Making a radiator

OK, before you say it, maybe this is a step too far. Maybe not though. I've been trying to get hold of an innovatek dual 120mm fan radiator for ages. I want the radiator for a specific reason(s). It's thin.
It has two 120mm fans.
It would mount nicely on the side of my system, so I can at last have a portable computer again...
So, I thought, what's involved in making a radiator? I did think about this a while back, and even got as far as buying copper sheet for the rad fins. It's going to be all copper by the way. What my original idea was to do, was drill 10mm holes in the sheets of copper, and put pipes through, then add u joints to the pipe ends, then solder the kaboodle together. There is a much simpler way to make a radiator though...
Say you want a dual 120mm fan rad, and only an inch or so tall (I do) If you get 3/4 inch copper pipe, and flatten it out to 2mm height in a vice - you can get a strip of2mm thick plastic sheet so the pipe flattens nicely instead of going into a figure 8 cross section if you try this. If you make the pipe 250mm long, then you can make up 12 of these "flat pipes" 250mm long to fit in your radiator, placing the pipes every 10mm, to get your required width.
So, pipes done - now connecting them up. Get 1" diameter copper pipe - that 3/4" flattened out to about an inch - and saw sections out of it, halfway through the pipe, every 10mm for the spacing. Do this for both sides end sections, and dry fit the pipes into the end sections just to test the fit. You might want to saw / cut semi-circular recesses out of your flat pipes so the flow isn't too impeded. OK, you have what looks like a ladder stretched sideways now.
Now for the performance adding touch... Get thin copper sheet, and I mean 1/64" kind of thin. Thin enough to flex, fold, bend and possibly cut with an old pair of scissors. You now need to cut the copper sheet into inch wide strips, and fold it in a zig-zag every 10mm. (Remember, your flat pipes were placed every 10mm - there's going to be about 7 - 8mm between them) Then you stretch the zig-zag copper into shallow V's / W's or however you want to visualize it. These then go between the flat pipes, compressed so that each point of the V / W's is in contact with the flat pipes. After you fill the spaces with your zig-zag copper sheet, flux it all up and solder away. Mounting tags / lugs and fittings in the end sections should be fairly simple. A copper end cap with a hole drilled in for your W/C pipes, and a straight end cap for your other end of the end section.
Et voila - one radiator. If you don't make this, don't worry, I'm going to, so I'll let you know how it goes. And of course, I'll post lots of nice pics

Seems like a lot of trouble to me. I think soldering the fins is gonna be more difficult than you imagine (soldering one joint will cause the previous one to come undone..) Anyway good luck if you attempt it. Also that rad you want is listed as In Stock HERE.

peace.
unloaded

Thanks UnLoadeD, I've been looking for that everywhere, but have not found one in stock, either that, or they only had the single fan version. Well, in true "murphy's law" style, I went and bought a load of copper sheet today, before reading this post, so I'm going to make one for the hell of it. I've gone for heavier guage copper than I was going to originally, .025" or 0.5mm. Got 5 sheets 4 by 12 inches. The soldering by the way, I'm going to flux it, heat it up with a blowtorch, and use plumbers flux. I'll make some sort of wire / grip tie-up for it so it doesn't all spring apart, but I'm quite handy with a soldering iron, and blowtorch. I've got a butane / propane torch, so it won't be a problem. Now I've only got to get some 3/4" and 1" pipe, get it all bent / flattened, and *wahey*! one radiator. I would order that one you posted UnLoadeD, except it's in the states, I'd have to pay carriage, sort out credit card info, wait for shipping... Yada yada. Thanks anyway though, great find, thanks for the time you spent I'll post some pics of my radiator progress soon...

I think the keybord is broke becase it took me 3 time to soign in today.
I want to say I'm going to make this raditor and you can watch and laughh iff you like but its gonig to work and work good. I habve had a good time tonight but need to get to slpeep, so I ';ll say tataa chaps and make the radiator tommorow. post pics too. goodbye

From a person who has worked on many of cores all I can say is good luck!!!!

They do say - "Perfect Planning Prevents P*** Poor Performance" and this has been in planning and I've thought about it an awful lot. I've just cut 5 copper sheets into 20 copper strips 1" wide. No mean feat in itself, I can tell you. I designed this radiator so the manufacturing process would be easier at each step of the way, even if each step might be a little more time consuming. I trust you when you say good luck, DodgeViper, but from my point of view, I've got it pretty much figured out. I'm going to make a bending jig for the strips next, and get some copper pipe the right diameter to test a few theories out on.
After assembly, I'll be able to test it on my system, and will benchmark it against a BeCooling Aquacoil. The aquacoil is a 20 pass rad, two sets of ten copper pipes in paralell, with aluminium fins. I don't think the fins are compressed enough against the pipe though, as I can move the individual fins a small amount. I think soldering the copper strips directly to the flattened pipes will make quite a difference. This remains to be seen though. What I'm going to do is start a new thread with pics, instructions and temperatures, not just an idea and my thoughts, once I have the radiator assembled and tested.

