How to Attach Heat Pipes into an Assembly

ATS engineer Greg is in the lab today to discuss the ways to attach heat pipes to an assembly and the processes needed for each option.
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[@docmdb87]

So awesome this manufacturing dude is answering questions for all us pc modders! Youre the man!

[@akikinnunen8573]

This video is absolute diamond. Thank you a lot for sharing the knowledge you have about heatpipes. I am planning on building a custom GPU cooler with heatpipes and huge heatsink. This video helped me a lot :)

[@justincredible5406]

Torille!

[@olegolegunches4905]

И как успехи, получилось?

[@supersop1367]

How’d it go?

[@inqizzo]

Did it work?

[@danielgiesbrecht9701]

This was a goldmine of information. I’m an electronics engineer and I’m looking to use a heat pipe for an industrial product, and this was a fantastic primer. Thank you!

[@heatsinks]

Glad it was helpful!

[@WarPigstheHun]

Hey I remember seeing you in an old, old video! Nervous but full of Smaht.

[@powerhour4602]

Great explanation, sound, and video.

[@heatsinks]

Glad it helped!

[@craigwilliam532]

Amazing video. Really good job Greg!!

[@heatsinks]

Thanks for watching

[@chrisminnoy3637]

Great video!

[@wmurraytx]

Nice video, thanks.

[@chrisstanford3652]

Thanks for the prototyping insights, Wikipedia only goes so far🙂

[@calebgrefe8922]

Thanks for the info!

[@heatsinks]

You are so welcome! Glad you found it helpful!

[@blablip4712]

This dude is the maaaaaan!

[@finalmanfinalman3223]

I've done a few custom at-home DIY heat pipe heatsink projects. Now in the past I've been using Sn42Bi58 low melt temp solder but have discovered recently that having silver part in the solder will improve it's strength. What solder paste would you recommend for heat pipe heatsink soldering?

[@Maisonier]

Can Heat Pipes be used in cars to replace automotive engine cooling system?

[@made7236]

Thanks!

[@ckush928]

Do you think heat pipes could be 3d printed into complex shapes to achieve more efficient designs? So instead of the fins you'd have a mesh of heatpipes or something like that.

[@heatsinks]

Maybe. The field of additive manufacturing is growing and new developments happen regularly. Perhaps 3D Printing a bent HP would be better than bending one? The wick is pretty fragile so that would might be quite a challenge with today's technology.

[@andreasseifert1788]

Great Video

[@heatsinks]

Thanks!

[@spinning-rstudio8054]

Do you have any guidance in regard to how much solder paste needs to be used when reflowing the pipe into a machined channel? For example, is it sufficient to have solder mostly only running along the bottom of the channel or does it need to be 180 degrees around the channel?

[@heatsinks]

The solder paste should be applied on all surfaces where there will be contact between the heat pipe and the machined part. However, we try to avoid using heat pipes in bores that go 360° around the heat pipe. It’s much easier to assure full contact and solder spreading if the contact goes 2/3 or 3/4 of the way around, as in a keyhole shape for a round heat pipe, or a T-slot for a flat heat pipe. You can also sandwich the heat pipe(s) between top and bottom plates, where the plates do not quite touch each other.

[@gf6368]

Some of the heatpipes in off the shelf coolers are slightly flattened at the cpu block base. I was wondering how does one flatten round heatpipes at one end properly?

[@heatsinks]

For prototypes, you can probably flatten the pipes in the block using a vise if you want to do it yourself.

[@Real_Tim_S]

I though up a couple of questions for a project I'm considering: 1) What if one wanted a special shape on one end of the heat pipe - say an equilateral triangle? 2) How does one calculate the thermal capacity of a heatpipe? 3) Say I have a 15Watt 1/2" heat source on one end, and want to keep the cold end within 5°C, and only have 2" of length embedded in a heatsink?

[@heatsinks]

1) I’m sure it could be done with the correct die to squeeze it in, but we have not done created any heat pipes with special shapes like that. 2) Please refer to the calculations shown on our heat pipe datasheet to get an approximation of the thermal capacity. We also have Qpedia papers on our website which contain more detail. 3) Feel free to contact us via our website if you would like to get into details about your thermal management project. We would be glad to work with you.

[@paradiselost9946]

erm..... what IS the critical temperature? for standard (i guess) 6 mm water type (i assume...)? sort of wanna make a chimney water heater, solder some into a copper pipe and sleeve it in a larger pipe... sorta like an inside out hedgehog... bought a bunch of compression fitting with the idea its possibly better to do it that way. hard solder/braze the fittings in and just screw down onto the pipes. i may want to change them for longer ones. got 40mm shorties... shorter than i expected! havent found much on heating the things for soldering... then again, when i think about it... theyre under vacuum. theyre going to have to get pretty hot before they get to a decent pressure, and copper is still good for pressure up til...400C-ish i would assume them to get some oxide colour change well before they explode!

[@IrocZIV]

Thanks

[@douglascoggeshall2490]

2023-11-07 ... again, an absolutely excellent presentation ... well done ...

[@heatsinks]

Thanks @douglascoggeshall2490 we're glad you enjoyed it!

[@vladimirhadzic1958]

Maybe a weird question. But how would you shorten an existing heat-pipe? Can you for example crush it with a vise at a certain point that you preserve the vacuum inside the part you want, then cut the other part and solder the crushed end? Thank you for your video.

