rjent wroteHobbyman2 wroteJMO thinking out loud here , in the radio world heat sinks and fans, and some times both are used to transfer heat from the finals , just wondering if there would be any practicality to mounting the boards to the bottom interior and adding a external heat sink on the external bottom of the headstock , might not need a fan ? might not be worth the design effort .
The problem is that every square inch of space is taken up. They really struggled getting it all in there and there is only one place for the motor and power supply to go (this is coming from the head engineer Jim McCann). If they could have redesigned the headstock, I don't think this problem would be as severe or even a problem, but it is what it is. It is all well and good about the concern of drawing dust into the headstock, but the real fact remains that it does run hot, it has no true ventilation so it is a design flaw. A flaw that seemingly they are not going to address. I am going to try (in time, as I am busy right now) to work up a ventilation system.
One thought is to draw air through the access port like the OP has had success with, but have a filter of some kind on the PTO grill (just a thought).
The headstock is pretty easy to work on and quite easy to blow/vacuum out. My opinion is something is better than nothing. I worked with high tech equipment for 40 years. Heat kills electronics ....
JMHO
I’ve designed power electronics for CNC machines, industrial applications, and heavy vehicles, and I agree with all the points made thus far in this thread. On the temperature issue, I’ve designed electronics for reliable operation in 100C (212F) ambient temperatures — you just have to specify the right components and do the component-life analysis carefully. If designed with relatively inexpensive automotive-grade components, if you can touch it without burning your fingers, it’s probably cool enough. It’s quite possible, but by no means certain, that Nova has the over-temperature alarm threshold set low enough that component life will not be unduly affected.
On the other hand, not being able to run a PowerPro continuously for normal woodworking functions strikes me as a definite design shortcoming.
Forced-air cooling is usually one of the easiest and cheapest ways to dissipate heat. But we all know that dust is a problem in the PowerPro headstock, so any forced-air solution that either blows or sucks more dusty ambient air into the headstock is likely to cause more problems than it solves. You can buy snap-on air filters for cooling fans, which would be a big help, but now you’ve introduced a filter-cleaning maintenance issue.
If I was bound and determined to cool a PowerPro, but didn’t want to get into significant redesign, here’s what I’d do.
1. Put an air-hose adapter on the headstock, just like the OP is doing.
2. Get a small wet/dry vac, and install a HEPA cannister filter in it. Also install a dust bag in the vac, so that the HEPA filter won’t get dirty for a long, long time.
3. Run a clean air hose from the
exhaust port of the vac to the PP headstock.
Now you are maintaining positive pressure inside the headstock with clean filtered air, so
no outside dust is going to get in. The airflow volume through the headstock depends on how leaky it is, but the OP’s experiment indicates that it’s enough to be helpful.
One caveat — if the headstock is sealed up too tightly, airflow will be low, and that vac will start to act like an airstream preheater. So some testing is needed.
