Yes you guessed it. Time for some more Jam Jar luvin! Or Jelly
Jar for those Americans that walk amongst us. Yes they have may uses, storing
pencils in, urine samples, pickling poor defenceless animals or even watercooling.
Some of our readers who can cast their mind back to the amateurish spodesabode.co.uk
(not that we are saying we are now any better!), will remember our original
Jam Jar Watercooling articles, if not parts 1,2
and 3 are available for your viewing
pleasure. But the idea in those articles are very different to what I am to
discuss today.
For this article, I used a beetroot jar. It has a .75 litre capacity. I found
when contemplating putting a reservoir inside my computer, there where two
things I was worried about. Size and leakage. One of jam jars great properties
are their watertight properties. and being quite small.
What I decided to do, was make a system where I could close
off the reservoir, and I had to do was connect the pipes to the lid somehow,
and get power to it. I also had portability in the back of my mind. If I just
thread the pump wire through a hole in the lid, and probably then through
a hole in the case, my reservoir would be stuck to being in my case. I decided
that using something like the plugs on the back of a PSU would be a great
idea, infact why not from a PSU? I took my fried 300W PSU (sob) and desoldered
the socket. The next step was to mark out on the lid where it would go and
cut a hole. The great thing about these sockets is there is about a 2.5mm
ridge (great for overlapping the box edges and epoxying on).
Not quite central... As this was an experimental setup, I used the "broken"
senfu pump they sent me first time round when I reviewed the Senfu
Watercooling Kit. I chopped the cable to the pump (leaving enough so
that I could take the lid off without wrenching the pump out). I soldered
the wires into place. I'll sort the epoxying out after I found a system for
hosing insertion.
And
what did I find? Well a friend of mine Jeff Evans suggested using a Bic Biro.
So I ran round the house and found the perfect pen. I expanded on his idea
by trying to copy the senfu screw system design. As you can see (vaguely)
the 6mm tubing that comes in the senfu kit fits snugly into the biro (after
a bit of spit for lubrication) and holds tightly. You might also notice the
lid, I chopped some of the end off and threaded the tubing through that. Then
it screwed down into place.
So I made two of these biro systems and made a hole for them
to go in the lid. I then pushed them in. Now it was time for epoxy! For people
who don't know what epoxy is, it is a glue like resin. You mix a hardener
with it and apply it to a cleaned surface. It dries withtin about 5 minutes
and is waterproof (if you get the right one).
So I mixed it up and dunked a load around the biros, and underneath
the socket, and around the socket on the other side. What about waterproofing
those bear wires I hear you cry? Well I dunked a load around those as well.
But unfortunelty I don't think that was enough. So I let it dry and then put
a layer of insulating tape over it. I then epoxied over that as well.
So, here we have the final result! Not too shabby I think you shall agree.
I turned it on it's side completley submerging the socket and it was fine.
If it did short out of course, it would blow the fuse in the pumps plug and
the pump would fail OUCH! But no problems here... But, that can't be it, there
is always something to complain about! And yes, there is... I made the wire
to the socket a little too long so it was difficult to fit the whole lot into
the jar. I also had to dissassemble the pump to get past the indent at the
top, and then reassemble once it was back in the jar.
But is that the ONLY use for biros? Hell no. A friend of mine gave me a waterpump
from a gardening display he had, but it used 11mm hosing. I wrapped some insulating
tape around it, jammed it into the hole and put a small amount of epoxy on
it. SWEET!
Spode