[@heatsinks]

We do not recommend shortening heat pipes yourself; the seal will not be as reliable as the factory seal. We offer many different lengths off the shelf, and we always recommend working around one of those. Check our website, www.qats.com for the full list. That said, if you wanted to try shortening a heat pipe, I would do exactly what you have described. Crimp the tube, cut off the excess, and then fill the end with solder. It may be difficult or impossible to maintain the vacuum during this process. Within the crimp, there will be sintered copper material, and that will prevent the walls of the tube from making a seal, while allowing air to pass through the porous sintered material.

[@8BitRip]

@@heatsinks good answer

[@passerby6168]

Great video thank you very much. Do you fill the heat pipes with plain water, distilled or other type liquid? What ratio is typically used for the liquid, e.g. 90% of available area inside each heat pipe? And random stupid question that just popped into my head - what would happen if liquid metal was used instead of water? I just googled that to see if anyone had tried and it seems not so stupid after all, apparently used in the space and atomic industries?

[@olegolegunches4905]

Жидкий металл не прокатит, так как при задачах земных нужно наполнение, испаряющееся при наиболее низкой возможной температуре.

[@passerby6168]

@@olegolegunches4905 благодарю вас :)

[@omegaglory1]

I recently soaked a heat sink in a bath of isopropyl alcohol followed by warm soapy water. Some white residue has appeared around the seams and where the pipes meet the rest of the heat sink. Is this anything to worry about? I’ve been told it’s just solder flux but could also be thermal paste?

[@heatsinks]

That's certainly an unusual result. But isopropyl alcohol is commonly used in many electronics cleaning applications, so its doubtful its would cause a problem. But the white may be conductive flux residue from the soldering process. Your conducting heat so we're not sure that's going to be an issue, other than cosmetic. Your best bet is to try it and make sure the chip you are cooling stays within the expected temperature range - given airflow and ambient temperature. We have a couple of articles you may find helpful. First, you can learn more about the use of isopropyl alcohol at this excellent article from Techspray: www.techspray.com/cleaning-electronics-with-isopropyl-alcohol A second helpful article is from Chemtronics www.chemtronics.com/ultimate-guide-to-cleaning-electronics#t18

[@catklyst]

does the tin and bismuth not run the risk of alloying with the aluminium heat plate and cause problems?

[@achannelhasnoname5182]

He said the aluminium was nickel plated.

[@catklyst]

@@achannelhasnoname5182 ahh I missed that ty! Makes acceptable sense then.

[@P8qzxnxfP85xZ2H3wDRV]

If I wanted to develop and build a video card cooler with you guys for a small batch of 1,000 pieces, would that even make sense financially or be completely unsustainable? Something in the 400 W range with a vapour chamber, heatpipes and a CNC machined water-to-heatpipe heat exchanger? Skived fins on the topside of the vapour chamber and zipper fins on the heatipes? Similar to the new coolers on NVIDIA's FE cards for the 3000 series.

[@heatsinks]

Hello, we would suggest you reach out to us with the following link so we can further address your questions and project - www.qats.com/Corporate/contact

[@WarPigstheHun]

Question, say cost is not an issue, what if instead of 4 heat pipes, we had a component equivalent of 1 fat heat pipe? Would the strip of cupper be more or less effective than the 4 heat pipe?

[@ddegn]

Heat pipes conduct heat much better than solid copper.

[@heatsinks]

@WarPigs ... @Duane is correct about this. But let's dig into this a bit further. That large component might be tough to cool with a heat pipe just layed on top of it. One approach is to find the hot spot on that component and attach the heat pipe to that spot, that would be a possible solution. It would also be less expensive and less heavy than a block of copper. Another solution is to use a less expensive aluminum heat sink and attach to it a vapor chamber or possibly heat pipes. That gives you the performance of copper for heat transfer but with less weight and less cost. We actually worked with a customer who had the kind of application and we have the case study on our blog here www.qats.com/cms/2017/03/28/case-study-thermal-comparison-copper-aluminum-heat-sinks/

[@infuriatedjurijcorn1346]

That is really interesting because i wanna create a custom heatsink for my laptop. I´ve got 2 questions though: Is there a point where the pipe will burst when you bend it and is there a diffrence in flat and round pipes? Where can i check what my heatpipes are made of? I mean i can obviously see that they are from copper but i mean whats on the inside if i would like to solder it.

[@heatsinks]

Yes, heat pipes will stop functioning if they are torn open during bending. Using the largest possible bend radius is advised. On our heat pipe datasheet, the suggested minimum bend radii are listed, at 3 times the diameter for round heat pipes. For flat heat pipes, the equivalent diameter is the dimension of the tube that you are bending “against”. For both the sintered and grooved wick types of heat pipes, if the outer tube is copper, then whatever is inside is also copper. The internals won’t be damaged from soldering temperatures; the limiting factor is the fact that the tube will burst from internal pressure at a temperature around 250°C.

[@_________9996]

My mistake of getting the combination of thin form factor and high end dGPU in a laptop also brought me here. I wish I had a lab to prototype my own cooling designs.

[@marcinhilgier4798]

Is it possible to join a flattened heat pipe (or multiple heat pieps) with a vapour chamber to improve performance?

[@WarPigstheHun]

That's what I want to know. I know you have to actually splice it open, and put the cupper powder to the sides, but say we did that, would 1 flat, fat, individual pipe actually be better or worse than the separate 4 pipes.

[@DragonLAM3]

6:41 - flush

[@JackLe1127]

omg you're the Asian Tom Scott

[@heatsinks]

Greg is a very experienced and talented engineer. We are very fortunate to have him on our team!

[@graemewight2975]

Sodder ? Ooh, you mean Solder. 👍

[@AutodidactEngineer]

This guy has no clue what he is saying!

[@notapplicable793]

Are you serious?