You realize the thinness of the fins is whats gonna give you problems? I think while you are heating one spot to solder, the adjoining spots will also heat and melt their solder. I might be wrong tho. SOmething you might try is a product by Oatey-Instant Solder. Its a tube of paste "Solder and Flux Combination, Just apply and heat." You might be able to apply it to all the joints and then heat the whole thing at once. I look forward to your updates, coz I'm curious how this will play out.

peace.
unloaded

The way they solder everything at once on a heatercore or radiator, is to lay it down in a shallow pan of molten solder for about 10 seconds until the metal heats up to adhesion temps. You can see this by looking at the side of any heatercore, and a radiator repair shop that recores them would have the same equipment available.
They'd also have the fin material in bulk rolls...That might be worth it's weight in gold to your project. You could also desolder an air conditioner's core to get fin material, it's aluminum, but what would that matter on the outside of the tubes?

Well, pretty much nothing's going to stand in the way of this project now I was talking to this chap - ex precision engineer / hydraulics chap / fount of all knowledge, and got some excellent tips. I thought I put some thought into it - in 10 mins, I'd gone over the whole thing again with him and revised the manufacturing process. I don't think the soldering's going to be a major pain - thanks for the bath soldering tip diggrr . I'm going to make a brass mandrel to fit down the pipe to keep the profile nice and flat. Wood blocks / longer angle iron jaws in the vice, to compress a foot of copper pipe all at once, and heat the copper pipe and cool it first, to really soften it up before it's bent into shape. Either that, Or i'll get a heavy metal roller and flatten out the sections like that. The end sections are going to be more semi-circular than round, the flat on the semi circle being milled out to get thin oval cross sections for the flat-pipe fittings - nice ends in the milled out slots to fit the pipe into This is going to be proper *sweeeeet*

More power to ya for making this, but I seriously think that you could save more money/time by getting a minimum-wage job (not that you don't have a job already), working for the time you'd spend making that rad, then buy a pre-fab'd rad.

This isn't exactly the age of manual construction where bonding metals is involved. A lot of the soldering that is used for radiators (tons of points, lots of solder) is done by induction heating or baking it...thats how they get fpga chips [what ever the flat chips are called] on boards. Jigs for mass production also don't need a price cap because they have a relatively long life.

Its a good feeling to know you designed and created every aspect of your rig, but it doesn't take just perfect planning, a trash can, and a stick of TNT to get to the moon... If nothing else, this will definately be a learning experiece, and a humbling one at that. Good luck.

frostmeister said:

Well, pretty much nothing's going to stand in the way of this project now I was talking to this chap - ex precision engineer / hydraulics chap / fount of all knowledge, and got some excellent tips. I thought I put some thought into it - in 10 mins, I'd gone over the whole thing again with him and revised the manufacturing process. I don't think the soldering's going to be a major pain - thanks for the bath soldering tip diggrr . I'm going to make a brass mandrel to fit down the pipe to keep the profile nice and flat. Wood blocks / longer angle iron jaws in the vice, to compress a foot of copper pipe all at once, and heat the copper pipe and cool it first, to really soften it up before it's bent into shape. Either that, Or i'll get a heavy metal roller and flatten out the sections like that. The end sections are going to be more semi-circular than round, the flat on the semi circle being milled out to get thin oval cross sections for the flat-pipe fittings - nice ends in the milled out slots to fit the pipe into This is going to be proper *sweeeeet*

Click to expand...

I credit you for going forward with this project, but for the life of me I cannot see how this H/C core will out perform anything that you can buy for under $30.00. Maybe it’s the challenge or maybe you want a core a certain size. You must have some time on your hands as this project you will invest some time.

Have you ever taken the top or bottom tanks off of a heater core? When a core is made the tubing is drawn with a mandrel so each piece is the same size. Using a vise you will not even begin to have the tubing the same size. You mention you were going to make a brass mandrel, how are you going to get the mandrel out once you crush the copper tubing in the vise onto the mandrel? What tubing size (thickest) and fin stock are you using?

I would really like to see photos as you move forward with this project.

I'd like to see the results . I don't think you'd reach the efficiency of a commercially made heatercore, but I'd be curious of the performance of this home-brew one.

Some of us buy pre-made blocks, some make their own. He's just doign the same, but with the radiator instead. I'd personally not do it as I get heatercores for $12

yes, photos, photos, photos....
the good the bad and the ugly, we want to see them all

Well, I suppose I'm doing this because I can, and because I want a radiator a certain size. It's also a challenge, and I think it will actually perform pretty well, if not as good as a commercially available radiator. Anyway, feast your eyes on the bunch of 1" copper strips I've cut for this thing so far. I think I'm probably going to need at least a few more, as they'll fold up to less than half their length - I'll have to work out the angles, and therefore the copper useage on this one...

It's a start!

One more tip, as long as you're cutting up a bazillion copper strips...get your hands on a paper sheet cutter. That's what I use to cut my copper flashing for various projects. Works like a charm, and doesn't leave the dents on the edges from the snips.