Quote Originally Posted by mcoffey View Post
Good points,

Time will tell when Petra gets his lab report back.
Gimme a little time here... It turns out that I'm going to have to do some shopping around, as the cost of such services seems to vary quite a lot depending on where I look. So far, I've had estimates ranging from about $1500 to $3000 ...and that's an awful lot just to prove a point. I shall keep looking, though. I may be receiving a second compromised aluminum GTX top from a different customer somewhat soon, which should help with analysis.

Now, I have voiced concerns to Gabe and others since the introduction of the Apogee GTX--concerns that were founded upon some phone conversations that I had a while back with an OEM that I work with who had some bad experiences experimenting with aluminum while developing cold plates for their multi-kilowatt LED arrays. I have also stated numerous times that most people shouldn't experience corrosion issues with the Apogee GTX/Stealth line, provided that they use some sort of corrosion inhibitor. However, as pointed out by Scott and others, therein lies the problem. The Apogee GTX is marketed as being a performance product intended for the enthusiast crowd, but a good portion of the performance-seeking users are running straight distilled with, perhaps, some form of biocide (be it silver, iodine, copper sulphate, etc.), as that is all that should ever be needed. Putting total faith into almost any plating process (with regard to corrosion prevention and aluminum) is somewhat akin to me claiming that there are no quality control issues with products coming out of China--be they large or small in scope, you will run into problems at some point. Given the numerous materials options which were available while designing the Apogee GTX that wouldn't have posed any possibility of causing a problem, we shouldn't be having this conversation right now... but here we are.

Does it matter that there have been, perhaps, only four cases of possible corrosion involving the Apogee GTX (that I know of, have been posted on XS, etc.)? No. Does it matter that I can personally verify only one (maybe two, depending) of these cases out of "thousands" of Apogee GTX blocks sold by Swiftech? No. The point is that it can happen... but it shouldn't have been allowed to--the only reason that the possibility of corrosion exists in this product is due to choices that were made by Swiftech.