Did a project here and thought it would be nice to share it with everyone. IKIKUINTHENUTZ with another great project! Experiment! Fast summery of how the idea come to be: Couldn't find the color tubing I wanted because I searched 2 weeks for it and asking people like Cyberdruid or companies like Saint Goblin (Tygon) who said they don't carry it, don't know,or never seen it. I was looking for Transparent black water cooling tubing. The tubing is for my IKIKUINTHENUTZized Navig Tech Station. (In project logs) I found something called Rit Liquid Dye while doing my laundry. I read the information and figure WHY NOT! Materials used for this project: A pot you will never use again Rit Dye Concentrated Water Non Iodine Salt A metal tong/strainer A stove Tygon R3603 1/2in. ID 5/8in. OD Laboratory Tubing cut into pieces Directions are straight forward. What I did here is testing out with Black dye to see the results much easier. Water in the pot with one cap of the dye. Do not put a lot of the dye in the water, the stuff is extremely dense. Sorry no measurements, I will assume I put 6 cups of water and one cap of the dye. Put tablespoon of salt to help activate the dye and increase required temperatures to boil. Heat it up on high until rolling boil Once it starts rolling boil, turn off the stove and move the pot else where on to a cooler surface. Use a strainer or clamp to carry the tube in place and simply dip and stir it in while it is hot. Do not let the tube fall to the bottom or pinch the tubing while it is hot or it will make the tube warp into a different shape. Now depending how long you leave it in the dye, your results will vary and you need to experiment on cut pieces so you know how long to leave in the tube to get your desired color before doing large pieces. Once you think it's ready, remove it and simply flush it with tap water in a sink. Here are some examples all next to the non dyed tubing Now I inserted my Bitspower barbs to help you see the transparency. Each one of these represent how long I left it in the dye. No Dip, MFG original 7 seconds 15 seconds 30 seconds 30 seconds with a re dip after flushing of 20 seconds The last image was the tube a bit warped because I accidentally pinched it when it was real hot with the tongs. Maybe everyone here can experiment with different Rit Dye colors, different brands of tubing, and with different results to share. Try it out if you want tubing in the color you want that you can't find. MAKE SURE THE TUBING YOU USE HAVE HIGH HEAT TOLERANCE LIKE TYGON LABS OR YOU WILL HAVE A MESS TO CLEAN UP Also to note that I haven't testing the tubing to see if the dye leeches out. However I will note that washing it with soap and water will not remove the dye.
Improvisation at it's finest. I like the third one the best (not counting the clear) It still retains some transparency, giving that smoked look.
Looks great so far, but I'd like to see some testing of leeching of the dye. I wonder if this would contaminate your loop/stain your waterblocks?
It does leach out a tiny bit. Not really enough to be a problem. Works on molex plugs too. - I thought you were going to show us how to dye Tygon.
Now I did decide to google up a bit on dying plastics with rit + heat and next thing you know I ran into this very fun keyboard mod on OCN http://www.overclock.net/computer-peripherals/551389-keyboard-dye-customization-guide.html After reading a bit, these 2 post caught my interest on the subject matter http://www.overclock.net/6842819-post23.html http://www.overclock.net/6842834-post25.html I decided to do a cross section on the 30 second tube Dye did not penetrate inside because not enough time had lapse. Right now Vapor from XS is nice enough to offer testing of mixing Rit dyes Cyberdruid of OCN is going to run a loop with the stuff to see if any bleeding happens Also I found this on the net about their special effects dye http://www.pburch.net/dyeing/dyelog/B1063361308/C765382484/E1035496870/ Perhaps adding the Absorbing UV properties dye would make a UV effect and right now Vapor from XS is nice enough to do that also. http://www.xtremesystems.org/forums/showthread.php?t=234858&page=2 http://www.overclock.net/other-hardware-mods/577822-how-dye-water-cooling-tubing-experiment.html
If it doesn't penetrate all the way through, you could make sure the water/dye mix doesn't get inside the hose (seal the ends before dropping it in?) then there's no chance of it leeching into your loop. Or less chance, anyway.
do you have a shot with blue coolant in it? i want to try this method and would like to see how'd look like with blue coolant cheers
