LiquidFrostbyte

[OCme]

last night I masked off my Asus P4P800 deluxe MB

[OCme]

and my ATI Radeon 9800XT VC

[OCme]

I placed scotch tape over serial numbers... then I gave front & back sides of both MB & VC 3 coats of Kon Form Coating got mine @ time motion tools. I allowed 1hr dry time between each coat and then 24hrs to cure. That should seal things nicely...

[OCme]

i've had a little trouble with my pump/res, but i should hopefully have this issue corrected by this weekend... i'll keep everyone posted

[S_I_N]

Originally posted by chilly1
Insulate that line!! Remember Insulate, insulate and when you are done insulate....

Yo Chilly1 man I can believe you forgot to metion insulate insulate insulate. Bro ur slipping.

[OCme]

since my chiller will not see temps in excess of -25F i choose a pondmaster 500GPH pump made by danner mfg. to move the liquid in my system. this pump seems to be popular here on xtremesystems forums because it is seal-less. it is a bit of a ill mannered brute making more noise than most other inline pumps, but insulation should help quiet things down and give me better temps as well.

[OCme]

i decided to insulate the pump in a styrofoam chest... the sides and bottom and lid are all 2.5" thick

[OCme]

here is a pic before i insulated everything. i decided to go with an in line T instead of a reservoir for two reasons 1) quicker pull down times due to less fluid to chill, & 2) it makes the system easier to seal from alcohol vapors that might escape.

[OCme]

first i insulated everything with rubatex and armaflex (foam rubber) then i tightly wrapped black duct tape around all the insulation.

[OCme]

here is a pic of everything assembeled before i hooked it up to the chiller. what i didn't show is me filling the styrofoam box with spray foam and letting it sit over night before putting the lid on and sealing it up. it took 1.5 cans of great-stuff (spray foam insulation)

[OCme]

here is the pump box hooked up to the chiller for a test of the cooling loop. the out of chiller is connected to the intake of the pump just befor the inline T & the out-let of the pump is connected to the inlet of the chiller.

[OCme]

chilly1 directed me to the magic knob on the PEV inside of the chiller so that i could tune the charge.

[OCme]

after a little tweaking i was able to achieve -23F. i will post actual unloaded pull-down times tomorrow & loaded temps and times after i get the system all together.

[OCme]

make that -24F or -31.1C...

[kayl]

love the insulation job on the pump dude truly xtreme

[OCme]

WARNING... WARNING... WARNING... WARNING!!!!!
DO NOT INSULATE YOUR PUMP LIKE THIS!!!!

i turned off the chiller last night but left the pump plugged in to see to what level the liquid would end up at in the inline T. i knew it would expand some as it warmed. i did not plan on what happened next. the pump, being so heavily insulated, melted down and cavitated the spray foam around it. i suspect that this was due to the cooling loop not being able to dissapate the heat the pump produced with the chiller off.

[OCme]

here is a pic of the melted down pump. i'm damn lucky i didn't burn my house down!

[OCme]

here is another one

[OCme]

anyone have any suggestions on where i should go from here?

[froudeg]

Good God! - how the hell did that happen?

If i'm reading things right here, you just turned off the chiller - but the pump carried on pumping the coolant round through the chiller hx and back......if that was the case, how on earth did the pump generate so much heat. I know it was insulated, but with liquid flowing through it constantly - the temperatures surely shouldnt have hit high enuf for it to melt itself into oblivion.

I spose, with the chiller, the coolant lines and the pump itself insulated, there isnt much chance for the heat of the pump to get out.....altho the pump doesnt generate that much heat - it should have just levelled out (insualtion isnt perfect and that big a cooling loop should have allowed enuf of the heat to escape).

Whats more likely to have happened is the coolant hit say 50celcius...and the pump rotor stuck or something (the rotors get soft with hot coolant and can jam) - then the pump burnt itself into oblivion

[OCme]

Originally posted by froudeg
If i'm reading things right here, you just turned off the chiller - but the pump carried on pumping the coolant round through the chiller hx and back......if that was the case, how on earth did the pump generate so much heat.
Whats more likely to have happened is the coolant hit say 50celcius...and the pump rotor stuck or something (the rotors get soft with hot coolant and can jam) - then the pump burnt itself into oblivion

the coldest the chiller reached was -24F/ 31.1C... i don't think things got colder when the chiller was turned off.... the pump is rated @ 45 watts of heat, i think the cooling loop turned into a heating loop not being able to dissapate the 45 watts of heat that the pump produced, but i could be wrong

[chilly1]

Warrentee? doubt it. Glad to see your ok. Does that pump have openings where air is supposed to flow throgh the motor? Pumps need to have some form of cooling to them so they don't over heat the 45W was probably being dissipated through teh cooling loop until it gort warm? What was the temperature of the loop when you found the motor burnt? Usually these pumps will have a thermal overload to prevent this from happening you may want to ask the manafacturer if that is the case and then if it does why did the thermal fail and not open? Your 2 for 2 on pumps now. Good thing it didn't reach the ignition point of the methanol.

[OCme]

Possible solutions so far:

-thermal-couple to act as a shut off the pump

-shut off the pump with chiller

-run pump in reservoir to dissipate the heat it produces... i was trying to stay away from doing this because it would add heat to the cooling loop, but it could be my best alternative

-run the pump inline but only insulate the in/out portion of the pump agonist condensation allowing the heat to be released and dissipated by the rear portion of the pump



does anyone have any other suggestions?

[froudeg]

I would go with the thermal cut off - but then again i always go with electronic solutions as im an electronics engineer lol

If you do go with a thermal cut off - use one of the miniature bi-metallic trip switches, you can get these to trip at various temperatures. I get a lot of my parts from www.farnell.com (im in the uk so i dont know if they have em where u are), but im sure RS etc would.

Dont use one to directly cut the mains to the pump off tho (ie dont use it inline with the live/neutral wire to your pump). You dont want any mains parts exposed where you have fluid. Use the switch to cut off an external 12v mains relay which then cuts off the pump etc.

[OCme]

Originally posted by chilly1
Does that pump have openings where air is supposed to flow throgh the motor?

yes, there are four small holes on the back of the pump housing

Originally posted by chilly1
What was the temperature of the loop when you found the motor burnt?

don't know exactly... i shut the chiller down @ 9:30pm and went to bed... i woke up to the smell of alcohol fumes at 4:00am in the morning and a melted down pump. the pump also melted the foam rubber around it and cavitated the spray foam insulation around it. the S-L-X alcohol got hot enough to melt the outlet of the pump off.