What am I doing wrong?

dave343

[H]ard|Gawd
Joined
Oct 17, 2000
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I ordered some PETG to practice bending before I attempt a PETG build next week. This is my first attempt at bends or hardline all together and so I ordered 8/12 and 10/12 just to practice on, but so far I’ve found 8/12 thickwall the easiest to bend, although it just takes longer to heat up.

Using a $40 heat gun off amazon, holding the tubing approx 2” above the gun and constantly rotating until it starts to sag on is own, then keeping it on for 5-10 seconds more. The 8/12 seems to come out almost perfect albeit a tiny few flat spots on the outside of the bends. I say tiny but you really have to look, it’s pretty smooth bend.

10/12 thinwall on the other hand keeps flattening like a cobras head, and this is with the silicon insert inside for both. I can’t figure out what I’m doing wrong. Why even with the silicon insert is the thinwall 10/12 keep flattening like a cobras head when I go to bend...?

These are pictures of both thickwall 8/12 and thinwall 10/12 that I’ve done so far.

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Looks like it's pushing out on the sides–you can almost see the same in the thicker stuff. If I was to guess, I'd say uneven heat. Either not enough on the outside of the bend, or too much on the sides of the bend.

But that's just from my conjecture– I haven't done petg or acrylic myself, so I don't know how it reacts to heat.
 
Or maybe it's too evenly heated? Try as you had before, but after it gets soft focus more heat on the outside and sides of the bend before you bend it into shape.
 
Too much heat, you want it just hot enough time bend. If it's too hot it will retain the heat after you form it and continue to move/collapse.

Also, you will always get a small amount of deformation, you are asking material to both stretch and shrink while holding it's shape.
 
A little to much heat. Your thick wall bends look just fine, so adjust slightly. Using a jig may help a bit. Just have patience and keep the gun on the lowest setting spin the tube and slide it back and forth. I, personally, would not use the thin walled tubes. I would bet that you will always see some flattening in those thin tubes. Why use them? Based on the thick tube bends you are doing things right.
 
Those are also fairly tight bends. They're not too tight, but making a larger radius will cut down on that deformation.
 
I ordered some new inserts and hardline from PPCS, turns out the insert was the issue even though it was the right size. The original insert for 10/12 I had sourced locally. New bends look decent. Still deciding if I’ll go with 8/12 or 10/12.
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I ordered some new inserts and hardline from PPCS, turns out the insert was the issue even though it was the right size. The original insert for 10/12 I had sourced locally. New bends look decent. Still deciding if I’ll go with 8/12 or 10/12.
I recently started looking at this also, thinking about taking the he plunge in the near future. Limited rad space in my son's h510 (can fit a 280mm front rad and 120mm rear) so I'm thinking custom loop with both CPU/GPU in series. Still up in the air on hard vs flexible though, these kind of posts make me want to try my hand at it, lol.
What madrel/insert didn't work vs what did work?
 
I recently started looking at this also, thinking about taking the he plunge in the near future. Limited rad space in my son's h510 (can fit a 280mm front rad and 120mm rear) so I'm thinking custom loop with both CPU/GPU in series. Still up in the air on hard vs flexible though, these kind of posts make me want to try my hand at it, lol.
What madrel/insert didn't work vs what did work?

I'll have to dig up my order and see what brand the original insert was, but the new one I got was from EK, as was the hardline 10/12.

If you've never attempted watercooling before, you could start with soft tubing, that's what I did. Although it only made me want to dive into hardline tube fast, because after 3 builds using soft tubing, it gets boring. There really isn't much planning or work involved... once you know the size of tubing, you get the fittings, grab a pump, rad, and cpu block, and it's not like you have to plan out the bends etc... you're just attaching a hose. Soft tubing is pretty easy to start with, and if you want to get into hardline, you can re-use all the equipment, you'll just need different fittings.
 
I'll have to dig up my order and see what brand the original insert was, but the new one I got was from EK, as was the hardline 10/12.

If you've never attempted watercooling before, you could start with soft tubing, that's what I did. Although it only made me want to dive into hardline tube fast, because after 3 builds using soft tubing, it gets boring. There really isn't much planning or work involved... once you know the size of tubing, you get the fittings, grab a pump, rad, and cpu block, and it's not like you have to plan out the bends etc... you're just attaching a hose. Soft tubing is pretty easy to start with, and if you want to get into hardline, you can re-use all the equipment, you'll just need different fittings.
Yeah, soft tubing is simple, but I like the look of hard tubing better and it's a bit more sturdy for running around things. I have only use aio to this point (mini itx, so would be difficult to do custom).
 
re bubble; gottta lay it on its side, tilt it around and run it for a while to get it all out.

Thanks, gave it a few rocks and a crap ton of bubbles came out.

Also added in a drain which I neglected to do on my first 3 soft tubing builds :facepalm: hard to tell from the picture but the drain is coming off the 3rd outlet on the EK Reservoir and runs to the back of the case.

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Yeah, soft tubing is simple, but I like the look of hard tubing better and it's a bit more sturdy for running around things. I have only use aio to this point (mini itx, so would be difficult to do custom).

Heck, I did both in the same system. I used glass hard line for the pump, both rads and to/from a custom distribution block I built. Then I used soft tube from the distributor to the CPU, Video, and (as it happens) an Intel 10G 2-port NIC. Each component was run to the distributor individually and with QDCs to make component swaps super easy.

My cousin thinks it looks weird, but I have upgraded to a different mainboard and video card TWICE EACH since I initially put it together - and every upgrade was trivial to install with no draining of the loop required.
 
Glad your leak testing went well, mine showed the radiator core was toast. Now I got close to 10 years out of them, but still it sucked to discover. Every pipe and hose connection though... Those were solid.
 
Heck, I did both in the same system. I used glass hard line for the pump, both rads and to/from a custom distribution block I built. Then I used soft tube from the distributor to the CPU, Video, and (as it happens) an Intel 10G 2-port NIC. Each component was run to the distributor individually and with QDCs to make component swaps super easy.

My cousin thinks it looks weird, but I have upgraded to a different mainboard and video card TWICE EACH since I initially put it together - and every upgrade was trivial to install with no draining of the loop required.

That’s partially the reason I wanted to use as few fittings as possible, it’ll make upgrading the CPU fairly simple.
 
Great looking loop! If I may, the run at the front coming off the res to cpu would look better if you added an extension fitting so it was running parallel with the run behind it rather than in front of it when looking at the loop as a whole from the side. It looks great, I am not saying it doesn't.
 
Great looking loop! If I may, the run at the front coming off the res to cpu would look better if you added an extension fitting so it was running parallel with the run behind it rather than in front of it when looking at the loop as a whole from the side. It looks great, I am not saying it doesn't.

hey thanks, I’m always open to suggestions. I’m actually in the process of rebuilding this loop because I had a leak from the drain. It wasn’t the drain itself but the extension fitting that went into the EK res itself wasn’t sealing and had a slow leak I didn’t notice overnight...
could have been worse, at least my tubes and main fittings didn’t leak!

So I’m definitely open to suggestions :) I know the tube that runs from the CPU to the res-IN port wasn’t perfectly in line with the res-OUT port. I thought about making them align but then thought maybe it wouldn't be good to hide one behind the other.
 
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