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DICE pot design help

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Lochekey

Senior Pink Member
Joined
Sep 13, 2015
So I am thinking of trying to build a dice pot since I have the ability to have parts made (and because I am a cheap SOB). I was hoping for some input on my first design, I've included some different screenshots of the basic design below. My plan is to take a piece of aluminum round stock and turn it to an O.D. of about 3" and then bore the center out to an depth of 10.5" and leave a 1/8" side wall. The bottom will then have a 60 degree taper of 3/4" of an inch leaving a bottom mounting area of 1.5" in diameter. I am then thinking of boring a center hole of 3/4" inch and pressing a 10 inch long copper rod up through the core.I need to do some more detailing on this and make sure it will work but wanted some input before I made it too far. thanks.

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core exposed.PNG
side.PNG
side cutaway.PNG
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You will want a thicker sidewall and a lot more mass and copper towards the bottom in order to help hold temps down. You will also want multiple holes to get down closer to the source of heat.... but you need to be careful, too little mass down there causes wildly fluctuating temps and inability to hold cold... its a balancing act. My suggestion is to look at other designs and mimic as best you can. Otherwise, it would be just cheaper to buy one than to have to try again.
 
Thanks for the input I may have to look in to sourcing some material for a different design. I went with this design primarily because I have the material lying around. Ill have to see what it will cost to source some different material and weigh that against the cost of just buying one. Most of the units I have found readily online are going for about 230 USD so if I get close to that cost in materials it will not make sense.
 
Also Lochekey remember when you drop in all that DICE with the Acetone you will get shrinkage on the 2 different metals and they will separate causing a leak. That is unless you use a physical bond like JB weld(?).
 
Quick things I would recommend - a bit thicker sidewalls (but you don't need to go crazy on thickness) & a thick, copper, base base drilled out with several holes for increased surface area. See my pics in this post and this post for a moderately inexpensive design.

I didn't have a problem of leaking where the pot joined, but it was a tight fit. Pretty sure EarthDog has that pot now, unless he got rid of it. It was dubbed "giraffe pot" by xoke. :)
 
Giraffe pot still lives... :)

@Lochekey
Perhaps something like this...
The copper base would weigh a little under 7¾ lbs before machining. I can't get an exact measure as Sketchup doesn't allow for that and I don't have Solidworks installed on this machine at the moment, but my estimate is that it would come out between 5 and 6 lbs after machining. The copper stock bar would cost you about $110.
The Alu extension would not add much in terms of mass (I'd say about 1 lb) or cost (something around the $50 - $60 range).
If you look for a used Koolance V2 pot and are lucky to find someone selling one; you may get it for about $100.
DIY way would be more expensive for sure; unless you were budgeting for something like a der8auer Beast pot (that one is about 500 €).


bored.jpg
 
Im away from home this weekend and posting from my phone so please bear with me.

Blaylock - my plan to deal with the different expansion rates of the metal was to machine the inner plug slightly larger than the whole. I would then freeze the entire assembaly to shrink it and use a press to put it together. This should form a pretty good interference fit. If it leaked after that i would probably braze the joint as well.

hokiealumnus- i actually have seen those posts in my research andconsidered something similar but did not have the stock on hand to replicate it.

Seebs - i have the aluminum stock on hand for a similar design. I may be able to source the copper pretty cheap as scrap from some of the local machine shops.

Everyone - i am not against buying used i have just not found a good deal on one yet. When i get home in a few days i will dig through my scrap pile and see what i can find. If nothing else this has been a good excuse to play with solid works. To bad i dont have a good mold because i have about 50 pound of small scrap copper pieces i could melt/cast/machine into a pot.
 
1. You won't braze coopper with alluminium.

2. Basing on shrinkage when connecting two different metals is not a good idea. Alluminium has two times bigger expansion rate than copper. Remember that, you might use this pot in -70C or -196C temperature. It may not leak, when you fill it with water, but it may start leaking, when you fill it with nitrogen and alluminium part will became smaller than copper, even if it was originally bigger.
 
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