Scratch Build – In Progress Project: Hush!

I can only bow to your skillz!
+ 1

 

subbed!
This looks too wild to miss, and my brain can't process anymore tonight!

 

I hope you treated the copper, or it'll be green after a small bit of time

Otherwise, it's an interesting concept

 

Blowtorch! I follow Oh, and offc the shiny copper

 

holy crap that is amazing. great work man!

 

i broke my frigan jaw!

 

Epic plans, but you seem to be pulling them off nicely! I really DO love the looks of shiny copper.

 

YUMYUM, copper cheesecake!

 

+1 on the Duuuuuuude!
That thing's going to weigh a ton!

 

Thanks for all the nice comments guys.

Yeah, it is rather large - about the same size as two Lian-Li PC-7 cases side to side - but hey, at least there's lots of space for routing tubes, hard-drives etc...

It's untreated; I don't really want to compromise the performance of the fins. If left it'll go brown afaik - the green patina on roofing/statues etc is due to the copper reacting with carbonic acid in rainwater I think and forming copper carbonate.

The copper seems to stay shiny quite well - the copper fins that haven't been used have had the plastic protective sheet off for about 2 or 3 months and are still shiny shiny. Sadly soldering them gets flux burnt on and the heat oxidises them a lot - I'm still undecided on how best to restore them to their former shiny glory... Acid seems to attack the solder, and my brother has a large ultrasonic cleaner I put it in but water/washing up liquid doesn't do much to remove burnt-on flux. I'm not sure whether this is a fault of the detergent mix or a power issue or what.. Could perhaps sand-blast it, but that's not ideal.

Alternatively I could possibly get it plated with dark nickel - not sure how expensive that would be (probably very) or the effect on cooling and so on.

Not sure on the weight of it - around 25kg with all fins on I think (was a few kilos more before I started drilling!), so with the side panels it's probably going to be around 30kg I expect. Need to find some attractive castors I think.

 

I don't know, but when all soldering is done etc, then powdercoating this whole thing would be an option and is far more cheaper then nickel-plating.

Painting, anodizing whatever don't weakens the cooling-abilities that much to care of. All radiators are powdercoated.

 

make some casters

 

Time for an update.

I changed the method by which I put the fins on;- before I had deooxidised the copper pipe prior to putting new fins on, now I instead changed to using strips of 120 grit wet'n'dry with sellotape on the back to strengthen, which I used to sand about 4cm of the pipes, flux and slide fins on (I had already filed the holes of):

PIC OF SANDED PIPES





All the heatfins are now on, and the pipes have been trimmed down.

PICS OF MONSTROSITY


















I've decided to make the manifold/plenum from copper - it'll have an inner box made from thin copper (0.152mm thick) joined to the end fin by solder paste, and strengthened with some of the thicker 0.9mm thick copper made from 4 leftover copper strips I had.

My friend Robin has some nice tools and machines, so I asked him to maked the inlet, outlet, fillpoint and drain port for the radiator from the 25mm diameter copper bosses I had.

PIC OF LATHE



After making 11.8mm holes with the lathe the copper bosses were tapped on the lathe with a BSP 1/4 tap, cut with a circular saw mill bit and then fly-cut on the mill to give a beautiful smooth shiny surface, which doesn't really come across in the photos:

MACHINING











PORTS DONE -







I'd bought a roll of thin copper when I started the project:

PIC OF COPPER ROLL



PIC OF ROUGHLY HOW THE BOX WILL GO TOGETHER
The sides look angled and messed up at the moment, since only some of the flaps of copper have been soldered together. I need to be able to open the box at this stage in order to press it against the end-heatfins to make good contact when being soldered to the side of the box with the slits (the pipe ends will protrude through these slits). The rest of the thin-walled box will then be closed up and soldered into place, and reinforcing 0.9mm copper strips soldered to the outside of the box and the inlet, outlet, fillport and drain port soldered on.









Sadly the project will have to take a short hiatus since I'm moving away for work next week and won't be able to take it with me, so finishing it off will have to be done when I can take a week's holiday.

 

god!!!
next time you are out shopping, don't forget to buy a crane or something!!
that project is so crazy that im loving it to bits!!

 

between you and Langer i now know why there is a copper shortage!!

Dang that copper must have set you back some serious cash at current prices.

 

It's not as bad as you might think - around 20kg ish atm. I can lift it okay with one arm, so it's not too heavy to move around. Having said that, when it's finished with a thick aluminium support frame/structure, plenums, water and hardware I expect it to weigh around 30-35kg.

It wasn't cheap, but it's not too bad - it was all either from a scrapyard, cheap online store or ebay. I got the roll of thin copper because thicker stuff was going to be too expensive, but then found the guy selling lots of cheap copper sheet etc (eg 1.2m x 1.2m sheet for £50 )

Strips, sheet and bosses, including cutting to size: £105

http://i220.photobucket.com/albums/dd96/tcg001/1f7f673e.jpg

6 x 10m coils of copper: £42 iirc

roll of thin copper sheet for original plan, now used to make the plenum/manifold: £28

Oh, and about £10 for the 15mm coiled soft copper pipe, so about £185 in total. Not exactly cheap, but not that bad really.

 

That is the biggest radiator i've ever seen. Looking pretty sweet.

 

Good job

If you want the copper to really shine you'd have to use a sandblaster
to get in the spaces between fins.

 

Thanks for posting that video Wolfandangel - I think I probably will end up going the sandblaster route. I'm not sure what the finish will be like - whether it will be bright pink-salmon coloured but matt or still shiny? My only concern would be whether there's a risk of damaging the solder joints. There shouldn't be a problem really with a quick blast, but tin's quite a bit softer than copper.

 

Any mod with a blow torch is cheesecake....