How can this part be manufactured?
How can this part be manufactured?
(OP)
Hi There,
I'm looking at getting this part manufactured out of copper which has internal cooling chambers. It needs to be made from 1 piece and needs to be water tight. Does anyone know of a process that can produce this?
Approximate dimensions are 500mm x 60mm x 25mm
Ideally I would like to cast it but the only process I've come up with so far be a sintering process such as sls.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Roy.
I'm looking at getting this part manufactured out of copper which has internal cooling chambers. It needs to be made from 1 piece and needs to be water tight. Does anyone know of a process that can produce this?
Approximate dimensions are 500mm x 60mm x 25mm
Ideally I would like to cast it but the only process I've come up with so far be a sintering process such as sls.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Cheers,
Roy.





RE: How can this part be manufactured?
It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. (Sherlock Holmes - A Scandal in Bohemia.)
RE: How can this part be manufactured?
RE: How can this part be manufactured?
It's a big deal on engine blocks, where the hollow features are much larger and less intricate than you are proposing.
Cheers
Greg Locock
New here? Try reading these, they might help FAQ731-376: Eng-Tips.com Forum Policies http://eng-tips.com/market.cfm?
RE: How can this part be manufactured?
The most difficult part of the process would be removing the investment material from inside the cored passages. This is typically done using water jet.
A more practical approach would be to machine the part in two halves, and then diffusion bond them together. For a copper heat exchanger, machining and diffusion bonding would allow greater precision in the passages and wall thicknesses. Which would result in a more efficient heat exchanger.
Good luck.
Terry
RE: How can this part be manufactured?
Why? So-o-o-o-o-o much easier & less expensive if you make it an assembly.
TygerDawg
Blue Technik LLC
Virtuoso Robotics Engineering
www.bluetechnik.com
RE: How can this part be manufactured?
RE: How can this part be manufactured?
It is better to have enough ideas for some of them to be wrong, than to be always right by having no ideas at all.
RE: How can this part be manufactured?
Furnace brazing was my first thought as well. If the volume (quantity) is high enough, the complex piece could be cast economically and a plate used for the closure. If the volume is low, machining becomes a valid option, but precision machining of copper is not very fun.
RE: How can this part be manufactured?
If so it could open up options in the 3D printing world: Link
If not, ignore this post...
RE: How can this part be manufactured?
The different processes mentioned above will work.
Also, with recent improvements with the sintering process such as SLS, that can give you a good part.
Chris, CSWA
SolidWorks 13
ctopher's home
SolidWorks Legion
RE: How can this part be manufactured?
RE: How can this part be manufactured?
RE: How can this part be manufactured?
So to make it out of a single part - casting maybe achieved with some difficultly. SLS rapid prototyping would also probably work however expensive? (I'm pretty sure you cad print / sinter copper)
Options if it is split into 2 parts - Furnace brazing or diffusion bonding.
I'm not against making it in 2 parts if its a lot more cost effected then a single part and can still be water tight.
So from everyone's suggestions above could I assume the most cost method would be to cast or machine the part in two halves and furnace braze them together? This part may end up mass manufactured.
Cheers,
Roy.
RE: How can this part be manufactured?
RE: How can this part be manufactured?
In particular, you'd have to deposit a _lot_ of copper, and mill off most of it to get the external prismatical shape.
Servometer is one supplier of electroformed parts.
Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA
RE: How can this part be manufactured?
RE: How can this part be manufactured?
E.g., at high volumes, you could coin/coldpress/impactextrude the halves, at a rate of many per minute, with some limits on depth, but you might have to accept some degree of mismatch after the brazing or diffusion bonding operation. At low volumes, you could CNC machine the halves, but copper is not fun to machine.
At most volumes, brass would be superior to copper for workability/chip_friability/scrap_value, at a very slight deficit in thermal conductivity.
To be frank about it, I regard insistence on pure copper, as opposed to another of the infinity of coppermetals (see copper.org), as an 'amateur track'.
Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA
RE: How can this part be manufactured?
If it has a cover, then I yield to what the experts have already said here...
Mike McCann
MMC Engineering
RE: How can this part be manufactured?
What is Engineering anyway: FAQ1088-1484: In layman terms, what is "engineering"?
RE: How can this part be manufactured?
Mike McCann
MMC Engineering
RE: How can this part be manufactured?
{
I'm under the impression that the project, and the material selection, is being steered by some pushy, arrogant, dumbass MBA type, who looked no farther than a table of thermal conductivity numbers. ... as has happened to me on occasion. ... not that I'm bitter about it.
}
If you trouble yourself to run the numbers for the whole problem, you will find that the contribution to the total thermal gradient of a thin metallic barrier is completely dwarfed by the contribution of the boundary layer or laminar sublayer on the fluid side, and by the thermal resistance of the joint between the cooling module and whatever is being cooled on the hot side.
Whether the thin metallic barrier is copper, or brass, or nickel, or aluminum, or even steel, hardly matters in the real world, and is small enough to be difficult to measure if you wish to bother with a proper experiment.
Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA
RE: How can this part be manufactured?
Would this part be any easier to produce if it was made out of stainless steel, aluminium, bronze or brass?
Cheers for the input!!
Roy.
RE: How can this part be manufactured?
If this is immersed in another fluid, turn the bends 90 degrees. Piece of tube running the length, bend 180 and run the full length back, bend 180 and run the full length forward again. If needed, crimp end plates on to hold the tubes in shape and allow you to attach the gizmo to something else. If the other fluid that it is immersed in is air, you are going to need fins.
Google ... "images" ... "power steering cooler". Something like that.
RE: How can this part be manufactured?
If you allow a seam the cost is in machining the channels, so brass would be least awful.
Most producible is probably a serpentine copper tube cast into a block of aluminum.
Corrosion resistance will affect the selection.
Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA
RE: How can this part be manufactured?
Make a serpentine pipe out of copper tube.
Put pipe inside case.
Pack space full of magnesium oxide powder.
RE: How can this part be manufactured?
Brazing is a well established and reliable method of constructing heat exchangers. Diffusion bonding would be more expensive, but a diffusion bonded component is generally considered to be equal to one produced from a single piece of wrought material in terms of reliability.
Hope that helps.
Terry
RE: How can this part be manufactured?
It is a capital mistake to theorise before one has data. Insensibly one begins to twist facts to suit theories, instead of theories to suit facts. (Sherlock Holmes - A Scandal in Bohemia.)
RE: How can this part be manufactured?
What is Engineering anyway: FAQ1088-1484: In layman terms, what is "engineering"?
RE: How can this part be manufactured?
Mike Halloran
Pembroke Pines, FL, USA
RE: How can this part be manufactured?
Mike McCann
MMC Engineering
RE: How can this part be manufactured?