The iBookGuy
One thing that always irritates me is how long it takes my frozen dinners to cool down after I've [microwaved] them
Before I could eat them so started thinking about some ways that I might be able to solve that problem
So first I did a test on a common meal that I often eat. I nuke it the usual amount of time
It's not [a] frozen dinner anymore now. It's piping hot in fact it's
171 degrees hot So to be scientific about this
I went ahead and recorded that data and measured again every 30 seconds using my iphone as a stopwatch [now]
[at] about the [five-minute] mark you can see the top surface has cooled off to 123 degrees, but the bottom is still
154
So here's the chart showing the temperature after [seven] minutes now you'll notice the fastest drop-off in temperature was in the first 30
seconds and then the drop becomes gradual now
there's two reasons for this the [first] reason has to do with the ambient air [temperature] the
Closer it gets to ambient temperature the more that the heat transfer will slow down, but the other factor is likely the countertop itself
So when you sit the hot meal down on the countertop the heat immediately
Begins to conduct away from the meal and heat up the counter now this has an immediate cooling effect on the meal
But the heat will build up in one spot quickly, and then sort of just hang around there because there's nothing to remove the heat
That's when I got the [idea] [to] use these old pentium 2 heat sinks it was obvious
[I'd] need to grind off these little pieces in fact
There's a very slight offset between the center and the rest
So I went back over to the geek pub and I used the belt sander [to] quickly solve this problem
But then I had to figure out a way to put all this together
so I used my trusty ibook clamshell and sketchup to come up with an idea for an easy to build frame out of wood and
This is what I came up with
The goal was just to make it as easy to build as possible out of wood just for a proof-of-concept
So I got right [to] work constructing this thing
Once I was done with the wood I decided to use this truck bedliner to coat the thing which will make it have a plastic
Type feel to it, and it will make it resistant against the steam from cooling down frozen dinners
After it dried. I did the final assembly
And here's the finished product [you] can see the big fan on the top and the three smaller fans at the bottom
So I performed the same cooling test again using my cooler so interestingly enough
This one actually started off eight degrees hotter than the first one
Still it cooled down very rapidly [you] [can] see the heat sinks are staying around 88 degrees
So the fans are doing well at dissipating the heat
It's down to 122 degrees after just a min and a half in fact
I didn't even bother to cool it down Beyond three and a half minutes because it was starting [to] get cold and I wanted to
Eat [it]
Well, so there you have it
it's not the most Elegant looking device ever but
You know I just wanted to build something as cheaply and quickly as possible just to test the theory to see if it works
And apparently it does [and] it only cost me about twenty-five dollars to build it now if I wanted to get real serious about this
And make it look like [a] true kitchen appliance
I'm sure I could spend some time with my 3D [printer] and come up with something a little bit more elegant and
You know I've already thought of a ton of features that I'd like to add to it for example. It'd be great
If it had like some rocker switches up here where I could turn like the top fan on and off or the bottom
Heat sinks on and off individually, so they didn't necessarily always have to run together
[if] I wanted to get really cool
I could put like a [microcontroller] and some kind of temperature sensor on the heat sinks to say that okay
You know shut the fan off when the temperature gets down to a certain?
Degree, but [it'd] also be kind of cool if the top part could open like a clamshell
So you could put larger items on there or especially if you didn't want to use the top fan
You know and the other thing. I thought about doing was using thermoelectric coolers on the top of the heat sinks
But those are pretty pricey and it would probably cost me like hundred dollars to coat the top of those with thermoelectric coolers
So I decided not to do that and I'd like to point out there are other things that you could cool down
Beyond microwave dinners with this thing for example of
baked cookies or even certain types of crafts that you know might need to cool down after they've been hot or
Even hot circuit boards or you know there's any number of things that you might use it for well
I hope you enjoyed this episode, and I will see you again
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