with silicon bronze and does it have the same feel and characteristics of 316/304 ss wire or does it flow and weep like solder... thanks... great video... I love learning by someone else's experience..cheers😍😎
Heya Michael,
It does flow to an extent but in quite a viscous fashion than solder.
Sili-bronze beads up much more like a weld than flowing everywhere like a solder. I find it much more controllable.
I use more amperage brazing silicon-bronze than I do with stainless TIG welding but this is usually on account of one of the brazed components being a large chunk of copper that wicks heat away.
You also have less time over target so you are running alot faster.
Brazing 2" stainless ferrule to 2" copper tube would probably be around 60amps.
4" ferrules and copper tube maybe 110-120 amps.
I've had large copper jobs (15kg copper and brass components) where I've had to outsource the sili-bronze work as I ran out of grunt with my 185amp TIG unit.
Happy Distilling.
Angry Parrot Distillery thanks Bro😘😎
Question for you: when you weld the water inlet/outlet fittings on the stainless jacket, how do you fit them up to the tube? Do you drill a larger hole than the diameter of the fitting and pass them partially though or do you contour the fitting to fit the outside curvature of the 4” stainless tube so there’s no gab? If so, how do you contour the fitting? Thanks so much. Awesome work!
G'day fella,
Thanks!
I've done both before.
For the smaller sockets, 1/2" or so I drill a hole the same size as the threaded bore and then curve fit one end of the socket with a file/grinder.
For bigger sockets, 1" , 13/4" and up I tend to drill a hole same OD as the socket .
Two considerations for me are whether I'm pre-assembling the core - in which case I don't want anything occluding the inside of the jacket and/or whether the socket penetrating into the jacket will interfere with the cooling tubes which on bigger condensers with larger 1" + sockets is not usually a problem.
Plus curve fitting a massive heavy bsp socket is time comsuming.
Either way its necessary to get the best fit you can to get a good result.
The better the fit, the better the weld.
Happy Distilling.
Angry Parrot Distillery you’re the man! Thanks!
Hey, great video! What kind of knock-down power did this condenser have as a product condenser?
21.1 GigaWatts!!! (at 88MPH)
But in all seriousness, if a well built ø2¨ x 24¨ condenser can knock down 4500-5000 W of input power, a ø4" x 36" has over 6 times the volume so a proportional amount of cooling power. I'm making a lot of assumptions about internal surface area of the cores of one versus the other and that the relationship is linear (which it's not), but you could probably make the estimate of 30,000 watts of knockdown on the high end....which is nuts! I don't know how the big commercial setups are powered, but 3 x 10,000W is a lot of angry pixies.
Look up "tube rolling " on you tube. Jeff Hammond has a good video. There no welding necessary. They do this a lot with various heat exchangers. Thanks for you video
G'day Beetle,
Will look him up now, ... I did a larger exchanger in copper last year that turned into a freakin nightmare, ... I ended up fabricating out of stainless just to get the client something to start working with definitely need better technique for larger diameter in copper.
Happy Distilling!
Nice job
Thanks fella!
Strangely enough I've been running a 1200mm long 2" diameter gatling condenser for the last year or so and this guy has been gathering dust on the shelf.
Happy Distilling!
Which video has the alternate for back purging with argon ?
Great content.
Can't remember sorry, product is called "Solarflux", is a powder you mix with methylated spirit to form a paste you paint on the back-face of the weld.
Not as pretty or clean as back purging but an ok shielding method.
Hey mate, what flux do you use for copper to stainless & and is it the same flux copper to copper?
Also, which solder are you using? (% of silver?)
G'day Chris,
Pretty sure I silicon bronze TIG brazed the stainless-to-copper in this vid.
I used to use the same general purpose liquid flux for soldering stainless-copper as copper-copper.
For the stainless-copper application it has to have zinc chloride (will be on the label and will probably mention something about being suitable for stainless steel).
Having said that, it is a pain in the butt to copper-stainless solder, the flux burns easily and you inevitably have to clean and restart the odd join - especially larger joins.
Brazing works better and once I got the knack of Silicon bronze TIG brazing thin stainless-to-copper I never went back.
The plumbing/food safe solder I use is only something like 5-10% Ag.
You can get silver brazing sticks that go much higher like prosilver 34T or 45T (34%/45% and cadmium free) but they really need a hotter flame than you'll get outa mapp gas. (OxyAcetylene or similar).
Happy Distilling!
Angry Parrot Distillery
Thanks mate, my brother in law is a commercial plumber, so he’s been roped in to knock up my parts for me. I showed him some of your vids and he wasn’t 100% sure, so we had to ask.
Always look forward to a new vid mate 👍
with a heat exchanger this long you can easily increase the efficiency with a couple of baffle plates
G'day Prof,
Yeah, I have made a few of these commercially now and include partial baffle plates 1/3 and 2/3 of the way along the condenser.
Serves a two-fold benefit;
1) forces the waterflow side-to-side across the jacket.
2) holds the tubes inplace so if the condenser gets moved around and shes a real long one, the thin internal tubes can't wobble/vibrate about (and they will when they get this long).
Happy Distilling.
Not a very experienced welder or anything so don't burn me, but have you tried using a filler rod with a higher melting temp for the copper to copper internals then a lower temp for the stainless to copper so you don't have to worry about blowing out the previous welds, and or soldering.
G'day fella, that's exactly what I do.
High temp stainless-to-stainless I just TIG with stainless filler
High temp stainless to copper I TIG with silicon-bronze food grade filler. Copper-to-copper (usually the last stage of anything I do) is low-temp silver-bearing solid wire solder (food/plumbing grade).
Ah just re-read your post. I weld in the baffles with silicon bronze before soldering the internal tubes.
Pretty much what you were asking I think.
Could you make it out of 3 inch, as my column is 3 inch and I have a 3 inch pipe to make it out of. Would it matter or effect the product?
Wouldn't affect your product and makes sense to keep the pipes the same size all the way thru.
You wouldn't get as many tubes into a 3" as a 4" unless you reduced the size of the cooling tubes.
Main thing is that the condenser has the ability to knock down what the kettle/powersource is throwing at it.
Happy Distilling!
@@AngryParrotDistillery Should I put the same amount of tubes into the 3 inch, with reduced diameters or put the same diameter as you just fewer tubes. Not sure if it would make a difference. I'm also not sure which would work better to "knock down what the power source throws at it? Thanks!
I shall talk too a radiator shop, because I'm sure they can 'roll' those tubes olnly have too weld the headers in each end first. Then slide the tubes in and then ' compression' roll them.
I bead the tubes on the inside of the baffles nowdays and then peen/roll them on the outside before soldering.
Makes a solid mechanical joint prior to solder.
Happy Distilling!
Éljen a szesz