making a radiator

[The Overclocker]

i am making a radiator, it will either use mircobore copper tubing (the bendy stuff) of normal 15mm copper piping with joints. what i want to know is should i make fins out of foil for this or just leave it?

[Random Nonsense]

if you use enough of the microbore stuff, it shouldnt need fins, fins are hard to attach... I gott know though, how are you gonna get the bigger pipes for water going into the rad down to a size that will go through the microbore stuff?

i was thinking a tank on the end and the pipes just stick into it... go back and forth a couple times, then empty into a tank on the other end... that sound about right?

[JaY_III]

you may want to look into buying a radiator for a car... ok a truck, i think older Ford F-serries have copper radiators. this will be alot simpe to get working and may cost less....

But if your really want to make one... just tell us how it went

[bdf24]

I thought about constructing my own cooling cube. Would get the copper from the hardware store. As far as the fins I can get very thin sheets of aluminum at work. I'm a shear operator and cutt steal all day. I could cutt it to size. Drill holes so the copper tubing fit tightly thru it. Then use some Artctic Silver Epoxy to put it all together.

Problem is Just dont have the time right now.

[Rob Cork]

Sounds pretty ambitious - good luck with the project! If you manage to do it, let us all know how it performs :)

[AMDGuy]

Interesting. Let us know how it goes.

[Random Nonsense]

is it a case of you cant find a suitable radiator/heater core at a scrap yard? if you like i live quiet close to the biggest car scrap yard in the country.... i should be able to grab a heater core or radiator no probs for u. could send it by post, but thats expensive... i may be going up your way soonish though...

[The Overclocker]

Originally posted by Random Nonsense
is it a case of you cant find a suitable radiator/heater core at a scrap yard? if you like i live quiet close to the biggest car scrap yard in the country.... i should be able to grab a heater core or radiator no probs for u. could send it by post, but thats expensive... i may be going up your way soonish though...
thanks for the offer but my dad wont let me use a car radiator, something to do with him thinking that it will smell. that is what led me to this idea. I have now finished my ideas, i will use microbore copper tubing to make a standard radiator, then cover the copper tubing with thermal paste (cheap stuff, i am not going to waste artic silver) and weave copper wire in between the microbore pipes. these should act as fins

[Random Nonsense]

ok, cant see how it could smell though.... well my dad doesnt understand why i want to watercool my PC..... or how i need 2 PSU's he seems to think a CPU sucks about 2 watts of power lol..

let me know how the radiator works out... i'll be getting a DD cooling cube for my birhtday....

[Erode]

Here, near my town, is a workshop that produces radiator using a particular process covered by a patent.
They dont use fins. Instead they cut many many small chips on the surface of the copper tubes, then ply them and build the radiator itself.
This way you have a great surface (which is one of the most important factors for a radiator) and no contact resistance (which is always there if you join fins and tubes).
I understand that it's hard to do this at home, but it's always an idea...

[Ridenow]

On the home page under water cooling I think there is an article by a guy who made a rad like what you are talking about.

[Erode]

I can't find it, can you please tell me the title?

[Erode]

Well, maybe I found it! Is it "DiY radiator"?
If it is, then it's totally different from the design I talk about.
He punched holes on alluminium foils and threaded it on the copper tube, but this gives a bad contact resistance since it's not welded, nor inserted by force (zero interference) and so the heat can't flow efficaciously from copper to alluminium.
I was talking about "scalping" the copper pipe itself (sorry for the bad pic). You can obtain a pipe covered with copper chips and the continiuty inside the material gives the best heat conductivity possible.

[The Overclocker]

thanks for the ideas, i have not made it yet but might tomorrow, scalping the tube sounds like a good idea, as it does the same function as a heatsink but with less thermal interferance (thermal paste and such) but sounds quite hard to do without good tools (the only things i can think of is a cutting disk or a chisel)

[Patchmaster]

I wouldn't mess with the thermal paste on the microtubing. In this situation you can easily make up in quantity what you lack in efficiency. Just weave the copper wire through your tubing matrix. As long as you get reasonable surface contact with the tubing you should be fine. If you put thermal paste on the tubing you'll just end up with a dust magnet. And all the dust will eventually reduce the radiation directly from the tubing. (Not to mention the mess of trying to weave copper wire through a maze of silicone zinc oxide-coated tubing. Yeech!)

[The Overclocker]

Originally posted by Patchmaster
I wouldn't mess with the thermal paste on the microtubing. In this situation you can easily make up in quantity what you lack in efficiency. Just weave the copper wire through your tubing matrix. As long as you get reasonable surface contact with the tubing you should be fine. If you put thermal paste on the tubing you'll just end up with a dust magnet. And all the dust will eventually reduce the radiation directly from the tubing. (Not to mention the mess of trying to weave copper wire through a maze of silicone zinc oxide-coated tubing. Yeech!)
yeh, i have been thinking the same thing. i will leave the theraml paste and use nothing unless i can make it set.