water cooling

I really need to cool my little pulse generator.

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Plus a big blue paint bucket from Loews half full of water, some plastic tubing also from Loews, and a bunch of water bottles and cold-packs cycled through the freezer downstairs. I drop a couple frozen things into the bucket when the water starts to get warm.

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Amazon rocks. This was pretty easy.

I had to get all the air out of the tubes to get the downhill syphon going, or that tiny pump would only make a trickle.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
picosecond timing   precision measurement  
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John Larkin
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And the air diffuses back in. Our millidegree Peltier-based thermostat started off with circulating water, but a service call every six months or so easily justified the switch to a heat pipe.

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Bill Sloman, Sydney
Reply to
bill.sloman

Does your lab bench always look that neat?

George H.

Reply to
George Herold

Only when I take pictures.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

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John Larkin

Those water blocks work well, I'm using ~4 of them strategically mounted around this aluminum enclosure about 10" x 10" x 5" to cool a hot processor! a small pump about the same height as the enclosure is mounted externally.

I had to "machine" the right-angle connectors out of the original straight-up brass fittings and some additional brass refrigerant fittings from Home Depot with a Dremel and solder - regular 60/40 electronics solder and a maxed-out iron to 850 F works great for soldering small brass parts like that.

It's a tight fit but the (custom) PSU, RAM, and drive also fit neatly inside.

Whoops the top right screw on the processor bracket looks wonky i'll have to fix that. The dpak buck converter MOSFETs at the front get pretty hot to touch during operation too maybe I'll thermal epoxy some small copper radiators to them as well.

Reply to
bitrex

What's interesting is that I can buy an aluminum cold plate from Amazon for around a tenth of the price from Aavid or Wakefield or McMaster. It's like heat sinks: the worst place to get a heat sink is from a heat sink company.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
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John Larkin

OH, that's a big relief. My bench looks way more like Jim Williams' bench, and I NEVER take pictures of it. Too embarrassing!

Jon

Reply to
Jon Elson

Well, if you need a finned extrusion, there are only a few companies that make that specialty item. However, if you just want a block of aluminum, then there are many more places that handle bulk metal, and rolled aluminum is a better material than extruded, anyway.

Jon

Reply to
Jon Elson

I couldn't work at a Williams or Pease level of chaos, on paper or on the bench. I stop now and then to get physically and mentally reorganized.

Beautiful circuits just work better.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
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John Larkin

I'll show you mine, if you show me yours.

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It's been worse.

George H.

Reply to
George Herold

Looks fine to me.

The silliest thing about some of those late 1990s Star Trek programs where like, the crew was trying to find their way home over years and years was that the ship always looked brand-spanking new every episode. That thing should be beat to hell after years in space without being serviced, even with some kind of sci-fi micro meteorite shield or whateever

Reply to
bitrex

It's...why it is real nice I can't argue

Reply to
bitrex

You could probably sell those to rap guys to wear around their necks on a chain or something after you're through as a value-add income stream

Reply to
bitrex

For my IF3602s I have bought some TO-5 coolers from Aavid in spite of their shocking price tag. They looked sooo precise..

Bob Pease used a cylinder head of one of his air-cooled beetles.

A customer of mine did water cooling for their mixed signal wafer testers. A 4096 channel system dissipated 50 KW from less than a cubic meter. They were thinking that it should be easy to find a solution for a cooler in the hometown of DB-Mercedes. That proved to be wrong. Long-term corrosion from dissimilar metals / alloys; the need for plastic hoses and water connectors since they had to be able to change cooled boards; Chips on the boards were nekkid and made direct thermal

warmer & performance is not satisfying, cooler & the boards would collect dew depending on weather. That does not go well with uncased chips.

It also turned out that plastic had to be completely opaque. Every little bit of light that makes it into the water will ensure that there is life in the water after a year. They found no poison that they could add to the water to stop that.

cheers, Gerhard

Reply to
Gerhard Hoffmann

I used to drive past his house now and then. The front yard and most of the street was covered with various rusting Beetles and Microbusses.

I have a TO-247 SiC fet that I really want to keep cool. Ideal would be cold water flowing directly across the metal bottom of the package.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 
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John Larkin

I drove a late 70s Superbeetle at one point, a car from before my time. It's madness, how did anyone ever drive those on the open highway? Felt like some kind of diabolical contraption from the 1920s. Scary.

One of my father's good friends was killed in a VW Microbus collision in the late 70s sometime, you're just right up front with nothing but the windscreen to "protect" you.

Reply to
bitrex

If it works , do not change it.

But if you need to do this again some time try to put the bucket higher tha n the electronics that need the cooling. The warm water will rise and coo ler water from the bucket will sink. You might be able to get by without a pump.

About 25 years ago I made a cooling block out of some scrap copper flashing for a CPU. The water reservoir was a big peanut jar about a foot higher t han the water block. Did not use a pump and it was good for at least a ho ur. It was silent. Of course, CPU's did not put out a lot of heat 25 year s ago.

Dan

Reply to
dcaster

Pease died in a Beetle.

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John Larkin         Highland Technology, Inc 

lunatic fringe electronics
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John Larkin

You could always do a Cray and put the thing inside a giant heat pipe.

NT

Reply to
tabbypurr

Heat pipes don't do much below the boiling temperature of the transport liquid. I you want it really cold, liquid cooling may be better. The amount of total energy transport capacity will be smaller, however.

regards, Gerhard

Reply to
Gerhard Hoffmann

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