I don't want to be an alarmist, but I have noticed a phenom that concerns me. It began as a few isolated reports, but I see it more and more.

I am speaking of spontaneous cracking of acrylic reservoirs. These are events that occur after periods of flawless operation.

I know of two instances of DD round res rupture, including the misfortunes of Ducati, and I have for months been steering people away from that product.

Here is a leak that resulted from a spontaneous crack in the very popular (and expensive) Innovatech Tank - o - Matic.

http://www.modthebox.com/cgi-bin/yab...num=1058224005

This got me thinking about an early water cooling experience I had. I made a sexy little inline flow meter, whose life ended prematurely when a crack (and leak) formed in one of the acrylic side walls. No seam, no seal, no joint, no hole ...... just a 1 cm linear crack in an acrylic sidewall.

Most of you know that I have abandoned resevoirs in favor of the more functional (IMHO) fill and bleed circuit. Reservoirs however, remain a water cooling staple. Perhaps manufacturers need to reconsider the use of acrylic in this application.

If you have any acrylic cracking or leaking stories, please post here.

yea not only did i have a res. crack but also a dd block too. dd replaced it for me but i still have not put it in a system yet.

i have also not put any more resivoirs into any more wc systems as i too have gone the route of a fill and bleed setup. it is just easier to maintain.

Well I've been of the opinion Acrylic is a poor choice for water blocks. Far too brittle for constant expansion and contraction. Polycarb is a much better choice. But I'm gonna be pissed if my Tank-O-Matic takes a dump.

At least it's outside the case.

well with so many units on the market somethings going to fail. space shuttles explode.

Sounds like a case of over torquing the end caps, hell they got o-rings...also
It seems like to me they get brittle with age. I wonder if its the way they are hot formed. Then after time the built-in stresses take over and cause cracking and splitting. Another thought was the temperature difference between the outside and inside of the piece, different contraction and expandtion rates....
at any rate reservior failure totally blows.
schedule 40 water pipe in ASB is sure ugly but it'll hold up untill the next century at least.

Zennzzo could be right on the user error theory. The way the Tank-O-Matic is mounted if you forced it into the mounting without the end caps in place, you could probably crack it. The instuctions probably warn about that. But being in German, whoes gonna know?

Hopefully mine will last until my next mod project. I guarantee what I have planned won't crack. You could kill Colonel Mustard in the Ballroom with it without denting it.

Just to put everybodies mind at rest. I did a search of overclockers and overclockers.au and there was nary a mention of cracked reservoirs.

I had an acrylic res crack on me. It was in a very unlikely place. It cracked along the bottom of the tank, no seams, chips or mounting hardware anywhere around it. It cracked the entire lenght of the res. Lucky for me the res was in the bottom of my case and only leaked and pooled there.

But I am a slow learner, so I bought a bay res so that if/when it cracks it will take out my HDD located below it.

how bout you do a CAD drawing and we can have it carved out of an acrylic block w/1/2" wall thickness That should be deccadently overpriced ehh. All these leaks and spills around is the end nearing?

Well I could do that, or I can call out copper for the material and then we could really overcharge for it!! Plus it will give that person who always have to mess with their rigs something to polish every week.

Actually the differences lay in the manufaturing of these pieces. Meaning weather the plastic used to make your particular product was formed in an extruded or cast process. Extruded is weaker and tends to be much cheaper. Its viscosity is more relavent to allow chemicals to affect its properites over a long period. Cast Plastic however is much more expensive yet very strong. I can tell you most reputable manufacturers have learned this tiny tidbit all to well. sometimes even the hard way like Danger Den and the Ducati situation. After Ducatis res died further investigation found that the company manufacturing the res was cheating and using extruded acrylic. Not the cast that the bid called for. As for the innovatek that is high quality stuff. I would assume there is a bit of user error their. Consider this. The number of people water-cooling these days grows rapidly. With all these people cooling with water problems are bound to seem more hrmmm shall we say frequent. If 1 out of every 500 has a problem your gonna hear about it more and more often as more people lean to the wet side. I don't think the products are any less then they used to be. Just more use then their used to be. With any thing we do in our business there is always a certain amount of risk. But its the risk takers that get all the glory.
Thats my two cents
Peace Out!!

That restores much of my faith in Danger Den. Good to see you DW!

Good to hear from ya DW...Thanks for the good heads-up!!

Rockk...copper kinda has a nice green deposit when I
forget to seal the top as well, I imagine it would show good under UV... Yes then..I'll take two.....

Let me see, does that mean that Jeremy and associates(dangerDen) will be tied up in probate till the cows come home? or are they trying to rectify problems like Ducatis'?It would be nice to see a recall on those items.
It may not be business feasable, but you gotta feel for ducati's situation as well. They just placed their first ad in the MaxPC mag. July issue, so there must be a fund or two to pull from.
I realize the liability waiver they post at their site and I really like those guys and their products..but if they were selling steak dinners and I got served Dog, because the bucher cheated... I'd bitch till the cows,...er steers,.... er..cats,....er......whatever came home!!

Some consideration should also be taken to the fact that people have been using acrylic for tanks and refugiums in salt applications for many years. Here are some interesting links with some very interesting facts on acrylic:

http://www.reefcentral.com/diy/?menu=12

Some consideration should be taken into looking at the thread dates too.

I have to agree with DW. Its more in the manufacturing process.Some acrylic tube is actually formed from flat sheet and they almost always only heat one side of the material to form it, causing part of the thickness of the material to become harder than the other half causing a constant tension throughout the entire circumference. The heating and cooling of the material causes it to harden and get brittle as metals do.Even slight changes in temperature can cause cracks in tubes made this way.

Holy ****e I just realized how old this tread was.

Quote: Originally Posted by ERAD Some consideration should be taken into looking at the thread dates too.

Uh.... ok.. although I doubt much has changed in the dynamics of the chemistry of acrylic.