that's brass allright..... you will notice it to be very easy to drill, and the shavings will not be so stringy... it will allmost form a corse powder as it comes of the bit.... Copper makes nice long curly loks that is very sharp. and a pain to get out of carpets.... :)

Brass is an very good material for the top plate, if you want to polish the end product. It looks awesome when you put a little bit of effort into it. and it polishes much easier than copper....

I vaccuum cleaned three times in three days and it still sparkles occasionally whe I pass the room...hell...

oh, and something I just managed to put into my scanner:rolleyes:

i might keep it for the top plates then, i already noticed that it is almost impossible to rust. normally everything i touch oxidizes real bad in a matter of hours. that is what originally made me doubt that it was copper; my maze can be polished and a few hours later my greasy fingers already messed up the polish work.

ofcourse it was also weird that puzzdre was having such trouble dremelling and cutting his copper. and with me it was as u say like butter.

am smarter, and a bit more suspicious towards metal merchants

I don't get it, how can anyone sell you something for copper, than after the complaint tell you the percentage of components, being the metal merchant, not telling you its simply - brass????
WTF? If you ask me for some water, I can give you a cucumber??? Well, its' mostly water?!?!?!?

S#IT!

Btw, I handsawed some brass barbs for my block I'm using now, and was PRETTY surprised that handsaw went through the whole barb in three jigs. It is like cutting the butter...

Well, let's go on. Back to the (telephone) board...
C'mon, make some more calls!

i will be telephoning some more.

funny thing was that after i called and asked him about the mixture, he told me that i needn't worry, because for what i needed it (cooling) it was gonna be as good as pure copper. after that you showed me that little table, that brass has 3 x worse thermal properties. i wonder what he would say if i paid him 3 x less, and tell him for what he needs; 3 times less money is just as good.

anyway, your water cucumber analogy is a good one too; even managed to bring a smile on my face in these 'difficult' times.

thx for the support, appreciate it...

ok,

the mf didn't even want to give part of my money back. don't know how it works in the rest of the world. but i chked with other metal merchants, and apparently if you ask copper, they ALWAYS assume you mean brass 70/30. whatever

anyway, got myself a 1/4NPT tap, 12mm drill, and tapped in my first hosebarb. i'm gonna use the brass for my top halves and for practicing purposes.

amai amai, drilling in more than 6mm with a cheap bench drill is a real PITA. be warned, stepping up the dia with more than 2mm in a step is next to impossible.

When I was looking for copper, people usually asked back if I can use brass INSTEAD (more common and easier to find among machine shops). No confusion here about it, I think.

How hard is to get the hole tappered right, to keep the tapper straight while inserting it into the hole? You have only one tapper or they came in set of three (I mean same dia, but first tapper cuts shallow tap into the hole wall, second a little deeper, and the third is final?)?

What's the ID of the barb? If you have 12 mm dia hole for barb, I assume the barb would be 8 mm or 10 mm ID?

Did you lower the rpm on a drill while drilling with such big dia bit?

Wanna know! Wanna know!:p

Great!

it sux major a$$ drilling more than 6mm dia; and that is in that stoopid brass. i would strongly advise you try to drill like this:
3.5
5.5
6
7
8
9
10
11
12

i did it
3.5
5.5
6
8
this sucked alot
10
this sucked real monkey nuts, thought my machine was gonna vibrate to hell, took 30mins for just the last step
12

so for a 1/4NPT u need a 12mm drill and the right tap ofcourse (the tap is gonna cost u though, mine was about 70€ for just the tap)

i found this really cool DIY shop where they have EVERYTHING; my parents tell me they are of a duying breed. brother of 60 with his 2 sisters. 20 allen bolts, m4 , no problem, in stock. 3.3mm drill bit! no problem in stock. 1/4npt tap, no problem, in stock.

i also bought a raco brand universal tap kit for 20€ everithing upto m12. those taps look a bit more crappy than the expensive one though.

the tapping in itself is a piece of cake!!! and it is really cool, the metal makes this nice screeching sound while you scrape away the thread. i didn't even have the right handle to work that large tap, just used a adjustable wrench (imagine); and even then i still didn't fux0r it up. just take it slow (u could go real fast, but they say it generates alot of heat even at the handspeed rpm), and u will be fine. in the shop they confirmed that for m4 u need 3.3drill with m4 tap.

anyway, my hose barb screws in like butter (cost me 1hr to get there though) could have been faster by using more drills to get to 12.

hope this clears it out some.

cheers m8

You know you're only supposed to do 1 turn forward then 1/2 a turn back, then 1 forward then 1/2 back?, and so on?. With a smaller tap (M4 or so) you want to do 1/2 turn forward the 1/4 back.

You'll get away with just screwing in the tap on a large size hole but you'll snap a smaller diametre tap. they are VERY hard and VERY brittle!!...

Use cutting paste as well!, the stuff (fine side!) that you can buy at Car Shops to grind in cylinderhead valves will do at a push, just don't use the course side :D . should be easy enough (and cheap enough) to find/buy cutting paste specific for threading though, try a plumbing suplier...

thats about how i did it, 1/4 turn forward and back again. didn't know about the cutting past though. can't one use almost any kind of oily substance?

