In other news, Team Hack-a-Day broke into the top 100 Folding @ Home teams yesterday. Come check us out at http://www.teamhackaday.com

Posted at 11:24 am on Nov 30th, 2005 by grayskies

NO grayskies you did it wrong thats to straight to the point. What you should ahve said was “Man these heat pipes would help my folding at home computer fold for team hackaday.”

Posted at 12:08 pm on Nov 30th, 2005 by bird603568

I just started at a refrigeration company a couple months ago, and since I haven’t taken any classes for it (I’m not out of highschool yet), I’m not always sure how everything works. But this seems like a great project for me to try, especially since I can borrow all the tools I’d need from work, and maybe get some advice on how to do it too. That being said, I’m definitely going to have two pipes because I think one of the reasons it’s not getting great results is that the warm 134a is warming up the cool 134a as it’s coming down. So just figuring out a way to keep everything seperate and going in the same flow would improve things a bit, hopefully there’s just a device that can be placed inside to keep the liquid from going back into the vapor. Or maybe it can be done by bending the pipe. In any case, should be fun.

Posted at 12:32 pm on Nov 30th, 2005 by Jack

oblig. slashdot crosspollination:

IMAGINE A BEOWULF CLUSTER OF THESE FOLDING FOR HACKADAY!!

Posted at 12:55 pm on Nov 30th, 2005 by carpespasm

If you could make one out of glass, that would look cool.

Posted at 3:49 pm on Nov 30th, 2005 by Confused fishcake

Hum, Glass at 85 psi. You can, but I don’t want to be around. BTW, want you go blind from a piece of glass slicing your retina, remember, Joey told you sooo.

-Joey Dale

Posted at 7:33 pm on Nov 30th, 2005 by Joey Dale

The only mistake I could see is that R-12 isn’t illegal, just wickedly expensive.

Posted at 8:52 pm on Nov 30th, 2005 by LIp

Maybe if we take a design consideration of the condenser for a moonshine still and make a “worm” of sorts and have a fan blow across it.

Posted at 9:10 pm on Nov 30th, 2005 by einstienbblo

With this a double heat pipe shoud be easy enough, just add another hole and pipe.

Posted at 10:24 pm on Nov 30th, 2005 by ez

“Hum, Glass at 85 psi. You can, but I don’t want to be around. BTW, want you go blind from a piece of glass slicing your retina, remember, Joey told you sooo.”

Yea but then we’d see some bitching hacks for the blind, which have the added advantage of allowing the sighted to keep our vision on someithingelse while remaining productive with our hands.

Posted at 11:16 pm on Nov 30th, 2005 by nevarmore

jack, its a pipe within a pipe, so the hot is outside (i think) to radiate any heat it might want to, and the inner pipe is the cooled liquid.

http://www.thermacore.com/hpt_animation.htm

would alcohol work?

Posted at 12:30 am on Dec 1st, 2005 by monster

Go to http://www.dairyfarmradio.co.uk and tell every one about it, to make suggestions, email info@dairyfarmradio.co.uk.

Posted at 5:47 am on Dec 1st, 2005 by dfr

Just a side comment; that site is really old but a good starting point for those that are curious

I’ve been working on building my own heatpipes, hoping to offer custom sales on eBay. Using presurized freon/environ is an option, but its a poor one IMHO. My designs have been using alcohol and water mixtures under vacuum, same as the common industry, with a target of 45C holding temperature. A big part of my goal has been to include plastic tubing to make them flexible (and therefore of use to customizing designs).

The *HARDEST* part is figuring out a way to seal the pipe with the contents under vacuum while not spending a ton on valves for each pipe. Without a doubt, most of my cost will go into that component.

Anyone else been seriously looking at home-made heatpipes?

Posted at 9:03 am on Dec 1st, 2005 by Davandron

What I like about this particular design is how it get’s the CPU heat completely outside of the computer case. Ducting can only go do far and more often than not one still ends up trying to cool the CPU with the hot air inside the case.

IMHO, this is the direction more commercial heatpipes should go.

