Used Water Temperature Controllers for Sale

A water temperature controller, called a water thermolator on most plant floors, circulates water through a mold, die, roll or platen and holds it at a setpoint. The cabinet holds a pump, an electric heater, a cooling valve and a probe. Water leaves the unit, picks up or gives off heat in the tool, and comes back. The controller then adds heat or opens cooling until the return matches the number on the display. That closed loop is the whole job. It is not a chiller, and it is not a hose teed off the tower. If you have not decided between water and hot oil, start with the broader thermolator group. The notes below cover water only.

Water units and oil units solve different temperature bands. A water thermolator is the everyday choice up to about 250 F, which covers most commodity resins and a lot of engineering work. A single-zone cabinet feeds one circuit, often one mold half. A dual-zone cabinet runs two temperatures from one frame, which matters when the cavity and the core are supposed to run apart. Direct-injection cooling mixes tower or chiller water into the process loop, so it cools fast and it also imports whatever is in the plant water. Indirect cooling keeps a heat exchanger between the two loops, so rust and treatment chemicals stay out of the mold. Pressurized water circuits can sit closer to boiling without a cloud of steam. When the tool needs to run hotter than water can comfortably hold, the right machine is a hot oil unit, not a larger water heater.

On a molding cell the water temperature controller sits on the floor beside the press, between the chilled-water supply and the mold hoses. The chiller or cooling tower is what removes heat from the building. The controller decides how warm the steel is, and that temperature is often well above the chilled water. Dryers, vacuum loaders and blenders feed the screw. Size the water unit together with the portable chiller that feeds it, and keep hot oil units in mind for the tools that outgrow water. Blow molds and extrusion dies use the same idea: stable metal temperature, short hoses, and a pump that can push through the passages that were actually drilled in the tool.

Heater kilowatts, pump horsepower and supply voltage decide whether a used water temperature controller can run your tool. A 9 kW heater on 460 volts, three phase, is a common press-side package in North American plants. A 230 volt cabinet will not land on a 460 volt cell without a transformer. Nameplate horsepower is not the same as flow through a restricted waterline. Ask what gallons per minute the pump delivers at the pressure your mold actually needs. Hoses, shaft seals and a scaled exchanger are the parts people replace. The cabinet and the pump housing usually outlast them.

Meadoworks offers these water units when they come off molding cells in plant closures, from consignments, and from auctions where a press is sold with the auxiliary that ran beside it. Confirm heater size, pump, voltage and that the circuit is water before you compare two cabinets. Buyers can inspect before they commit, and when a whole cell moves we coordinate rigging and the truck with the rest of the machines instead of treating the cabinet as a loose box.