Pyramid-shaped, water-cooled, floor-lamp B22/Buffalo-II concept

Let me state this first: I don't have any DIY amp experience. What I do have is an Aerospace Engineering degree, a pretty good idea of how stuff should be built, and decent soldering, wiring, and CAD software skill.

Today I randomly decided that I want to build a balanced B22 in the near future. But I want mine to be unique, and a one-box design. I hopped onto Solidworks and figured that I can manage to stuff all 6 boards and 2 toroids inside a pyramid-shaped chassis of 15.5" sides and 7.75" height. I don't plan to run speakers off of this thing. Headphones only. I want the exterior of this thing to be CLEAN. No ventilation holes if possible. That means running an off-board heatsink.

I found out a way to position the 6 boards (shown on cross section picture) so that their MOSFETS line up exactly with a band of 1/8" aluminum U-bracket that wraps around the entire pyramid about halfway up. 1/8" is the thickest that McMaster sells in my desired cross-section. This band also provides a visual break and provides mounting structure for the side panels. Will that provide enough heat dissipation to run HD800s? Do the transformers tend to get hot? (which would mean I probably shouldn't mount the S22's above them)

Other preliminary thoughts:

-Tinted transparent 1/8" acrylic sides

-3/16" aluminum (or acrylic?) base

-Band of 1/8" polished stainless steel above the aluminum U-bracket, flush with the plastic (I have its external surfaces as white instead of gray in the pictures). I realize that this is the only place where heat radiates out. It does conduct heat worse than aluminum or copper. But it's prettier when polished. If needed I can cut a valley into the entire thing and have heatsinks emerge, but I don't want them to stick out past flush with the sides.

-No single ended, just balanced. Only plugs that stick out of the entire thing (which will be in the back) are AC power, 2x XLR3 input, XLR4 output.

-Power switch in the back next to the AC plug.

-No other switches or input selectors.

-Crystal pyramid cap, although its hard to find one in the correct 2:2:1 aspect ratio

http://www.jatashop.com/crystal-pyramid-figurine-clear.html

-3W ~100 lumen Luxeon white LED beneath the crystal cap. Going for the Luxor hotel look.

http://blog.mapawatt.com/wp-content/uploads/2009/09/luxor_light.jpg

Here's the results of a few hours of initial brainstorming. Obviously I still need to add a lot of other stuff. The two S22's are in orange and the 4 B22's are in blue. I will be able to do all the metalworking at my university's machine shop, and I also have access to a laser cutter which can perfectly cut the acrylic. Thoughts or comments? And let me know roughly how much heat I need to dissipate when running HD800's.

Quote:

Originally Posted by qusp 

aside from the issue of this being about the most perfectly conceived way to expose the amps to all of the radiated noise from the transformers and power supply equally, stainless will just hang onto the heat, would make about the worst heatsink material imaginable. very creative idea though and well realized even if it is a bit garish IMO. 

 

on to version 2 mate, that just aint gonna work, not even close. you'll get there though, with your knowledge once you get your head around the concepts at play I reckon it'll be an interesting build

Yep. I fiddled with the pyramid idea a bit more and couldn't figure out an efficient way to correctly position everything without making it unrealistically huge and wasting 90% of the volume inside the pyramid, regardless if it's one-box or two boxes that assemble into a pyramid. I guess that's why rectangular objects are never packaged into pyramid. Damn you rectangular shapes and your space efficiency and dullness.

Here's what I've accomplished so far on my twin-box design today. 18"x10"x7"

Rethought the pyramid idea. Base measure 16" and height measure 14". Major increase in space efficiency compared to that earlier two-box design. I also decided to run strips of LED's down the edges and add a Buffalo II DAC inside of it for a hybrid amp/dac.

I couldn't think of a good passive solution for cooling the big tip LED so I'm thinking of adding a watercooling loop to the whole thing. The watercooling idea seems to save a lot of space compared to using Conrad heatsinks, letting me put the transformers plenty far from the DAC and B22's. They'd be just as far as they would be in a typical stacked 2-box design.

Two B22's, one S22, and one Placid PSU share a common aluminum plate on each side which are attached to VGA waterblocks. The LED also has a waterblock. This water pump (black box) and reservoir (clear box) are in the front half of the chassis, and the radiator and fan are in a channel underneath it. A single fan setup could cool up to 400W, so it should be able to cool the B22, S22, DAC PSU's, and a 5W LED easily.

All of this saves me the hassel of an umbilical cord, separate transformer case, and modifying the Conrad heatsinks. It's probably cheaper as well. Plus I can keep a clean-looking flat exterior with no visible heatsinks.

I guess one concern is the 10W-15W motor in the water pump. It's unshielded and might cause some hum. I could put a steel or aluminum box over it though. Thoughts?

B22 boards - blue

S22 boards - orange

Buffalo II/IVY-III stack - red

Placid and PlacidBP - purple

I would like the power supply to be incorporated in if it could be made to work without adverse effects. Is the transformer distancing still not good enough? I see plenty of setups in the B22 gallery with a really close transformer. Although some of them have shielded transformers. Are there any manufacturers that keep a constant stock of shielded transformers?

Edit: Or I could put the pump and transformers together, and isolate them with a shield of mu-metal foil.

http://www.mcmaster.com/#mu-metal-foil/=9g7jnk