The BIG weekend tweak!

[NickB]

nick any reason you seem particularly aggressive to manoet?

your speakers are heavy because they have drivers in them, nothing to do with the aluminium.

i get that you dont agree with the way he thinks, but feel free to leave well enough alone. if you antagonise him every chance you get people will begin to look at you in a negative light and be less open to helping you if you actually need it sometime.

Manoet might get to the end of his tweakend (im trademarking that ps its mine) and go oops im an idiot it was actually aluminium all along, but guaranteed he will tell us either way so lets just see what the outcome is.

Not at all aggressive and the weight of my speakers has very little to do with the drivers. They are heavy because they are made of 1/2 inch thick aluminium which is very heavy stuff.

[completeluxury]

what the hell! are they custom?

[thumb5]

The 'tooth' on this adhesive is likely rated 50-75lbs per sq inch. Which means there's enough inside to hold over 2,500lbs. Just crazy to use this much of this product on something that may need warranty work down the road. Oh well its days are numbered around here. I just need to duplicate its sizes and shapes out of single-sided material to have around for reassembly. Here you can see how that piece of glass I found so worrisome is really a piece-o-cake.

Manoet - I'd assume this stuff is there for the purpose of heat transfer from the PCBs to the casework, maybe more so for that than simply as an adhesive?  (I might be totally off course, just thinking aloud...)

[Manoet]

NickB- As I said in that post I've worked with aluminum for many, many years and have a pretty good idea of what it weighs in sizes familiar to me. Aluminum has a density (pounds per cu inch) of 0.0975 while brass has a density of .308. When I picked up the bare Devialet case I knew immediately this is not aluminum. Had it been maybe only 1.5 or 2X as heavy as aluminum it might not have even caught my attention. But brass being nigh on 3.16X heavier than aluminum it just screamed "too heavy" and I knew immediately something was awry with my original thought of it being alloy. Trust me no one wanted it to be brass less than me. I had pinned all hopes and planned tweaks related to this upgrade on it being aluminum. No one is hurt/disappointed by this outcome more than me. But as promised I'll confirm its not aluminum within a few hours and brass remains the biggest suspect.

thumb5- Who knows what Devialet is thinking? Only thing I know to be true is this stuff would make a better potholder than thermally conductive medium. You can wrap it around a finger and touch a flame or incredibly hot surface for quite an extended period without discomfort. Wouldn't be in my first couple hundred choices for efficiently transferring heat and it won't be re-used on reassembly. If you look at materials used specifically for heat transfer you'll find them to be pastes, typically containing silver/copper particulate matter that are known thermally conductive particles and used in incredibly thin layers rather than thick insulative resilient 'blankets." Whether its for heat transfer or heat insulation there are better choices available to me. But I will be spending some time with it making comparisons from which I'll develop another approach which I'll disclose along with why once chosen.

[bentrider]

From the website cut and paste:

Chassis carved out of a single aluminium block


Is aluminium a special alloy, French for aluminum, or a typo?  

[Antoine]

The only ones that spell it wrong are the Americans!

http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/aluminium.htm

[bentrider]

The only ones that spell it wrong are the Americans!

http://www.worldwidewords.org/articles/aluminium.htm

And now I suppose you are going to tell me we drive on the wrong side of the road?

[Antoine]

In The Netherlands we drive at the same side of the road as in the US, so no. It's the brits, some of their (former) colonies and a small number of others where they drive on the wrong side of the road.

http://www.worldstandards.eu/cars/list-o...countries/

[Rufus McDufus]

I would be a little wary of replacing the thermal pads. It is pretty-commonly used material in computers. I guess it has another advantage of sticking components down but allowing for a bit of give, maybe more protective when shipping units. Who knows? I can imagine there are more thermally-efficient materials/methods though.

[Manoet]

Ok guys, time to drop everything and get to the bottom of the aluminininium question. No, not the spelling aspect but the material one. Little would please me more than to be wrong on this. Gimme a half hour and we'll know for sure.

Rufus- I believe there's an element of fact in what you're saying due to the thinness and 'flexibilty' of the primary PCB.especially with the added weight of 2nd story PCB's stacked on top. And when heated they're even more flexible. If it were to flex while powered on beyond a certain amount it could put any of many charged electrical solder points and/or other exposed conductive contact areas in direct contact with the ground-to-earth chassis... and instant component failure would result summarily, on-the-spot. In fact this is an area I plan to cover later in the week using small plastic spacers adhered to the PCB back-side in an effort to offset the potential for a dead-short situation while minimizing the insulative and heat-retentive effect of resilient foams.

Back in a flash with aluminum or brass. Place yer bets!