SPI SteadiCool™ Plus Water Chillers and Recirculators

Introduction:

SPI Supplies offers a complete line of water chillers and water recirculators. The products described on this page have been designed and engineering for electron microscope applications and any other applications requiring precision cooling and temperature control.

For electron microscope applications and those who have been around electron microscopes for a long time, you might remember in the "old" days when there were two distinct "lines" of water chillers, one with less sensitive temperature control for SEMs and another, with tighter temperature control, namely ± 0.1C° for TEM applications. Because of advances in chiller technology, SPI now offers only one line of chillers, ones that are built to the "TEM standard" of ± 0.1C°. In real terms, we offer a far superior chiller for a lower price today than we did ten years ago.

A word about prices:

Simply put, you will find our prices to be lower than competitive chillers with similar specifications and this is simply because we are not part of some giant corporation with giant corporation overheads and distribution channels. With the SPI SteadiCool chillers, you buy direct, from the manufacturer, and not after the product has gone through multiple layers of distribution.

But there are chillers available at prices lower than ours. However, you must be sure to take a closer look at what you would be getting: Often times, a cheaper unit uses Fiberglas insulation instead of the more expensive but superior special refrigeration quality foam insulation. Or you will see plastic piping with plastic welds instead of the one piece molded seamless reservoir found in the SteadiCool units. Or you can often times see simple hose clamps being used instead of the much more reliable seals in the fittings in the plumbing part of the system. We have seen lower cost systems that do not have a protective electrical box around the electrical components, which means moisture can more easily get into the electrical components and result is premature failures. The "open" electronics presents a safety issue when the unit it being serviced. And yet other low cost units do not have the provision to put a refrigeration pressure gage to perform routine service. Such systems are not field serviceable as would be the case for the SteadiCool systems. To service these lower cost units, one would have to figure out how to put on an access port to measure refrigeration pressure to diagnose the refrigeration system to see what failed. This is the reason why many of the lower cost systems are thought to be "non-serviceable" and to be "throwaways".

A word about service:

The first chillers for electron microscopes produced by SPI Supplies go back to 1979 when we were asked to supply five chillers to a Middle Eastern country to be installed to AMRAY SEMs. The environmental challenges were daunting, laboratories that were not air conditioned much of the time (even though summer temperatures could exceed 120°F (49°C), and if that was not enough, there was sand and dust everywhere! Only the SPI chillers could meet the specifications for this kind of installation. And as recently as 2006, at least some of these chillers were still in operation! Now the point is not to suggest that SPI would guarantee a chiller would work for you in this kind of environment, but only to make the point that we have a history of making the world's most ruggest chillers. They seem to go on and on and on and give years and years of reliable performance.

Regulatory compliance:

The entire line of SteadiCool water chillers/recirculators is CE certified and RoHS compliant.