RE: Bulk Order 15kW SSTC Boards - Heatsinks Room Temperature

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Original poster: Jim Lux <jimlux-at-earthlink-dot-net> 


I concur with Dan... Yes, there's a bit of mechanical fabrication involved 
in any liquid cooling exercise, but, once you've done it once, you'll know 
how to do it for the future, and liquid cooling is very nifty.  You can run 
very high power densities, and have a very large radiator, so you don't 
need cooling fans.  If you're building something that dissipates hundreds 
(or thousands) of watts, pretty soon you decide:
a) You don't want that heat in the room with you
b) You aren't particularly interested in hearing the whine of high pressure 
cooling fans.

The "overclocker" business has had the nice side effect of making available 
inexpensive heat transfer blocks with hose fittings on them.

You also need to find a source for reliable(!) quiet pumps.  The new 
magnetically driven submersible fountain pumps work nicely, but I wish I 
could find them cheaper (but, then, I haven't done much looking).

If you're going to get interested in liquid cooling, start looking around 
for surplus/scrap dehumidifiers.  They're easily modified into liquid 
chillers.  A second best is a small bar refrigerator (about $100 for the 4 
cu ft versions at the discounters, brand new), but they're bulky and not 
easily cannibalized (they put the condenser coils in the side walls!). The 
evaporator (the cold part) also is sort of inconvenient for coupling to the 
liquid transfer medium, although I think a bit of "sawzall" work might 
help. My most recent liquid cooling project is cooling several hundred 
bottles of wine using a modified 4 cuft refrigerator.

For HV projects, the idea of immersing the entire board in oil that is 
cooled is sort of attractive.. insulation and cooling, all in one step.

At 12:09 PM 9/25/2003 -0600, you wrote:
>Original poster: "Mccauley, Daniel H" <daniel.h.mccauley-at-lmco-dot-com>
>Thats completely wrong.  My heatsinks on my power circuits for my SSTCs
>now utilizing fan cooling run just slightly above
>room temperature at about 80degC.  A liquid cooling system built with a
>homemade chiller (which can be just a tank of ice for low budget
>experiements and many coils of tubing) can easily get down to 15-20degC
>cold plate temperature.  Of course, a more elaborate system would be
>required for longer running times.  You sir, are purely mistaken in what
>is achievable with a little thought.  Power electronics utilizing
>heatsinks maintaining room temperature are not only a reality, they are
>simple to implement.
>
>Dan
>
>
> > Room temperature heatsink power elctronics? It's too bad
> > things here are
> > now marketing hype first, facts second.
> >
> > KEN
> >
> >
> >