Heating soft tubing

[Nexmo]

Has anyone ever tried heating soft tubing to persuade it into a better bend or hold shape? 

i was having a hard time making soft tubing look good so i decided to heat them up and this is what i came up with

[W-L]

13 minutes ago, Nexmo said:

Has anyone ever tried heating soft tubing to persuade it into a better bend or hold shape? 

i was having a hard time making soft tubing look good so i decided to heat them up and this is what i came up with

Hmm interesting does the tubing still retain it's pliability after heating or does it go stiff?

[Nexmo]

2 minutes ago, W-L said:

Hmm interesting does the tubing still retain it's pliability after heating or does it go stiff?

its fully pliable still, no hardness, this particular tubing is Mayhems UV white. i also tried with the basic EK clear tubing that came with the kit with similar results.  

[Neo-revo]

makes sense, they probably roll it up while its still warm, and heating it up helps it remove the curve memory

[Guest]

I wonder if this would harm the chemical make-up of the soft tube? making it more susceptible to perhaps to increased wear or tearing.

[Neo-revo]

4 hours ago, cartdog said:

making it more susceptible to perhaps to increased wear or tearing.

probably more dependent on the heat source/temp-  open flame/heat gun/   lower temps, or did the plastic melt.

 

Oh and i was thinking about Chemicals in my dreams last night @W-L  and any thing that would make a soft tube more rigid again wouldn't be good.   since the makeup of the polyvinyl-chloride  would be damaged making it structurally unsafe (oil cooling/plastics)      and yes i know they have hard PVC  plastics out there that, but i dont think they are meant for that still,  like a post i saw recently by For Science explain that (basically styro) the plastics tub would degrade faster with continued heat exposure so the particular application was highly not recommended.     So you might be-able to make a tube stiffer, but it might just make it fail sooner too.   

 

Maybe some sort or clear coat epoxy to help stiffen the bends.  But i would test it on a non installed part first to make sure the tube doesn't melt/ have adverse reaction.   although just read if the epoxy can handle PVC first too.   I got a selection of plastic weldign chemicals for when i break/crack things   like Methyl chloride i can weld hard plastics together that superglue/other stuff dont work well on.

[Benjeh]

No but I notice soft tube holds shape after many heat cycles any way so makes sense.

[Mick Naughty]

I’d prolly give it a try. Atleast in hopes for it to give up the natural curve from production/packaging. Kinda getting tired of my tubes hazing up though. 

[Benjeh]

13 hours ago, Mick Naughty said:

I’d prolly give it a try. Atleast in hopes for it to give up the natural curve from production/packaging. Kinda getting tired of my tubes hazing up though. 

Yeah, soft tubing going all hazy does bug me a lot... Need to finish my hard line loop.

[AngryBeaver]

It turned out good. Looks nice. I am curious what are your temps like with that setup? Noticed you have cpu and gpu on only a 240 or 280mm rad.

[Nexmo]

woah, this blew up without me noticing. this being a stock a240g kit, its all aluminum + mayhems uv white tubing. it didnt harden up at all just kept the bends fairly well. 

idle temps were about 24 or 5" above ambient 

AIDA cpu stress after 4 hours got to 61 at 4.5 ghz 8600k 

gpu temp running heaven loop got to 56 stock clock 1070. TIM used was arctic silver