In a recent Tested video (link), Adam Savage and astronaut Chris Hadfield dress up as 2011: Space Odyssey astronauts for Comic-Con 2015. In the video, they don these water-cooled shirts, aka Liquid Cooling Garment (LCG), through which ice-chilled water is circulated for greater personal comfort in their hot and stuffy suits.
With all the heated jackets out there (that’s a link to our prior coverage), it got me thinking… is there a potential for a cooling jacket? Maybe a cooling vest? And how could it be done? With liquid cooling? Peltier coolers and some kind of thermo-conductive liner thread that’s spaced out similar to the heating elements of heated jackets?
I brainstormed a little bit and then mentally filed the idea away for later. That was a week or two ago.
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This is always a slow time of year for tool news, and so I started tapping into my active cool tool search mode. Makita’s coming out with a new heated vest. Cool, er… hot.
The new Makita heated vest boasts 28 hours of runtime, when used with an 18V 5.0Ah battery pack. It’s not available in the USA (yet?), but looks to be an interesting addition to their very limited heated jacket lineup. I don’t think the heated jacket was ever released here, despite my expectation last year. If it was available here, it doesn’t seem to have been met with much fanfare.
You can read more about the Makita heated vest in their brochure. It can also be powered by Makita 10.8V/12V battery packs, but not the new Makita CXT 12V slide packs.
I kept digging, and found out about a new Makita 18V X2 cordless miter saw. More on that later!
And then came a deeper search, where I found this:
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So… that’s a Makita cordless cooling jacket. A COOLING JACKET!
Is this a new thing? I searched around and spent 10 minutes watching several other cordless fan cooling jacket videos. Each one was more amusing than the last. Apparently these types of jackets have been available in Japan for some time.
A search for more information turned up another tool site’s post from this morning, an Amazon Japan listing, and a couple of other Japan-based retailer product pages. It’s crazy that nobody picked up on this before!
Spec-wise, the cooling jacket’s fan has an airflow of 1.4 m^3 per minute. That’s 49.44 cubic feet per minute, or ~50 CFM.
It looks like there’s a USB charger for attaching your mobile devices to, and it looks like there are 3 or 4 different fan speed/power settings.
The Makita cordless cooling jacket is white, presumably to reflect sunlight to reduce heat, and is meant to be worn over light clothing. Wearing a sweatshirt or other similarly bulky warming layer would defeat its purpose. I learned that from this video, which features an inflating purple jacket.
While a great idea and something I could definitely use at times, I highly doubt that we’ll see these in the USA. What would you do if your colleague showed up to an outdoor jobsite wearing a fan-puffed white jacket in the middle of the summer?
An air conditioned work shirt which works on a similar principle? That could work…
Here are some other unique Makita 18V cordless products: folding bicycle, coffee maker, vacuum pump, oil pulse driver.
Pete
I could see wearing it while welding. But white would get too dirty too quick. Thats about the only place i could see a cooling jacket worn lol
Garden hose
Not to mention all the holes in the forearms, assuming it’s even FR.
Miller has a couple (or had) some cooling stuff for welders.
fred
Kiln Entry Suits and Proximity suits have been available for many years – with and without vortex cooling. The ones that I’ve seen in the past were not self contained – but tethered the wearer to an air hose – that presumably was connected to a clean/dry (hopefully not wet and oily) air source. I was never of a mind to try one out.
fred
I forgot to mention that ice cooling vests and evaporative cooling vests are also available – some via Amazon
http://www.amazon.com/s/?ie=UTF8&keywords=ice+cooling+vest
Dave L.
I sweat like crazy in hot humid weather. Boy could I have used this!
fred
Sweat – the body’s natural cooling mechanism!
If you can get it to quickly evaporate – the heat carried off by the enthalpy change (sometimes called the latent heat of vaporization) does wonders for cooling. This is part of the reason why air flow (e.g. from a fan) helps you cool off.
will
sweat is good though it cools you down, I work outside and don’t sweat and I burn up. I get dehydrated but I overheat so badly from not sweating,oh and it looks like i’m not doing a damn thing lol.
Nathan
I’ve wondered why nobody seems to make a tool battery powered vented jacket – or overlay of some sort.
I mean motorcycle riders have jackets that do similar jobs – hell some even plug into air-conditioning jacks.
I could see having like a helmet or vest that’s high flow vented for comfort under shirts and things. (like one guy said welding for example).
plug in your 20V/18V pack – etc.
Joe
“I’ve wondered why nobody seems to make a tool battery powered vented jacket – or overlay of some sort. “
It is just that people that sweating a lot have not had a taste of this…I have a feeling that if they wear o wear one for a couple of months, they will never look back and the demand will grow high to the point that it becomes the norm.
From what I have seen people trying to cool down is via wearing hats, wet neck towels, or splash water on the head here and there.
Most people that sweat a lot at work would benefit from this since kangaroos just lick their arms to lower their body temperature and have been doing it for years…the elephants use their big ears to cool off.
On a side note, those sound effects are funny in the video. 🙂
Nathan
forgot to add – where I live I would consider one.
I don’t even look at heated jackets – no reason. but a cooling device – absolutely.
Brian
I was surprised to see this and would welcome it! In the central valley of California it is not unusual to have 105 F summer days. We are having a string of 100+ days at the moment with Thursday forecast to be 106 and Friday forecast to be 107. It will only be 104 today. I’ve looked into evaporation cooling jackets but I don’t want to be drenched, that can actually make you hotter and lead to dehydration. Heating jackets I have no use for at all.
Garden hose
Wow! Unlucky you!
Up here in Fresno, we’ve cooled down considerably this week. I do remember a string of 7 days last July that was 110+ every single day. This would’ve been nice.
garrett
Central Texas in summer. Metal pole barn shop with no fan or insulation. Looking like the stay-pufft marshmallow man? No worries – sign me up.
Derek
hahaha, I watched the video, you would look like an ass clown showing up on a job site wearing this.
I would love an air-conditioned jacket…not a loud & puffy fan jacket, and powered by a heavy 18v 5.0 Ah battery.
Milwaukee makes some great looking heated jackets that works with their 12v batteries, it’s to bad they don’t make an A/C jacket (or anyone else for that matter).
Looks like I’ll just have to keep sweating buckets until someone makes something I actually want to buy.
Nathan
I suspect there could be an easily retrofitted liquid cooling vest/jacket rig made up.
actually air conditioning with a compressor and 134C and the like would be alot harder to fix up.
Sudipta chatterjee
I want to buy one cooling robe (covering trunk and limbs) preferably cordless for sultry weather In Kolkata, India . Can one be shipped to Kolkata against online payment /cash on delivery ? would it be useful in humid weather- can anybody guide me?
Rob
Were can i buy this cooling jacket
Stuart
At a Japanese Makita dealer?