Will stainless steel react with copper

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Postal Dude

Limp Gawd
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Mar 15, 2005
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Having trouble finding supplier of big enough thick copper for a res. WIll stainless steel do the job without causing corrosion in the loop?
 
stainless steel has piss-poor thermal conductivity. it is probably not the best material to make your chiller-res out of. i don't know for sure if it will react with copper or not.
 
hmmm cheers. What other materials wont react. I may have access to titanium, is that ok?
If someone could give me a list of materials i could use from best to worst it would be great!
 
Passivised Stainless Steel is compatible with copper.

Titanium is actually dramatically more noble than copper, and may actually lead to copper corrosion. I wouldn't use it.

I'd use the stainless and a 10% mix of corrosion inhibitor.
 
@cathar: i would agree with your assessment of stainless if he was not planning on making a res out of metal and then putting one or more peltier modules with the cold sides against the res and cooling the hot sides with heatsinks.

that's why i brought up thermal conductivity.

@postal dude: have you though about getting a length of relatively large diameter copper pipe and partially flattening out a sufficient area for the peltiers to press against?
 
Passivised Stainless Steel is compatible with copper.

Passivised is the keyword.
Take it from one who has learned from the wisdom of Cathar.
 
DFI Daishi said:
wow.....i was previously unaware that the united kingdom is located on the north american continant. :rolleyes:
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It's not, thank God, but a friend of mine in the UK did buy some materials from a few of those companies, none are protected by embargo.

Sorry I tried to help, I won't make that mistake again :rolleyes:
 
cathar... can u gimme an example of corrosion inhibitor?
How easy is it to weld Stainless steel?
Daishi: If The steel is thin enough it will jus act as a cold plate between my pelt and water right? am gonna set somethin up like this (i think)

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A heat sink on the inside of res aswell as outside. The one on the outside will be to cool the pelt. The one on the inside i want the incoming water to flow through the fins before exiting the other side of res. Should help a little bit.
 
Cathar said:
Titanium is actually dramatically more noble than copper.
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Oh gesh... now I have to start worrying about my metal's pedigree and heraldry too?

Is House of Lords more or less noble than Queesryche, what about King Diamond? :D

...couldn't resist.
 
BillR said:
It's not, thank God, but a friend of mine in the UK did buy some materials from a few of those companies, none are protected by embargo.

Sorry I tried to help, I won't make that mistake again :rolleyes:
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my bad. at first i thought that you had failed to notice his location, since all of the locations that i saw on that site were in the US or canada.

importing is a royal pain in the arse all the same, and he would most likely be better off working with what he can get domestically. shipping, duties, handling fees and sales tax at the border make it a real drag.
 
Postal Dude said:
cathar... can u gimme an example of corrosion inhibitor?
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zerex racing super coolant. it's made by valvoline. i am waiting on a backorder of some for myself.

Postal Dude said:
How easy is it to weld Stainless steel?
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not very easy. you might want to see if one of the welding guys where your dad works would be willing to do the work for a case of beer, or the like.

Postal Dude said:
Daishi: If The steel is thin enough it will jus act as a cold plate between my pelt and water right? am gonna set somethin up like this (i think)
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you really want a cold plate to be made out of something will good thermal conductivity, otherwise not all of the cooling of the peltier is making it into the water. there is a very good reason why decent to good quality stainless steel pots and pans have a plate of alumium or something else with good thermal conductivity attached to the bottom.

have you thought of making the res out of plastic, cutting a square out of it the size of the heatsink that will be sticking into the water, and mounting, then sealing the heatsink into place, and pressing the pelt directly to that?
 
was thinking of modding a plastic one with a cold plate on one side, Would definately be alot easier (on the eye aswel!) got my dad looking into it. He back at work tomorrow, gonna ask about spare materials and stuff. A few tig welders there so should be pretty cool. If the materials cant be aquired then the modded plastic is the way to go. But i hold good faith in opper or brass fabrication! :D

Is zerex available in the UK?

Welders are very easy to get hold of where my dad is so thats good.

spoke to him today... choices were brass or copper. Either is good. So i think im in business... how much power do i want goin to pelt's? 75W ones are cheap. next step up thats available is 200W! will 2 80's on a seperate PSU be ok?

The company that sells the pelts supplies 40x40mm hsf combo's with the pelts so cooling will be gooood.



PS: sorry if bad grammar, repetition, poor spelling. lack of sense in this thread. AM a little tipsy!
 
check performance auto parts stores for availability of zerex.

i still say that you should go with multiple ~80 watt pelts for ease of cooling the hot sides. maybe add yet another PSU and another pelt or two later.
 
Why not use copper sheeting from a roofing supplier?
Check your yellow pages for local roofing suppliers. Comes in various gauges...
 
Got my dad on the task.... he got some 8"ID copper tubing. He gonna cut a small section out of the tube so you can see inside it and join two of them together to get sort of a figure eight shape.... i can have the in and out on one end, and the two pelts the other end... hopefully convection will help me out moving the warm water with the cold, also the pump will move water towards the cold side, give me a nice cold buffer to work with. I jus gotta supply him with an old Heat sing to braze into the one side, he can get 1/4" ID barbs easily. SO it looks like its all gonna happen. Any Comments on the design....

Two Big bore pipe welded together to form a sort of figure 8. In and out on one side. 2 80W pelts on the other. Gonna be fun!
 
Jus had a thought! Dont know why noone warned me sooner. 99% of all Heat sinks are made out of aluminium. Having one inside the RES to help cool the water would defy the object of having a copper RES lol. So scrap that thought. 160W worth of Pelts gonna have to do without the HS inside the res. Sure it will be fine with the water flow.
 
Cheers dude. Looks like i need a cpu block made of solid diamond! that would ROCK!
Looks like copper is a much better bet over the SS thanks
 
the convenience of diamond cooling is that you would most likely need only 1 120mm fan at 5v blowing air in, and 1 120mm fan at 5v blowing air out. if you really want to, you could add a 60mm or 40mm undervolted fan in the top just to remove excess air. :D :cool:

and the diamond heatsink would probably be about 1/5 the thickness of current heatsinks and be more effective. :eek:

 
Great! I'll get one off ebay tomorrow. Will stick it on the end of a phaze change evap head. w00t
 
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