Heatpipe commissions?

I have been reading a fair bit lately on heat pipe theory and design, im no closer to figureing out buildin my own pipe, but i then got to thinking... why bother... most of the applications i need a heatpipe for are in gpu cooling, a buff *** cpu cooler heatsink is more than sufficiant.

I have a current project for my radeon 9800 that i will be able to build when i go back to victoria. im going to buy a zalman vga heatpipe cooler and rape it for its heat pipe. I havent designed the copper heatsinks yet, but they will be somwhat reminisant of the radeon 9700 cooler, just sporting 60 mm fans. the principle i have is to have the heatsink on the gpu side sufficiant enough to cool the card during stock operation, but when i oc it, and it generates more heat, the heat pipe would kick in and exchange some of the heat to the other heatsink on the other side of the card, which will be cooler, doing less work. both heatsinks would be actively cooled with 60 mm fans.
its a speculation project, but the idea is to have the fans running at low noise mode. since i cant make my own heat pipes easily, the zalman for $50 is an ok alternative. I was going to solder it to two heatsinks using that solder weld from radio shack.

now, while i have some attention, i want to ask.. are there any thermal design companies that will make heat pipes and sell just the pipes themselves? companies like shuttle or thermalright might make them themsevles, but i think its more likely that they commision out another company to make those higher tech parts and then sell them. is it possible to get pipes made to spec comercially?
kind of curious, if this works out, its a long way toward the gpu cooler i need to build to keep a radeon 9800 happy in a shuttle case.

I think this may interset you.Check it out.THE FANMAN

HEAT PIPE LINK

sweet man XD.
this is a wip of an idea i got. kinda based on the 9800 xt cooler, fan wise

I wanted somthing like this on my primary side, and a larger, still active heatsink on the passive side. the heatpipe is meant to work as support for the primary cooler.

I'm not sure about all of this...

but thinking..solder is electrically conductive, but is it thermally conductive? if not then you'd get REALLY bad performance because the heat would not leave the heatpipe and just heat up..

And I don't think that it is, since whenever my solder gets hot it plops into a ball and rolls.. ;-)

Valk, you into 3D developing things?

looks nice, but please explain a bit more on how you were planning to build it :/

solder is thermaly conductive. its a large percentage tina dn some silver. im sure that normal solder is better than solder weld, but trying to solder fins to a base without elaborate jiggs would be a pain in the arse to do. thermalright uses a solder fins to base meathod, and im pretty sure zalman would solder their sheets together, not just bolt them.

as for construction, my first attempt to get this to work wont look as nice. this is a single slot primary cooler design that would allow the card to fit in a fully loaded system. the heatpipe is a support unit that is only really there for when the primary cooler aspect reaches 50º+ the heatsink on the other side of the card will be significantly cooler as it will be actively cooled as well, so the heatpipe would ballance heat transfer to both heatsinks, increasing cooling capacity in high load. I want to design somthing ergonomic though, not just stupid overkill. im working up to a shuttle concept cooler that will be just a heatpipe. i consider this to be a hybrid cooler.
the cooler on the other side of the card looks similar, but its a lot bigger due to zero obstructions. .

they don't use solder to stick to peices of metal together, you just stick the two peices together with some form of a welder.

hmm. i think i might just take two sk6's and drill out a hole in their bases to support the heatpipe...

and becareful about soldering on the heatpipes, or doign anything to make them too hot tothe melting point..because there is a gas in there I beleive, might not want to breath that, and also once its out, the heatpipe is ruined.

With heatpipes the copper would be VERY hard to melt...copper takes alot to melt beleive me. Anyways, what you need to worry about is the pressure built up in the heatpipes if you are soldering. The heatpipes are actually under quite a bit of NEGATIVE pressure which is how they get water/ammonia etc to boil at such low temps. Heatpipes usually have a certain temp limit before they crack then the negative pressure is lost and it doesnt work anymore. You could probably use some really low temp solder or maybe artic alumina epoxy or some type of epoxy that is thermally conductive.

