Sand

henke · Post by **henke** » Sat Feb 01, 2003 11:47 am

I've been lurkning for a while. This is my first post.

I saw this in another thread and it got me thinking.

bluehat wrote:However sand shouldn't be used in isolating hard disks without any cooling since heat conductivity of sand is only around 0.27 W/mK. Not much compared to aluminum's 237 W/mK.

Couldn't you use sand made out of aluminum? Or copper?

Does anyone have an idea of where you could buy metal "sand"?

Is there some obvious reason this wouldn't work? I don't wan't to fry my HD

jhh · Post by **jhh** » Sat Feb 01, 2003 12:06 pm

this seems very odd to me. the first time you moved your computer you'd have a cyber-beach alll over your desk.

powergyoza · Post by **powergyoza** » Sat Feb 01, 2003 12:08 pm

There was a thread about using copper dust in the forums. The search function will help you find it.

iom_dave · Post by **iom_dave** » Sat Feb 01, 2003 12:38 pm

the metal 'sand' will conduct causing the pins on the chips to short - my hards hard exposed boards dont know about yours!

henke · Post by **henke** » Sat Feb 01, 2003 12:44 pm

@jhh

I don't think the drive would take to well to having all it's drive circutry shorted by the metal dust

You'd have to keep the dust in an enclosure or a bag.

@powergyoza

Found it! Thanks. Hmm, it doesn't seem like anyone tried this method yet...

Oh, well. I think I'll sacrifice and old 500Mb drive to Hephaestus and how it goes.

powergyoza · Post by **powergyoza** » Sat Feb 01, 2003 1:08 pm

henke wrote: Hmm, it doesn't seem like anyone tried this method yet...

Oh, well. I think I'll sacrifice and old 500Mb drive to Hephaestus and how it goes.

Yeah, I'm still in the rubber box mode of thinking... I like rubber for it's non-toxicity, ease of construction and low cost. If you try the dust, let me know how it works!

henke · Post by **henke** » Sat Feb 01, 2003 1:46 pm

powergyoza wrote:If you try the dust, let me know how it works!

Sure thing

jhh · Post by **jhh** » Sat Feb 01, 2003 2:25 pm

In case you couldn't tell

I'm pretty doubtful. sand/dust just isn't elastic to absorb vibrations - wouldn't a vibrating object just sink slowly to the bottom of the sand, until it touched the base of the enclosure and was no longer decoupled?

I don't know though, it's be interesting to hear now you get on.

bluehat · Post by **bluehat** » Sun Feb 02, 2003 7:12 am

Copper dust is quite pricey, $ 585 /5kg which should be enough for complete silence. Strong bags should be used so that no dust is leaked to cause shortcuts. It might be possible to find copper drilling industry waste dust for free...

Sand

Sand

fry the hard disk circuit board!