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Blackeagle Has anyone here tried making use of soft flexable copper lines like air conditioning or refridgeration use? Would seem to offer a bit larger ID than Tygon so lower head loss rate + a small gain for cooling.
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I doubt that either the cooling or the head loss benefits would be significant, but the hassle factor probably would be.
1. "Flexible" is a term with alot of flex in it...
Copper line is more flexible than copper pipe, but it is several times stiffer than any of the standard Tygon or other plastic lines that we normally use in WC setups.
2. It takes tools to bend it, and if not bent very carefully will tend to collapse (and there goes the flow restriction advantage). Getting it to line up with all the components w/o stress would be a challenge. (and I'm not sure what thermal expansion / contraction changes would do on top of that...)
3. W/ tubing we mostly use barb fittings, which are easy and flexible. Copper tube requires compression fittings, soldering, or other fancier connections, which again add more hassle, and are fussier about tube length, alignment, etc.
4. I'm not sure if it comes in appropriate sizes - my hardware store only seems to carry it up to about 3/8", but that might just be them. I'm planning to use mixed sizes in my setup, but some lines will be as much as 3/4"
I don't think it is impossible to do a setup with all copper lines, but it would be difficult, and I'm not sure it would offer a performance advantage. I have seen a setup using stainless braided teflon lines (like used for water feed connections) but the owner clearly stated it was for cosmetic reasons and didn't claim any performance boost. (It did look cool if you care about such things!)
I've also seen setups where copper pipe was used for the longer runs, with just short lengths of Tygon or equivalent used for jumping between the pipes and the blocks, pumps, etc. It was neat, but restrictive due to the use of many 90* elbows, etc. Tubing could be used for this instead I suppose, but not sure it would offer any real advantage.
Gooserider