The proper stuff is just like valve grinding paste if I remember my school days correctly (16years ago!), it's got tiny bits of grit in it to aid cutting, it's not oily as such, in fact it's quite thick and stodgy, though I'd imagine that's to prevent the paste from migrating during use, I'd imagine you could use any lubricant to aid cutting from a reduced friction point of veiw, though the paste actualy helps cut the thread, not just lubricate :) ...

thx man, im gonna become a real metal craftsman by using these forums alone

First, big thanx for all the tips guys!

Tommorow I'm picking up my barbs at the hydraulics shop, than going to look for some tappers. And Allen bolts. And big dia drill bits...whoa, that's a lot of stuff at to buy list...:D

Today afternoon I picked up another AT big tower case, so now I have two to choose from for wc/mod. Dunno if it mean something to anybody, it's Sky Hawk biggie AT case, big PSU (unfortunately AT not ATX), front door hiding all the bays...:drool:

I'll post the pic ASAP, just have to develop the film and scan the negative...:(

So...:shrug: waiting for tomorrow to come...:cool:

Damn puzzdre, time to get a digicam, no?

think you're gonna be surprised at how easy the tapping is

:D Yup, but not in the next few months...:cry: ...budget...:rolleyes:

hmm, know the feeling

i'll have to wait to advance with the block until i have the money to get myself 4m of pure copper (no other way, possibly i can find some ppl in belgium to take some off me)

anyone care to guess how much 4m of copper would cost at wholesale price?

Holy s##t! Four metres of copper...I really wish you best of luck finding the other enthusiasts willing to share the expense and goodies...

If you wanna, I can ask how much will the postage be from here to Belgium for some small amount of copper, but the thing is bloody heavy, I guess it would be better to find it there...

Dunno, I'll ask, I have a friend at the post office...

well, mailing could be quite expensive. those things quickly weigh more than 1 kg. but if i can find 2 - 3 guys in belgium willing to share, then i am out of the shitty situation.

btw: thx for asking your friend, but you didn't have that much copper did you? anyway, tomorrow i should know more

I just measured my 7 pcs I have on my kitchen scale, it said 2.2 kg...

/edit
I'm going to buy some more copper for me next week ( I like to have spare parts, for next generation experimental work :cool: , so there's no problem in that. The problem would be if I was lucky last time I bought copper, and this time the scrapyard can be out of copper... I'll go and see. The copper I bought was from scrapyard, but it was new and unused, I bought some leftovers from the machine shops.

I'll know much more about the postage tomorrow...NP

waw thought it would have weighed alot more. well, i'll see what the belgian watercoolers have got to say, hope they want to do a group buy

:D Be VERY persuasive!;)

I'm busy screwing around with PHP scripts....

dual athlon blocks


have a look... one can click on the pics to get bigger ones, and you can even add comments, if you want....

it is still very experimental, so don't blame me if I somehow delete the databasefile, or something, and your comments gets vaporized into the oblivian... :D

very cool scripting, i like it alot , really. i have to find out how to do that in .net.

and puzzdre, thx for listening around man, really, you are one out of a million.

damn, i just called a wholesale Cu shop.

apparently 50mmx10mmx1000mm weighs 4.5kg

price per kg is 2.90€ + sales tax = 3.51€/kg

minimum length = 6m (OMG :-(

6m = 27 kg
27kg * 3.51€/kg = 94.7€ for 6m !!! now isn't that cheap


although 6 m is about 50 x more than i need, the price is only 2 x more than what the ripper charged me for 1 m of brass.

#Rotor, that's a niiiiice looking gallery!!! More! More! More!!!:cool:

About me going to buy some more copper, just to clarify that a little bit more, It's NOT for making more blocks for sale, it's just because I'm kinda hamster-like, when I'm on to something like this, I just tend to make a reserve (and reserve of reserve) of material I need, cos' I cannot get it so easily when I need it, and I never know when I'll be in the mood to make something new... She isn't very happy about that, but I surely am...

g.l.amour, this is what I found: the postage for 2 - 3 kg package is 23 Euro. Guy at the post office told me he doesn't see any problems sending a slab of copper to Belgium (you never know what stupid law can be out there and especially here:rolleyes: ).

I cannot promise anything cos' that scrapyard is 300 km away in another (bigger hehe) city, but I usually go there on a monthly basis (my university is there, I still have several *obligations* to fulfill) and I'll surely check it out, so if you don't find anything, feel free to let me know, we'll arrange something, NP...

thx for hearing around puzzdre; but i think i'll go out and buy the 6m, the price i'd be paying for that , i'd be surprised noone wanting to buy some. cmon for 15€ per m, that is crazy cheap.

any news on the tapping?

No problem!;)

And now - The Barbs!!!!!yesyesyesyesyes!!!!!!!

Just got them! Now I can look for tappers, and other stuff!!!
As he promised, the guy at the hydraulics shop made them for me. On time!!! For 1.6 Euro a piece!

HappyHappyHappyHappy!!!!

they look mighty fine to me, and mighty cheap too, think you paid em less than i did mine premachined.

what kindof thread u got on em. is it european or american thread system.

Errr, the guy said its 3/8. That's about all he said about thread. Hope it will serve the purpose...I'll ask little bit around today afternoon for tappers and all...

That 3/8 is kinda hydraulics standard thread here...dunno, I must ask around some more...Hopefully they will be good enough with the teflon tape. If not, I'll epoxy them for seal, like I did it on my current block...

For the price, the guy said to me that I won't find them for less than 1.3 Euro machined, and today we agreed on 1.6 Euro/piece, got 8 of them, all nice and on time...