Finished Copper Block
 

Finally finished it. Tell me what you think.

what kind of tool, feeds and speeds were you running on the o-ring groove? is there a few drills stuck in those holes?
I dont think I have had that much trouble. I think your problem might be that your cutting way too slow. instead of cutting its rubbing or pushing.
If you could post your code, I wouldnt mind taking a look at it, or pm me and I will send you my e-mail address to send it to.

--oops-- I didnt see the second page. still, what feeds and speeds were you cutting the o-ring groove at? it doesnt look to healthy.


Jon

Yeah, not healthy at all, lol. I was cutting at 2500RPM at 10 IPM. I cut around .020" each time, but the tool I had was really long, so I didn't want to risk snapping it. It was at least an 1.25" long, but I couldn't find any shorter ones.

Next time, grab some cheap carbides from jtsmachine.com, 4 flute bigger ones, 2 flute smaller ones(under 1/4") You have to look into the website to find the cheaper ones. they work really good.

Jon

Thanks, I'll check out the site. The end mill I was using was brand new and was pretty good. Don't know why it happened like that, but when cutting aluminum, it's always good.

2500RPM? Sounds like the feedrate is a little high for 2500RPM. Especially with a long thin endmill.

I don't see any mounting holes in that block?

the mounting holes are in the acrylic top piece. I just put that on, but I forgot to get an o-ring. :rolleyes:

Anyway, I think it should be finished by tomorrow.

Oh ok, smaller than I thought it was. Looks pretty good. How thick is that base? Looks pretty thick from the pic.

It's around .615" thick, total, with the base thickness of .115", so little under 1/8".

So the overall base (channels and all) is .615"? Damn thats thick... If you have .125 for the base thickness that leaves the channel at .49" high. Almost 1/2"... That might be a bad thing. You may end up with water stagnating at the bottom of the block and the majority of the flow going from the inlet directly to the outlet on the upper part of the channel.

If your initial test show poor performance you might consider milling 1/16" off at a time and retesting to get the optimal channel hight. I have been finding about 1/4" channel hight to be good on my designs. My Lumpy Channel block only had 3/16" channel hight and R-Type only had 1/4" pin hight.

You can see on the testing results they hold their own http://www.procooling.com/html/pro_testing.php.

Anyway good luck and good job so far. :)

since you have another that got screwed up, take that facemill and take 1/4" off the top so your left with about 3/8" total thickness and recut your o-ring groove and compare them.

Jon

I'm trying to complete this project asap, have a month left before I hit campus again, but there are tons of other things I need to do on top of this. I think I'll just go ahead and shave off 1/4" and recut the o-ring groove. I'm also going to give it a copper top since we had lots of scrap pieces of thin copper. If work gets a little slow today, I'll keep you guys updated. Thanks a lot for the help guys. Priceless.

I didn't shave a whole 1/4" off (the fins were starting to bend a bit), but I'm willing to give this a try. I don't plan on making a GPU block, or watercooling it at all at this point. After having an acrylic top made, my dad pretty much said it looked like garbage, as wel as all the screws and barbs I bought. Instead, he made a top for it out of copper. It's almost 1/4" thick, bringing the whole height of this thing to .765", so it's a hefty block. We also used .200" screws, going in from the bottom and threaded into the top. I'll post some pictures later tonight.
I recut the o-ring channel with a slightly bigger (diameter) tool, and it came out much cleaner. We found an o-ring that fit perfectly, so all I have left is to cut the threaded holes for the barbs in the top and come up with some sort of mount.

If anyone could help me with ideas for a mount, I'd appreciate if you shared them. I have an A64 and there are 2 holes, 3.5" apart. I was thinking of making that out of aluminum. I'll also take some more dimensions when I get home.

Just a plate out of alumium should be fine. Might want to make the hole pattern the same as the block and screw the mounting plate right to the block. Especially being that is a heafty block.

hefty indeed...

sorry, my card reader ate my CF card, so i had to open it and dig it out.

Uhh... barb holes?

This design is revolutionary, such that it doesn't need barb holes.

Actually, I forgot to mention in this forum that the barb holes are still being worked on. I actually have a 1/2" OD brass barb from in-shop with both ends threaded. We're a tool & die machine shop, so we make injection molds for plastic. Basically, there are water holes in the molds to cool the molten plastic once it has formed inside the mold, so we actually have a lot of the stuff we need here. I need to cut two threaded holes into the top and then figure out a mounting solution. As jaydee suggested, I definitely need to screw the mount in securely as this block is one heavy piece.

Well, the barb holes are done. Unfortunately, I cannot grab the pictures off my camera from this computer, so I'll do it at work tomorrow. It looks pretty nice, so all that's left is just the mounting plate.

EDIT: Pictures are up now...

Mounting Plate
 

So far, I have the mounting plate to the dimensions I need it. I'm going to cut a total of 4 holes into it:

2x where the barbs are located
2x where it will mount into the retention plate

Ideally, I'd want to screw this into the copper top-plate, but I think I will cut a long, shallow groove for the top-plate and block to fit into instead, at least for now. I don't think I can do anything fancy because it's in a vice and it's about 1/8" thin. If anything, I'll have to do it manually on the bandsaw. Otherwise, I'd need to mount it to a plate which takes too much work to make anyway.

Well, back to work... also, I have a question. Does how I orient the pump matter, such as if I have it sideways or upside down?

EDIT: Mounting plate is done, although that whole groove thing didn't work as the plate was vibrating too much.

Well, here are some more pictures..

Looks really nice. It will be cool to see the results.

For my opinion, the fins are too thin and too tall.
So the top of the pins will not do their job...
If you have sources, do another one and copmare it, so you will se what jaydee is talking about...