Water Dispensing Mac

[the Fan-Man]

As per this discussion - I'm making a 'Beer Mac' - but it will be used for dispensing water. Read that hyperlink to put what I'm trying to do into context.

So the idea was to go with Peltier/TEC. Refrigerant systems are in the $500-$1000 range and almost might be too powerful for this application. I scored this Aquacool watercooler in officeworks for $40 (display model)





Will be taking it apart shortly to see whats inside

[the Fan-Man]

only a few mins in and I already dislike the design of the watercooler.




See below, the PSU is naked and within centimetres of the main water pipe which holds 10kg of water above it and held together with cable ties...




Anyway, removing the cooler unit from the casing gives me this unit



On the outside the Unit is rated to 75w, which makes me think this is only a 60w peltier unit, There is a Xinruilian 92mm fan that is wired to the PCB. Also noted there is a temp sensor that auto shuts off the peltier at the desired cooling temp, neat

This Xin 92mm is rated to 0.19a, so i plan to remove it and replace it with a larger fan 12v less than 0.19a.

[Rezin]

Originally Posted by the Fan-Man

only a few mins in and I already dislike the design of the watercooler.

See below, the PSU is naked and within centimetres of the main water pipe which holds 10kg of water above it and held together with cable ties...

Wouldn't wanna be the venue owner if something went wrong and a patron was injured.

[the Fan-Man]

ill be keeping the psu covered, ventilated and away from the water tanks

[IMtech]

Subbed.

Wanna see how you go with it, but not holding my breath with only a 60-75w Peltier...

[Jon187]

I have a feeling the first few glasses of water will be cold (given the TEC will have some time to cool them) but as soon as you refill the tank the TEC won't have long enough to cool the water and the rest of the evening it will just be serving - essentially - room temp water.

[the Fan-Man]

Originally Posted by Jon187

I have a feeling the first few glasses of water will be cold (given the TEC will have some time to cool them) but as soon as you refill the tank the TEC won't have long enough to cool the water and the rest of the evening it will just be serving - essentially - room temp water.

they will, but remember it will have 1 hour for every 2 litres of water consumed.

Got my donor G4 today,




Some internals are still there, anyone wants them they are free, last time I saw this fire up was about 2006. Need to completely strip the unit and give it a quick clean



here is a rough plan of how it will sit,



It will be side on, electronics will be above it facing down (so that even if the main tank leaks the electronics will be dry). The fan comes off the heatsink and is built into the side of the case. Thinking whether or not to swap these with different fans,

[the Fan-Man]

Using my epic paint skills, here my diagram:



There will be 2 x 65w peltier units, with the water flowing through them in series. There will also be a tank at the top which will feed to the bottom TEC units via clear tube, this will also be a level indicator

[rowan194]

Have you thought about the lowest temp the peltier can achieve? You may find that the difference between room temp and the water (after sufficient time to cool) is only about 10-15 degrees. I would imagine that a night club would be fairly warm.

[Reaper_1994]

looks interesting. subbed

[andyroo54]

This is such a cool idea. We've got a bunch of G5 mac's at work sitting in a storage container, from when we moved the designers from mac to PC. They are heavy and totally useless (they do look good though).. so they might make excellent beverage dispensers!~ What a great idea!

What if you had the mac logo act as a water level indicator? You know how kettles have those water level indicators, maybe you could do something like that, backlit with LED's. THAT would be cool!