Ice Cold Husky Bed From PC Water Cooling Parts- Sponsored by JLCPCB.

Now it is 38.7ºc. Hey everyone! As most of you know, I’ve adopted a rescue husky- Momo. Now Shenzhen is a very hot city- and not the kind of place anyone should bring a snow dog, but Momo is here, and I’m here so we have to make the best of it with lots of air conditioning and an indoor treadmill for her. But, if Momos outside on a long walk or playing, she can still get overheated very easily. Because Momo’s fur is so thick, it would be hard to take her temperature normally It would have to be her ear or her butt and she wouldn’t like that at all, so I use a microchip. By Shenzhen law all dogs have to have a tiny RFID microchip implanted.

01:09 - It’s not a GPS, and you can’t track them, but it does have a serial number that officials can look up in a database to find who the pet belongs to, so they can be returned to their owners. And before you ask about bad things that can happen to our furry friends here that’s illegal in Shenzhen now, and very strict penalties. But, we still don’t want them to get lost so we have mandatory microchips. Who was the doctor that examined her before? Mr. Rou She might bark if she feels the needle. I should have bought her some snacks. Momo is a good girl, good girl. She’s afraid of big needles.

02:00 - Since Momo had to get a chip implanted anyway, I choose to have her implanted with a Bio-Thermo chip It’s like a normal ID chip, but also lets me do very accurate temperature checks on her with this handheld RFID reader called the Halo Scanner. I’ll put a link in the description box if you want to get one. If Momo’s body temperature hits 40ºc, her eyes will get glassy and she’ll be panting hard and listless- she has to get cooled down fast or she could get heatstroke. So I keep an eye on her when we’re out, check her implant regularly, and don’t let her get above 39ºc or so. Later I’ll build an RFID reader into her vest with alerts, but the HALO scanner works really well for now.

02:54 - To cool off, we want something easy for her to use on her own, that lets her dump heat quickly when she needs to, and that won’t cost a fortune like keeping a whole room ice-cold with AC does. So what I’m going to do is cool her the way huskies cool themselves in nature through their paws and the more sparse fur on their bellies, by lying on the cool ground. In order to do that, I’m going to build a DoggieDock, a thermoelectrically cooled cold plate, and I’m going to use PC water-cooling parts to do it. I’ve got this big slab of 15mm aluminum plate here, you can go as low as 5mm but I’ve got a pretty good deal for this. So now I a going to paint it with my Dykem, mark it up, and then drill some holes.

03:50 - Huskies have a thick double coat, and it’s an amazing insulator that can protect them to many degrees below zero Celsius, but it also makes it very, very hard for their bodies to dump excess heat. Some owners shave them but you should never do this- they tend to get skin and other problems. Dogs don’t sweat the way humans do to cool themselves- so drinking lots of water doesn’t really help them cool the way it helps us. Fans and AC do help, but air is not a good heat conductor, so it’s slow and not very efficient. You can also let them jump in cold water if they get too hot- water is a much better thermal conductor than air and will let them dump heat quickly.

04:41 - The problem is their coat is so thick it can take hours to dry on its own even with a hairdryer and brush it can take an hour, and if there’s any dampness it can lead to more skin problems. So I can’t really just put her in the bath or shower every time she’s had a long walk. There are vests that you put in the refrigerator with icepacks- but the problem is they go on top of her thick coat which is far too good an insulator for them to have much effect. I got a discount on the aluminum because it was stained and scratched. So I’m just cleaning it up and smoothing it out a bit.

05:29 - If you like that angle grinder I will link it in the description box for you. Those foam pieces are just to insulate the Peltier junction. So there is no heat leakage between the two sides. And you just use a tiny little rice grain size amount of thermal paste. You don’t want to make a mess. And don’t crush it, you just push it down very gently. Okay now, this is the water cooling block. The water is going to travel through there and carry the heat away. One side of the Peltier junction is cold, one side is hot. You want to make sure you get that right so you don’t cook your dog. Then those metal strips go on to hold it in place and you don’t want to screw that down too tight just pretty snug.

07:13 - I am using silicon tubing not PVC and lots and lots of tubing clamps. The screw down kind, I don’t really like those spring loaded ones. I don’t trust them. So I am screwing all those down. There’s not a whole lot to running the tubing you’re just running a big loop, it’s pretty straight forward. Now we are pulling heat out of Momo but according to the laws of thermodynamics we still have to dump somewhere. That’s what this radiator is for. The water is going to travel through the radiator and the fans are going to blow over it and hot air will come out of the side.

07:57 - And that’s where all our heat is going to go. Okay, let me show you the temperature of the plate right now. Here is 12.4ºc and on the center spot, it’s 14.5ºc and here is 13.4ºc too so it’s pretty consistent. That’s the good news. And let’s take a look at this side. Okay, the radiator works fine. It’s dissipating the heat and the plate is cold. But you see all this water on top? The condensation, I need to do something about it. Right now I know the temperature is a bit cold, I can adjust that for Momo.

08:51 - But all this water, what am I going to do about it? I have to figure something out before I put this outside for Momo to use so yeah I will go think of something. I just want to take a quick break to show you something I’ve been working on. This is the 3DPrintMill. It’s an infinite-Z printer. That means it’s a combination of a 3D printer and a conveyer belt. You can print thousands of objects continuously and watch them just roll off the belt, or you can print objects longer than the printer itself. If you’re interested, it’s now available- the link is in the description box.

