Thinktank Revision 2.0

[grinder]

if i see a huge fire ball from my back yard in strathmore i guess i'll know what happened lol

neat, i live there too

.......


great job Braineater... we all had a blast today playing in your "sandbox". It was great to meet all of the HWC members and staff today.

Some of the notable sideshows: fishing for masking tape, dry ice cooled "beverages", and the HaDeS [patent pending] cold iso squirt troubleshooting method.

\m/

 

[Chilly]

I'm just curious, who from HWC actually ended up showing up? :biggrin:

 

[3.0charlie]

12V Charlie... meh. I won't speak about that forgotten pci-e molex connector on your card HaDeS...

Chilly, I was there, as was Eldonko and FixT. Check out the pics in the Gallery section.

 

[Nademon]

So did it work? Did you succeed in opening the transdimensional rift and travel to distant galaxies??

 

[BrainEater]

Heheh...No rift in space srry... :haha:

The cooling system works great.....The Nitrogen system does it's job really well too , it was impressive to see the pump totally frost free while just above it the valve was covered.hopefully there's some pics of that....And the vacuum dewar works as well....

We did'nt get the computer part to work , but that's gonna be part of the learning process from here on in.

The are some observations I/we made about the machines operation . Here's a few :

-The top assembly that holds the mobo / provides the vent lines , Is really clunky , it doesnt work well , for several reasons...I will be redoing it.

-Along the same line , the 'umbilical' that provides I/O/power/etc , is a pita....it needs to instantly disconnect to make changeovers easier.

-Balls of masking tape do not pump well. :haha:

-The amount of dissolved co2 in the Iso is enough the seriously degrade the pumps operation.This can and will be fixed.

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Any other observations from people that were there , let's hear em.

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Dean,Rob,John,Nick really good work doing all the mobo testing !
And really , thanks to everyone that attended , everybody helped out , a true team effort......thanks a lot , hope yah had fun !

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As to the coolant : it's either conductivity , or capacitance thats the issue , I'll be doing some testing later in the week .

For the moment I'm gonna take a break , it was a hectic 2 weeks prior.I do have to clean up a bit , theres dead motherboards all over the place.... but thats about all I'll be doing for a few days.

There are more pics , but they'll go into the gallery section post.....

:thumb:

 

[BrainEater]

Ok !

A couple people have inquired about the possiblity of issues other than conductivity/capacitance......I'll run through a brief synopsis of what happened , and the tests we ran.
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Once the setup was complete , I filled the tank with Iso , and started the pump....It did not pump well for some reason , and after a while It choked out a small ball of masking tape....so the pump was shut shut off and the tape removed.Upon restart , the pump was back to normal.

So we tried the first post of the computer.No joy.

I discovered to my horror that I had mistakenly connected the battery to the power switch leads , and assumed that I had killed the motherboard.We would later discover that this was not the case.....

At this point Rob and John stepped up and ran off to memory express and bought two more motherboards.Thanks again !!

So we put the new p5k-SE in and hit the button...At this point it actually posted , but we had monitor issues and didn't see it....we did however witness light 'boiling' of the Iso around the naked CPU.Very cool...we shut down to address the monitor issue , but it would not post again.

So we dried off the mobo's , and tested them dry.....The first p5k was actually fine...so the battery issue did'nt hurt it.......Back into the tank , hit the button , no joy.

2nd mobo went back in after verification of dry post.....hit the button , still no luck..

Now , it's important to be aware that at this point it's warm Iso , dry ice has not even entered the picture yet.....

We then stopped using the thinktank , and started liquid testing in a baking pan.We tried Iso a couple more times..no luck , we then tried distilled water...no luck....the motherboards always worked once dry tho......

During the lunchbreak , HaDeS came up with the idea of selectively testing various areas of the motherboards with Iso to narrow down the problem.2 points bud !

So Dean,Rob,John and Nick started a rapid-fire succession of mobo teardown/rebuilds that was cool to watch....I decided to test run the cooling system and burn up the dry ice.

The result of the mobo tests was that nothing error'd until the Iso interacted around the CPU...great work guys !

To my great delight , the thinktank cooling system etc worked damn near flawlessly , although we ran outta dry ice at -50c....

So thats the story...as you can see mechanical stresses and thermal shock were not the issue.

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:thumb:

 

[BrainEater]

I have done the fluid conduction tests.

Those of you who say distilled water doesnt conduct , pay attention ! :haha:

Here's the test setup :

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Now this would be more accurate with a proper 'megger but the results speak for themselves.

All values are @ 20c.

Clean Isopropanol : 2 Mohms
Distilled water : 350 Kohms
Tap water : 21 Kohms
Acetone : 1 Mohms
Methyl Hydrate : 70 Kohms
Kerosene : Infinite ohms
Varsol : Infinite ohms
Mineral spirits : Infinite ohms

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I'm gonna do a couple quick materials compatability tests , but I might just drop a mobo into kerosene....

h34r:

 

[Arinoth]

Heh i could have told you that bout distilled water if you had asked me, actually did an experiment back in first year chem (or was it physics) at university where we were testing the conductivity of different liquids and to some people's surprise, distilled water was still relatively conductive.

 

[BrainEater]

Oh yea , I fully knew that , I just wanted to post numbers.

And here's the rub :

FiXT has run computers in distilled water , And I have made one work in Iso.

Yet no love at all on friday.

I'm just gonna start eliminating potential failure points.

:thumb:

 

[MonsterSound]

Thanks for the update.
(man this is the coolest project - pun not intended)