Capillary block update

Three restarts and untold numbers of .050 drill bits have passed since my last mention of the capillary block. It took a design change or two to get it to the point of almost finished and I thought I'd give you an update.

You may remember these pictures from the "cathar is at it again..." thread:



and



Well, I kept snapping .050 inch bits. The tactile feedback from my 16-1/2 inch drill press was not sensitive enough to feel when it was time to retract and wipe off the particles. Despite three different kinds of drilling/tapping/milling oil and nine different drill speeds, they would seize enough to snap and believe me, it does not take much torque to snap them.

So, I had to increase the holes to .062 inch (1/16 inch) bits with .030 inch spacing. The total volume is about the same as the .050 holes, that being about 50% of the inlet barb. The 5/8 inch barb allowed me to hit all the holes in the new pattern after I reamed it out to 9/16 ID. Even at .062 inch holes, I snapped two bits but was able to retrieve them and keep going. The hardest part was not drilling all the holes so that they lined up, but rather milling the "sink hole" for the inlet barb without the benefit of a mill. Thank goodness the drill press table rotates. So, here's where I'm at so far:



What remains is to face the mating surfaces flat and solder them together to make one block. Then drill the mounting holes and lap it:



This will be my last hurrah of this season. Once the weather gets cold, I'll be back. I will write an article for the front page on experimenting with DIY blocks, when I'm done.

Hoot

Hoot that is incredible

You never cease to amaze me HOOT.

1 word. WOW !

Holy crap Hoot, that is amazing. Great work!

once again.............your patience is god-like!

So how are you going to attach the three section so they
don't leak? It doesn't look like you left much room on the
CPU side for o-rings or gasket material. Also I really look
forward to seeing how you are going to mount this thing.

Looks like you may have come up with a winner. How
we ever going to get Bill to tests stuff again?

I believe its soldered Tecumseh.

Amazing work Hoot! But how does it perform?

very nice man. and yeah, tecumseh. the only way to attach them is soldering(or epoxy but we know Hoot better than that.)

Lookin good man! I thought the main peice was 2x3 but now that I saw some other size comparisons, Im completely amased!

WOW,
Any idea of ~how many man hours you have in that block??? Absolutely amazing!!

Greetings!
It's my first post in this forum and I cant find any words to express my admiration Great work !

Dammmmmm Hoot that's a really awesome looking block! i can't wait to see it's performance! I speak it aloud, You are Da Man!



nice!
J.

The three parts will be soldered together using a higher tensile strength solder than I normally use for tops and barbs. I have some 96/4 Sn/Ag. It's a little bit harder to tin with than the typical 63/37 Sn/Pb stuff. The biggest soldering challenge will be the thin strip between the bottom row of holes and the bottom of the block. I don't want the solder to wick into the holes from capillary action and plug them up. They are the most important holes in the whole affair. I may plug them with some water soluable, heat resistant material until I'm done soldering them.

Hopefully, I'll get it done this holiday weekend, but many neglected chores await me. I'd say including the restarts, the middle part took me 10 hours and each end about 1-2 hours.

Hoot

I think a patent is due here...make some money off of this. (forgive me if this is already an industry standard...i'm not a water cooling guy)

WoW that was only the middle part? When I last saw that (only the middle) I though, yeah, that's small, but not tiny.. now it's TINY!!!

Do you have a picture with it by a coke or something for size comparision?

Great work!

Well, I got most of my "honey-do's" done and found the time to get it put together. Not one of my most picturesque projects, but then I don't run a see-through case anyway. This block is the most restrictive one I have ever done. Compared to my pin block, its like blowing through canvas as opposed to blowing through cotton fabric.

From where I left off, I faced the mating surfaces as best as possible with only a belt sander at my disposal. I then tinned all mating surfaces, like this:


and this:


I also tinned the rims of the barbs and their respective holes in the block segments. Then I aligned and clamped them together and put the torch to 'em. While they were still hot, I seated the barbs and torched them in, adding a little extra solder around the beads for good measure. After cleaning it up, this is what I got:


It took quite a lot of lapping to get the botton flat in the area where the core will sit against it. I did not worry about the rest of the block:


So, I'm almost afraid to test it out, fearing that after such a lot of work, this particular idea will not work out and I'll have done so much for so little. Nevertheless, I'm about to power down and swap out the pin block, but before I do, I'll do a Prime95 run on it for reference.

Results as soon as I get them...

Hoot

I want results sooo badddd!!

dangit! im about to pee my pants from suspense!

Wow, this is great, Hoot, really great. No matter what the
results this is what experimentation is all about. If it turns
out to be too restrictive then we have another data point to
work with. In any case this is the kind of cool block that we
will never see from the commercial world. Let's hope it
beats 'em.

Thats another work of art Hoot

Will you do some sort of gallery with all the blocks you made?
Also why not make a frontpage article for DIY waterblock tests showcasing all your blocks