Freezer

[AcEmAsTr]

Bought a new house, found this inside.

http://tavm.uh-shells.co.uk/WaterCooling/Freezer3.JPG

couple more pics
http://tavm.uh-shells.co.uk/WaterCooling/Freezer2.JPG

http://tavm.uh-shells.co.uk/WaterCooling/Freezer4.JPG

http://tavm.uh-shells.co.uk/WaterCooling/Freezer5.JPG

http://tavm.uh-shells.co.uk/WaterCooling/Freezer1.JPG

What exactly could i do with it? i plan on chilling my water, but i'd prefer not to take it apart, could i just put a tub inside and have an inlet and outlet tube?

[Marci]

Well... if the freezers main chamber is water tight then just fill the entire thing up with a nice solution of whatever...

Failing that, needs a few minor alterations and a Baker Evap Head and u got yerself a promi there d00d fer all intents n' purposes.

Does the unit have any kind of digital controller anywhere or just a thermostat (twiddly knob with cold > colder > willy shrinkin'.... or 0 to 12 or similar)? If a thermostat then that wants bypassing to get it going full tilt. Easiest way is to find the two wires goin into the thermostat, yoink em off and join em together.

If it has a digi controller, find us some form of make n' model and you may well have a VERY useful item there...

[AcEmAsTr]

couldnt i just put a large tub in bottom with inlet and outlet and tubes? would cool it nicely wouldnt it?


would i need condensation protection?

if so how?

[jamaljaco]

Not very effective to chill 40 gallons of coolant. IT would take forever to pull down,I would lose the casing and see what you have for evaps. you may be able to get them into a smaller container . take a look at the chiller/ ac unit sticky for some ideas.

[AcEmAsTr]

lol i didnt mean 40gallons, maybe 1 or 2


how would i get an evap?

sorry my knowledge is vague

[jamaljaco]

don't appologize we all learning. the evaporator is the part or parts inside that get cold. its where the refrigerant goes from liquid to a gas and removes heat, its the cold part . my hunch is its in the walls of that thing .I think it would be way better to put the evap into a cooler of coolant than to put a couple gallons of coolant in the bottom of the refer and have the evap cooling mostly air.

[jamaljaco]

Originally posted by AcEmAsTr
couldnt i just put a large tub in bottom with inlet and outlet and tubes? would cool it nicely wouldnt it?


would i need condensation protection?

if so how? whenever you your temps drop below ambient and hit the dew point you will need condensation protection. And yes your idea with the tub will work the question is how well. You may find that your heating up your coolant over time .

[AcEmAsTr]

is there anyone i can talk to on msn or aim? aaroningle at msn.com

AI122787

[AcEmAsTr]

perhaps strip it apart and put evap in a tub of water and get it to stay on full time?

[Gary Lloyd]

Seems to me we could get very creative with this. Let's imagine that we put a thick sheet of plexiglass over the top, seal it all up airtight, and fill the entire chamber with some dry gas, such as dry nitrogen vapor. All of the system's boards could be attached to the underside of the plexiglass. In effect, all of the innards of the computer placed in a cold, dry environment (except the PSU). Further cooling of components could be done with a chiller, mounted outside of the chamber.

[jamaljaco]

Gary , your a nut! Xtreme nut! you been reading to many forums .lol

[jamaljaco]

could work though....

[AcEmAsTr]

Originally posted by Gary Lloyd
Seems to me we could get very creative with this. Let's imagine that we put a thick sheet of plexiglass over the top, seal it all up airtight, and fill the entire chamber with some dry gas, such as dry nitrogen vapor. All of the system's boards could be attached to the underside of the plexiglass. In effect, all of the innards of the computer placed in a cold, dry environment (except the PSU). Further cooling of components could be done with a chiller, mounted outside of the chamber.


Are you serious about this? safe? effective?

[Gary Lloyd]

Ubetcha. :D

No doubt there would be lots of details to be worked out, but I see a potential work of art. I love the Mars ice cream label and the glass display top. I would mount the plexiglass below this, down where the wire basket is sitting.