I can melt copper easy..

in school they melt all forms of currency...although they arn't too smart and TRY to melt bills..*shakes head*

Foxi3a Pennys are filled with zinc that melts at a low temp

Placing a heatpipe in the base of an sk 6 without the use of solder to keep it in place would be very difficult to say the least. thermal epoxy might work ok but solder would transfer heat a lot better. If i was forced to go that route, i might make my own contact plate for the gpu and maching down the sk6's base, then i could just use arctic silver and some screws to hold it all together. that is pretty much how the zalman pipe works, I just wonder how much of a performence decrease that would boast.

That is unless you are unlucky enough to try and melt a wheat penny that is copper...they are old and worth alot more than normal pennies. The new pennies melt at a much lower temp/ mostly zinc and some other lightweight metal alloy make up pennies nowdays. Not saying you couldnt melt copper just...you wernt melting copper before hand really.

I've studied welding for almost two years and I recomend you do not try to weld the the heatpipe or any fins together. This takes alot of practice and with copper some inert shielding gas as well as a GMAW welder. It can also be doen using an oxy-acelytene system but it's more difficult. I suggest if you need to join pieces of copper together you use the sodering method commonly employed by plummers.

Good luck.

I never said anything about wanting to weld anything. of course that would melt my heatpipe. that would take it out back and mollest it horribly. What i wanted to do, was to drill out a hole in the base of a heatsink such as a sk6 that is 5 mm in diamerter, I would rough up the copper heatpipe a little to get to solder well, and then apply some solder weld. it looks like thermalpaste when it goes on.. slide it into the hole i drilled out then apply heat to the base so it melts the SOLDER weld and solders the two peices together. dolder melts at a much lower temperture than copper and i dont belive i will melt the heatpipe evaporator end. of course, if this does not work, i can always mill down the base of the heatsink, and build a base block to mount the heat pipe traditionally. but, if im going to do that, i might as well just take the thermaltake or zalman heatpipes, use them stock and blow big fans at them. the point is to try and keep the unit mostly self contained in single slot design. so i want a small heatsink on the primary side that cools alright, this could even be passive, and i want a mammoth heatsink on the active side with a 60-80 mm fan cooling it. solder would be the most efficaint way to exchange heat from the base block to the heatpipe, and back to the other heatsink, but i guess some as3 would do the job too, ne? i need some tools to experiment first off. I might have to just bolt a sk6+ to a copper plate and sandwich my stuff. it would work better than the zalman and thermaltake. but if im going to do that, i might as well throw out my plans to keep it single slot.

Design is hell,you'll get it figured out.Fun part is when you apply it and it works.It takes time to make fine wine. THE FANMAN

right now, design is the easy part. i dont have any tools to do elaborate work. i cannot mill anything and even making holes is hard ha ha. my first oc cooling sollution for this thing will be an sk6+ modded. but ill have to get someone else to drill the holes. being poor sucks ***....

Valk, PLEASE use paragraphs.

I'd use a mig welder(but I know almost nothing about welding)..

I use the oxy/ace for almost everything..lol

and yes, I can melt copper, very easily..my torch runs about about 3,000*C

Sorry Valk. For some reason I thought you were attempting to weld some fins onto the base.

Your idea of drilling a hole into the base and then inserting a heat tube using that solder-paste stuff sounds like a really excellent idea. I have a few suggestions though.

*Make sure the solder-paste has a good thermal conductivity compared to regular old solder.

*If regular solder has a higher thermal conductivity you can apply it in a similar manner. This technquie (spelling?) is often used in brazing and is called tinning, which is no relation to metal as far as I know. You basicly melt a thin layer of braze or solder over your heatpipe and then let it cool. You'd then slide it into the hole in the base and heat the base. Solder-paste will probably be your best bet.


*Yes, the solder will melt before the copper.
http://www.cerrocu.com/cda/figure8.html

*Thermal Conductivity of Solder
http://students.washington.edu/alysonsm/thermal conductivity.htm

I think this will work really well as long as you take care to use the correct type of solder with the best thermal conductivity.

A quick question. From your 3d model it looks like the heatpipe just dead ends.
Is that how it's supposed to work, or does it goto a heatsink?
and, foxie.
a GMAW (Gas Metal Arc Welder) welder is a mig welder...