Ludlow Cooling System

[Dave Hughes]

I've recently been contacted by Donald Stott, with this question about the Ludlow Model M - My money's on water, but does anyone know for sure?

Here's what Donald asked:

I am a volunteer at the Bradford Industrial Museum's Printing Gallery and we have acquired a Model M Ludlow caster with a refrigerated cooling unit,
We are trying to find out what coolant was used. We believe it could have been water, but not being able to contact the donor to find out we are askiing around.
Can anyone help.

[Mechanic]

Water is correct Dave, distilled is recommended. The URL below is for the instruction manual for the model M Ludlow. It can be read online or down loaded. Item 6 under assembly refers to the water.

I seem to recall adding soluble oil to the water, but I could be wrong, It is over 50 years since I worked on a Ludlow

http://www.archive.org/details/LudlowTypographModelMManual

[Dave Hughes]

And, of course, not forgetting there's plenty of Ludlow documents in the Metal Type Library.

[jhenry]

The Model M machine did use water with a soluable oil in it to help prevent corrosion. I have used water pump additive as a substitute. It is available at automotive supply stores.

[Dave Hughes]

Thanks for your input John, I'm moving this topic to "Solved Problems" now,

[Autospacer]

I realise this has been solved, but I would like to confirm/inform that we used soluble oil, the same as engineers use for cooler-lubricants on lathes, etc, in the recent restoration of our Model M Ludlow at our museum. This coolant-oil mixture was recommended by a retired Linotype mechanic friend. I can't recall the exact mix, but it was sufficient to leave the mix with the typical white milky look.

[WarnerDit]

Im not sure what you mean by a breather system but looking at the parts diagram for the cooling system it appears to be self bleeding.

[John Cornelisse]

I use a separate cooling system stemming from a scraped ludlow-machine to pump the water around for two Monotype composition casters.

Here I added a few liters of cooling fluid used in motorcars to prevent freezing. This limits also possible corrosion in the systems.