09:33 - Now I got this foam cutter on Taobao for about $40 and it’s definitely worth $40, I can think of a lot of projects I’ll end up using this for. On Aliexpress it’s $120 and I just don’t know it’s worth that much. If you do a lot of prop making and model making maybe I could see it. But I am going to link to it so if you want it, you can get it. But it’s a little pricy for something like this. I had it so I used it but there are also all sorts of other ways you could do this just as well. I’m cutting this foam box down to size to form an ice chest to make the cooling plate more efficient. Ok, I am just going to glue it together to form a sort of very shallow ice chest. And you can use a torch to heat up a bolt to make any holes you need to run tubes or wires. Okay, that’s the screw end thermal sensor I tapped the hole for before, and yeah I know hot glue, I am with you but I am really worried about the condensation.

10:54 - The hot glue is messy but I don’t want any water getting inside those wire crimps and shorting something out. You know it’s my dog and sitting on the aluminum plate so everything’s got to be well insulated. That is PEI tape. It’s rated for refrigeration use and freezers. It worked really really well. If you can find it it’s great stuff for cold applications. I forget what these little fittings are called but they let me plug and unplug the water loop without the water leaking out, they are really great.

12:04 - Here’s the part where you cut your aluminum extrusion to length on the bandsaw you have in your living room. Because, you know, if I can do it anyone can do it? But seriously you can just order the aluminum extrusion to length I just had a lot of extra on hand, and a bandsaw I like to show off so that’s how we’re doing it today. Aluminum extrusion is fairly cheap in China I think by the time it’s shipped overseas much less so? I use 4040 for furniture and work tables, and I use 2020 for everything else. It gives me a lot of flexibility. I can build pretty much anything with aluminum extrusion, a laser cutter and 3D printed parts. It’s very flexible. One of the local tricycle guys, I call him Thick Uncle.

13:19 - He always helps me with heavy stuff and he came by with a sheet of plywood for me. I’d like to thank Banggood for providing me with this great little circular saw. It’s not a Makita, but uses the Makita battery packs I already have. Whenever I can, I try to buy the genuine thing of course, but I have to budget and if it’s a tool I only use once a month or once a week, a good quality, compatible clone is more than good enough. I really like this saw because it’s small enough to be safe for me to use, but powerful enough to do all the cutting I need.

14:17 - The blade guard is the only thing I found that’s not as good as an original Makita so use a little caution, but otherwise, it’s a great value. The link is in the description box. Obviously, all of these kinds of builds you do it like you’re making something for a kid. You’re going to take off all sharp edges, all splinters. Our pets are our babies we don’t want them to get hurt on anything we make. My little Makeblock lasercutter isn’t the most powerful lasercutter in the world, but because it’s so easy to use I get a ton of use out of it.

15:29 - I’m going to link to it in the description, it’s definitely one of my favorite tools. This video is made possible by the generous support of JLCPCB, China’s largest manufacturer. With JLC, you can have your PCB manufactured in under 24 hours. All while you track the process in real-time. Prototype board starts at just $2 dollars in any color. Check the description box for more info, one of the best ways to support me is to support the companies that fund this channel. So while you might want cool exposed RGB fans on the side. Remember, dog hair. So filters are important. Ok, big thing here. This is distilled water, I am only using water in this, I do not trust any of the PC cooling compounds, I know some say they are non-toxic but I just don’t want to take the chance. It’s just a lot easier for them to use things that will kill my dog. Not worth it. For these kinds of builds, distilled water only.

17:41 - OK, well she likes it, so we’re on the right track. Let’s keep going. Ok, I’ve got this thermostat from Taobao. I already set it to 20ºc. It’s not too cold. I think if Momo thinks it’s too warm I am going to change it but for now I am just going to close it up first and then try it out. I’m not using a custom PCB board today because an off the shelf thermostat was the best option, but please show a little appreciation to my sponsors at JLCPCB for sponsoring this video anyway. This channel probably would not be here without their support. Okay, right now she is 38ºc. I am going to take her for a walk and then get her on the colling bed. Now Momo is 38.9C.

19:37 - Well, she looks comfortable up there, I will give her some time to cool off. A few minutes later. 38.8ºc, 0.1ºc down. A few more minutes later You like that don’t you? Isn’t that a nice cool bed? And now is 38.7ºc, 0.2ºc down. Ok, a few things I discovered along the way if you want to copy this build- the first thing is that this is way, way over built. Don’t copy this. As fun as it is to cool it down to 5ºc it’s absolutely not necessary. The best temperature seems to be about 20 degrees and you don’t need all this to do that.

21:02 - 20 degrees also means usually condensation is not an issue. The problem is we’re used to thinking in terms of air temperature, and air is a lousy thermal conductor. Aluminum is a really, really good thermal conductor and a 20ºc, actively cooled aluminum plate can cool off a 39ºc dog lying on it really quickly. Momo can take up to an hour to cool off in air conditioning, but her implant is back to normal usually in 15 minutes on the doggie dock. There’s really no need to make it icy. I will probably use two instead of four thermoelectric junctions next time and just 5-millimeter thick aluminum plate.

21:53 - This plate is so thick it takes 30 minutes to cool off- so I have to turn it on before she goes out. A thinner plate would cool faster and could even have a capacitive switch so she could turn it on by herself. But overall, I’m happy with it, and Momo has been running over to use it every day after our walks so I think she’s happy with it also. That’s it for today- many thanks to my friends at JLCPCB and Creality3D for sponsoring this video, when you support them, you support me. Momo and I will see you soon- until then if I can do it, anyone can do it! .