yeah i like the twin outlet thing, and I think with your design it would be particularly good.

as for the amount of flow going through the tubes like what EMC2 posted, it would be possible to make the first few tubes much smaller than the last ones

DigitalChaos,
Fins may be my best option on this. hmmmm. Do you know what the optimal thickness of the bottom of the channel to the die would be? I could go really wide and very shallow.

Brad,
I don't know how to calculate what the necessary width/volume of the channels would have to be. How did EMC2 do that?:shrug:

I will have to noodle on this for a while. Come up with a few more drawings to throw on here.

But any more help is definitely appreciated.

DoTheDog

I have no idea either, just get him to do it again hehehe

FM
 

LOL Brad :) Curiosity and something to do while eating lunch is the only reason I did it the first time, hehehe...


Dog - more math and issues than I care to even begin to go into :)

However - since you aren't really concerned in this case about finding precise values for the flow rates, there is a way I could explain that would give a close enough rough order approximation to meet your needs that is not that hard to understand and only involves simple math you could do by hand - or more quickly, in a spreadsheet. Let me know if your interested and when I next have the time and in the mood to write it up, I will :)

not sure what the exact optimal thickness of the base plate would be for this
but most ppl seem to get best results with 1/8" baseplate thickness

Yeah EMC2 I am interested. I haven't had time to mess with this lately (work seems to keep getting in the way :( ) I had a couple of big sales meetings I had to do, but I think I will have some more time to play with this later this week.

But if you do have the time and inclination, I am willing to learn :D

That sounds good, I wonder if I could get away with a 1/4" thick block and mill 1/8" channels?

Get a bottle of asprin ready DoTheDog
 

Ok dog, you got my Sat morning coffee slot ;) What follows is the info I said I would give if you were interested. I tried to strike a balance in the writing style, just hope I found the right one to help you :) It's long, but don't skip any parts, as they build upon each other and towards the end it gets "fast and furious".

To do this, I needed diagrams so all of it is in graphics format. The images are PNG format, and I know Internet Explorer doesn't like them very well, so you may have to either a) use Netscape or b) download the images and look at them at your leisure with something like IrfanView. Sorry, but's it's the only way I could do it and not make the images really large in storage size (don't want to abuse Joe's server).

This first pic is a version of your 8 armed block showing how I divided it up into pieces to be able to use the method the rest of it shows you. Hopefully when your done reading you'll see how to do the calcs, understand a little more about flow issues, and even a little something about electronics.

Let the picture show commence :evilaugh:

Blabbering
 

Part 1 of 6

Blabbering
 

Part 2 of 6

Blabbering
 

Part 3 of 6

Blabbering
 

Part 4 of 6

Blabbering - fast and furious
 

Part 5 of 6

Blabbering - the stupid ending
 

Part 6 of 6

emc, I think those are all over the 65kb limit

The biggest one is 24KBytes for the file size Brad :) (PNG does an excellent job of compressing with clarity and I worked hard tweaking the settings to get them as small as possible)

umm ok, somethings all rooted then :P

just try uploading them again

Holy SH*T
 

Wow, Thanks for the reply EMC2. I read through it quickly, I think I will need to spend some more time with it before I can use it though ;) If I have this right this should help me a lot with the design. I will let you know what I come up with.

DoTheDog

emc2, in reply to your pm, I have no idea why the pics aren't showing, maybe Joe can help

I can see the pics very nicely in Netscape 4.79 (My preferre browser) but IE won't. It doesn't bother me...;)

EMC2, I really appreciate all the work that went into that. I will spend some time with it and try to optimize the flow on the block.

BTW, when I try to save the images, it says that it is attachment.php, is that right? I can't seem to open it with anything. Will Netscape open just the image?

so now we know the problem. emc2, can you post them in gif instead?

Ok,NOW I know what your comment was concerning Brad :) Sorry, my bad - I thought you were saying the pics were too big for me to be uploading to the server, but I see now you were talking about the issue of them not being displayed by Internet Explorer.

Yes, I knew that (see my post at the start of the pics). For whatever reason, Internet Explorer will not display PNG files _unless_ they are 16 million colors. If they are 256 or 16 color pics, it chokes. However, Netscape works fine (just one of many reasons I prefer NS over IE).

I could post them as 16m color PNGs or as lower color GIFs, but their size would go up by 2 to 3X and I don't want to do that to Joe's server :)

Dog, as far as the "save as" - the pics show up as ".php" because of the way the forum software works. The correct file extension is PNG (Portable Network Graphics) for the pics I posted ;) Just change the filename extension to PNG and they will work fine (either view them with Netscape or with a gfx display program like IrfanView(free) or PhotoShop or PaintShopPro).

just email them to me then ;)

otama @ ihug.co.nz

EMC2, Thanks. Worked like a charm. I will have to spend some time studying this to see if I can put this together in a spreadsheet. :)

NP Dog. I made the offer, you seemed genuinely interested, so I did what I said I would, nbd :)

If there is some part or concept that ends up still being a little fuzzy after you've had time to digest it for a bit, let me know.