I bet it even has wheels. :D

[jamaljaco]

Originally posted by Gary Lloyd
Ubetcha. :D

No doubt there would be lots of details to be worked out, but I see a potential work of art. I love the Mars ice cream label and the glass display top. I would mount the plexiglass below this, down where the wire basket is sitting.

I bet it even has wheels. :D Gary your right, I love it! lets walk him through this , lol this is good. :D

[AcEmAsTr]

Originally posted by Gary Lloyd
Ubetcha. :D

No doubt there would be lots of details to be worked out, but I see a potential work of art. I love the Mars ice cream label and the glass display top. I would mount the plexiglass below this, down where the wire basket is sitting.

I bet it even has wheels. :D


dont tempt me to put wheels on it :p:

[PyroTeknik]

jw but how would you get the video cables and stuff out? un less you memorize the button positions for 3dmark and the bios... lol

[AcEmAsTr]

will take back panel off tomorrow and gather pics and post ASAP

[Gary Lloyd]

First off, dry nitrogen is nothing to worry about. The air we breathe is something like 80% nitrogen. We could do this with dry air, but the trick is drying the air. Dry nitrogen is available, and relatively inexpensive.

We need to get DaBit involved in this, since he has his mobo in a sealed, dried chamber. I'm sure he could provide us with invaluable advice. :D

I'm thinking the place to start would be to decide where to put the things that we don't want in the chamber. We could build a set of strong shelves onto the back, with the monitor on the top shelf. It would need to sit back far enough so that we could open the lid without hitting it. Underneath that we could have a shelf with our PSU, chiller, wiring, and anything unattractive.

The evaporator tubes are in the four walls, soldered to the other side of that aluminum skin. It is highly doubtful that there is tubing in the floor of the chamber. We can check this by running the system to see if frost forms on the floor. If the floor is clear, we can find a safe area underneath to drill a hole through to bring in wiring, hoses, etc., keeping in mind that we will need to seal and insulate the hole in order to keep our chamber dry.

This could be a fun project. :D

[Gary Lloyd]

Here is an alternative, although it gets a bit trickier. Once we have the back panel off, we may be able to dig out the insulation (very carefully). We do NOT want to puncture the evaporator tubes. These tubes may be spaced far enough apart that we can make a hole through the aluminum skin, which would provide a much handier access hole for our wiring and tubing.

[jamaljaco]

Hers is a link to Dabit's website . http://www.icecoldcomputing.com/ Look under "old projects" then "airtight mainboard housing". very good info on this subject. take note of how he did his wiring, you will need to do something similar. If you want a little distance from your freezer so you can set your monitor up on a table next to your freezer Your gunna need to make or find monitor cable extensions an IDE extension for your cd rom , power suply extensions (Don't need it in there generating more heat).Hopfully nobody uses floppies anymore so you don't have to worry bout that. If you have cordless keys and mouse your all set.

[chilly1]

The heat exchanger in these freezers are tubes attached to the aluminum walls of the cooler. if it is watertite, Then use the chamber itself, it will give you better capacity, To reduce the volume you could use bricks on wire basket chars this will add thermal mass and not block the flow of coolant around the heatexchanger, you will also need some means of circulating the coolant within the tank, the simplest means is a tube with a bunch of holes submersed 1/2 of the way down in the coolant. The pickup for the pump should be at the bottom of the tank. Do not use a submersable as these add heat to the liquid and would reduce the cooling capacity of our system as a whole. You could actually have only three gallons of liquid in the tank and contact with all the cooling surfaces with properly positioned bricks.

[jamaljaco]

Originally posted by chilly1
Do not use a submersable as these add heat to the liquid and would reduce the cooling capacity of our system as a whole I ran tests before and after adding my submersable pump as I thought this also > my danner magdrive did not change the coolant temp a measurable amount , if it did I just simply could not tell.

[Marci]

Dry nitrogen is available, and relatively inexpensive

Remember we're in the UK guys... so not necessarily as easily available over here...

