Copper piping

Are there any advantaged to copper piping, other than being able to get it to run pretty much wherever you want and possibly look cool?

I would guess that with all the elbows flow would be reduced. Is it completely unreasonable to use copper piping for a WC rig? I know some people have done it, but are the returns less than those with plastic tubing?

Noise is one issue as you need to clamp down the copper. If you use a tubing bender instead of fittings it will lessen the flow restriction and the use of "Long Radius" fittings is a must. By the time you install all the adapters needed to connect the blocks and other parts you will add quite a bit of restriction.

If I was going to to do hard piping in a loop I would use stainless steel tubing because it would look great. Tubing has all the advantages without the hassles, and loop changes are not a major undertaking.

Not to mention that when you want to remove something you would have to figure a way to "influence" solid pipes to move. I think it would be much more trouble than its worth

I think it is a good idea! copper tubes are as cheap probably cheaper than Tygon Silvers. It can conduct heat so the hot water in the loop can disipate heat in the tubes! People use copper pipes all the time for hot water systems without any problems. The connections they use are much better than barbs and hose clamps we use (considering the amount of pressure that is involved).

If you can fit turn, tap and bend the tubes of copper I say go for it...

There is that soft copper tubing that bends very easily. I'm just worried there would be a problem with corroding since it must be an alloy to be that malleable.

Soft copper won't corrode.

I have thought about doing this many times, but honestly I have yet to find a pipe bender that will easily bend 1/2" copper. Every pipe bender I see won't work for anything above 3/8". And soft copper is still a bear to work with when you are talking about the tight turns that we need without a good bender to keep it from kinking.

I would use small pieces of vinyl tubing to connect the copper to any barbs at both ends. One advantage that I could see is that you wouldn't be putting nearly as much pressure on blocks and their attached components that tightly bent vinyl tubing can.

I think if you can do it it would be great and worth the time, copper will last, (the hot water system in my house has lasted for many years)

Here's a pic of my bong cooled system from March '04.



Notice the silicone tubing going the last 5" from tubing to blocks...that's about absolutely necessary to let the blocks align properly without any lateral stress. If you're not good to the millimeter in your tubing skills, you'd best look to do the same. One imperfection and you'll get high temps or even burned chips due to a bad thermal interface from block to chip.

For info's sake, that's 1/2" bendable refrigeration tubing with 3/8" copper pipe fittings--a perfect match.
Notice on the tubes out the back you'll see that I used brass compression rings to make the tubing into hose barbs for the silicone interface. It's the same on the tubes inside, only with one ring per junction.
The brass rings are also called ferrules, and they are available in a 10 pack at Lowe's/Depot for many different sizes. That's the same way I make barbs for my home-built or re-engineered blocks.

As a bong cooled system, it was running at about 2C above room temp for the cpu, so don't all of you go off about the elbows and T's.
And the 1/4" x 1/8" passages of the NB block made sure that the processor got the flow it needed..

*Almost forgot..I use copper tubing in my current rig, routed behind the motherboard in my custom case.
Just search for "Further" with my username to find my thread and pics.