Posted at 11:34 am on Dec 1st, 2005 by ed3

One of my buddies handed me a project for his father’s company to build 10 low power, inexpensive PCs to drive industrial LCD panels. One of the requirements was the cases must be sealed or at least be resistant to getting hosed down. I’ve been looking at fanless motherboards, but they still produce enough heat that I need to make sure it exits the case somehow. So far all the custom heat-pipe solutions I’ve seen will cost a significant amount, more than the mini-itx mobos I plan on using. I’d like to take a crack at creating my own pipes.

Posted at 12:10 pm on Dec 1st, 2005 by dennis

to #11, sealing it off without valves is not a very hard task…

You just need use a piece of capilary tubing between the heat pipe and your vac equipment. One it is filled and evacuated, you take a torch and melt through the capilary tubing. The vacuum from the system sucks the molten tube into the pipe and forms a perfect seal.
BTW, this is how refrigerators are sealed off.

I am not sure how well it would work with plastic, you might end up having to attach a little bit of copper capillary tubing to the plastic to make it seal well enough…

Good Luck!

Posted at 7:53 pm on Dec 1st, 2005 by ...

To #13 Dennis

Serious Suggestion 1: I assume you’re using NEMA enclosures to make sure that you’re sealed. Depending on the internal space and wattage, you can mount some spare heatsinks to the *inside* of the metal enclosure walls with thermal adhesive. With each heatsink fan powered, you will dump quite a bit of heat into the case itself. Its also easy and cheap; and you can build one prototype to test.

Heatsink sources include ebay for OEM style spares, or numerous industrial sources. The aluminum heatsinks used on “1/2 brick solid state relays” are typically very good.

Serious Suggestion 2: consider using laptops with broken monitors as their overall power draw can be very low and they are already small.

Posted at 8:25 pm on Dec 1st, 2005 by Davandron

I call BS. Someone didn’t sanity check his graphs.

Why is the “cold side” DECREASING in temp as the hot side INCREASES? That heat has to dissipate somewhere, it should increase roughly at the same rate as the hot side, minues a little bit of heat due loss of efficiency.

Posted at 11:22 pm on Dec 1st, 2005 by acidrain

I have built refrigerators and have never heard of melting a piece of cap tube to seal them. Frankly that doesn’t make any sense at all to me. After any refrigeration system is complete it is evacuated to the highest vacuum one can attain. Then it is usually filled with nitrogen for leak testing. After leak testing it is common to again achieve a high state of vacuum and then to fill the unit with freon through a shrader valve. The shrader valve stays in place forever. The unit is then run tested and leak tested again and then shipped. As for cap tubes one problem with them is that when they are installed solder easily flows and clogs them. This can set the stage for an explosion if the unit is charged and run with a clog in place.

Posted at 3:28 pm on May 10th, 2006 by jim sadler

What I would like to know is if I place a bundle of heat pipes that are capped with a schroeder valve and have a refrigerant injected can I reduce the temperature of the medea surrounding this bundle if
for an example I use an 8′ high bundle which has a
pvc pipe housing and sink it in the ground?

Posted at 11:45 am on Aug 21st, 2007 by Bob Barrett

All I HAVE TO SAY IS YOU ARE ALL WRONG. I HAVE BEEN BUILDING HEAT TRANSFER DEVICES INCLUDING HEAT PIPES FOR THE LAST 18 YEARS FOR THERMACORE INC. AND YOU ARE NOT EVEN CLOSE. YOU CANNOT MAKE A PLASTIC HEAT PIPE BECAUSE PLASTIC IS PERMEABLE ANS THE PIPE WILL EVENTUALLY LOOSE IT VACUME NOT TO MENTION THAT IT WOULD HAVE CONTAMINENTS THAT OFF GAS MAKING YOUR PIPE USELESS. I WILL BE WRITING A DIY ON A BASIC 1/4 OD PIPE. FEEL FREE TO E-MAIL ME IF YOU HAVE ANY QUESTIONS.

Posted at 11:03 pm on Sep 18th, 2008 by JON S. HUSS