[DaBit]

Originally posted by Gary Lloyd
We need to get DaBit involved in this, since he has his mobo in a sealed, dried chamber. I'm sure he could provide us with invaluable advice. :D

So, here I am :D

First remark: why dry nitrogen? Agreed: it's cheap and available if you already have the bottle and regulator. But in our case it isn't.

Thus: drying out existing air with silica gel stays my preferred solution. There is nothing wrong with a little water vapour in the air, as long as the vapour freezing cannot do damage. This is what the silica gel does for you.

[Gary Lloyd]

There is an even easier way to obtain dry air if you live in a cold climate. On a very cold day, the outdoor air is very dry. The dewpoint temperature is always below the temperature of the air.

[Gary Lloyd]

DaBit, I notice you have to keep changing the dessicant in your sealed chamber. This would indicate that room air is leaking in, probably due to changes in air pressure in the chamber. You might try a plastic barbed fitting going through the wall, with a balloon on it. When the air expands, it would inflate the balloon. When it contracts, it would deflate the balloon. This may prevent humid room air from pushing past the seals.

[DaBit]

Originally posted by Gary Lloyd
There is an even easier way to obtain dry air if you live in a cold climate. On a very cold day, the outdoor air is very dry. The dewpoint temperature is always below the temperature of the air.

True, but then you have a problem in the summer.....


DaBit, I notice you have to keep changing the dessicant in your sealed chamber. This would indicate that room air is leaking in, probably due to changes in air pressure in the chamber.

Nope. Usually it's due to me opening up the box to do something inside. Change a jumper, reroute a cable, install some hardware. I can do this several times, and then I must swap the silica gel for a fresh load, and dry out the wet stuff.


You might try a plastic barbed fitting going through the wall, with a balloon on it. When the air expands, it would inflate the balloon. When it contracts, it would deflate the balloon. This may prevent humid room air from pushing past the seals.

This is not a bad idea after all, though the seals can easily withstand normal air pressure variations.

Also, I noticed another problem which is worth mentioning: the expansion coefficients of plexi and aluminium do not match. Not a bit.
Thus, what happens when you bolt the plexi to the aluminium in the 4 corners? As soon as temperature changes, the plexi distorts, opening gaps to the outside world.

The solution: give the plexi the possibility to expand/contract by using more bolts and overdrilled holes in the plexi.

[Gary Lloyd]

The solution: give the plexi the possibility to expand/contract by using more bolts and overdrilled holes in the plexi.

You might try magnetic door gaskets scavenged from a fridge door, although it won't work with aluminum. Perhaps add a steel strip on the aluminum. Then glue the gasket to the plexiglass.

[Gary Lloyd]

Here's another thought for our freezer: We could make an airtight plexiglass box for our components, with panel mount barbed fittings to connect the chiller hoses to. We could then suspend that box inside the freezer, much as the wire basket is now suspended. We could then place our chiller reservoir in the bottom of the freezer.

Just a thought. :D

Edit: I'm thinking we would want to use a glycol mixture if we are going to have the reservoir in an enclosed space. It wouldn't do to have someone open the lid of a methanol vapor-rich box while smoking a cigarette.

[Gary Lloyd]

what about 91% isop. alch?? awsome flow rate good thermal propertys wont frreze till -70's

Methanol IS wood alcohol. In the right mixture with air, under just the right conditions, any alcohol can go kaboom.

:explode:

[GeekGoddess]

Good to see ya still on the boards Mickey! :)

[jamaljaco]

Wondering what hapened to AcEmAsTeR, ?

[DaBit]

Originally posted by Gary Lloyd
You might try magnetic door gaskets scavenged from a fridge door, although it won't work with aluminum. Perhaps add a steel strip on the aluminum. Then glue the gasket to the plexiglass.

And then I'd still need something to prevent the backplate from coming loose when someone plugs in a cable.

A few extra bolts and larger holes in the plexi to accomodate for crimp/expansion is sooo much easier :)