yep, good ol' series 1 bridgeport, 1 Hp motor, powerfeed. grandpa used it in his shop where he made these: http://www.hardwarereviewed.com/vdhtt

thanx guys! I think I'll get to adding LED's to the middle sometime soon... heheh

Nope, Cathar tested his block with various flow rates and it performed pretty close with a wide range of flow rates.

What Cathars block relies on is high water velocity (Jet impingement), which is provided by his middle plate using a slot.

Awesome machines there NickC.... they still in production?
Love that big iron....heavy equipment pays my bills.

well, no... He went out of business a few months before I was born, in '87

the construction movement of the 80's ended, and these were fairly niche machines, so the demand went nowhere.

not to mention he built them so well, they never needed to be replaced.

all 42 of them (they were built in pairs) are owned by three companies or are over in the ME

I too have been working on Cathar's design. I decided to slit it using a 1.75 " x .040" slitting saw. Homemade arbor. I'm really happy how it is turning out.

http://home.attbi.com/~dcalhoun15/copper1A.jpg

Now this is interesting.

Is that just on a mill? How long is it taking you? What sort of depths? What sort of spindle speeds? How common are slitting saws? (I really want to have a go at this)

I had though about this but could never really see how to implement it properly, but then I was thinking of a different orrientation.

Can you give us details of your arbour. I presume it was made on a lathe?

Im going to post this over at OCAU if you dont mind.

This is being done on a small 6 x 26" small Jet Knee Action Mill. At this point it is half slit and it took my about an hour. That is not including set-up. I cut .005 deep at a pass. Using as I said before a 1.75 x .040 slitting saw. I bought them from Travers Tool Company. I can't tell you the tooth count as I can't move it till I finish.

As far as the arbor I copied it from one in a tool book.Yes I made it on my lathe. I happen to have a small machine shop in my garage. Slitting saws come in standard hole sizes and this arbor is stepped for I think 3/8-1/2-5/8 holes with a corresponding cap for each size. It's threaded 5/16-24 for hold down. Cutting the very end slot is the trickiest part as you must be very careful not to cut into the radius of the plenums(end chambers).

Milling the Oring groove is going to be toughest thing.

Other than building guns, bicycles, tools, and road racing motorcyles this is the first attempt at water cooling a PC. Cathar's design really impressed me.


:D :D :D :D ;)

Dang! Did you consider a sawblade?

Copper can be tough to work with because it has the ability to "work harden". It is fairly soft material and a slitting saw has a tendancy to bite into the material. Hence the light cuts. Being that the fins are in the 30MM length range each movement of the table can be a cut.

WOW! Amazing thing that is!
Where did you buy that? What does it call?

I meant a circular saw blade, which actually looks exactly like the one you used... I thought you used one of those fiberglass reinforced wheels. my bad!