My clover block

[Sin22]

Ok, this is my first pure self-made block. Have had a plethora of blocks now including both the WW & Cascade.

My first foray into wb modifications was with a simple budget maze style block some info of which can be found here.

This is what I had in mind based of a pelton wheel design and something mentioned by eletric_flip inside the "Introducing the Cascade wb" thread on OCAU here. It appeared to be a simple and possibly effective concept to try.





Thats what the conceptual design was.

This is what I managed to come up with







Three plates, each of 1.5mm thickness. I'll tell you this, its hard to be exactly accurate when you have so little thickness to play with. We're talking abt 0.4mm between the base of the cup and the other end. Measured it using some vernier calipers.

Each plate is then siliconed and epoxied to one another and I'm going to let that cure overnight.

On completion it ought to look like this.



Barbs are 1/2" plastic. Material is 2024 Aluminum, aircraft grade aluminum sheeting. I would have prefered to use copper, but it aint the cheapest thing around here in Sydney as seen in this thread. And since I have got free access to the aluminum, I'll be using that for the time being.

I have yet to mount it, letting the epoxy cure overnight properly. Will post results once I do.

I do have a chipset block in the works and will post once completed.

[Boli]

Erm... no picies. *shrugs*

~ Boli

[Sin22]

Seems to be an issue with ImageStation atm. Give me a while to transfer my images to a different host.

[Boli]

Simple.... but how effective?

[Althornin]

IIRC, the "pelton" style idea is flawed for waterblocks, as it greatly reduces (eliminates) impingment. Incoming water hits the point in the middle and flows away with no impingment at all (basically). Ergo, you have a very laminar flow.

[FL3JM]

What if you make small crates or something to increase contact and turbulence? Or sand blast it? (or whatever its called)

[Jewfro]

Don't completely understand the physics.....but I believe it's called bead blasting (was mentioned in cascade thread).

[Myten]

cheapest block I've seen
It'll probably work enough though, if max performance is not an issue.

[winewood]

Bead blasting doesn't do squat. The variations on the copper are to small to raise the copper into the flow.

[Jewfro]

Mmmmmmm......maybe simply using some thermal epoxy to stick some aluminum cylinders in the flow region could at least give you some turbulence.

[JFettig]

Hey, that looks like quite a good design in concept. It looks like your not gonna have much flow going through that though. You should be using about a 3/16" thick base plate, and 3/16-1/4" channel area for low restriction, and then a 3/16"-1/4" top for screwing the barbs in. I would highly suggest you invest in a bar of copper, Youll love being able to seal it up nicely. I would just say get a 14" or so bar of 3/16" thick copper and cutting up all your peices for it.

-edit- Also, invest in a center punch I see those holes are a little off.

Thats my input.

Jon

[Sin22]

Sorry for taking so long to reply, been busy.

Basically Althornin is correct, u will be getting a fair amount of laminar flow. The boundary layer isnt churned up enough.

Some quick and dirty CFD analysis shows that.


The exact internal dimensions were used for the areas actually in contact with the water


A close up of the cups area

You can see that around the cups, you arnt getting much flow, the water has pretty much formed a thick boundary layer.

Anyhow, it was something to try.

As to copper, I'll be moving back to Singapore in a month, and its a lot cheaper to purchase there than it is here in Sydney, so I'll be using it over there. And since I have free access to alu sheets here in the Aero workshop, I use that instead. I did use a centrepunch, however, on my first drill, I set the drill press to too fast a speed and it went a bit awry even with a G-clamp holdin the piece down.

[nemaste]

what CFD proggy did you use? just curious.

[Sin22]

Fluent 6