How to make a heatpipe-based cooling system on your own

   If you use heat pipes with 6 mm diameter the holes must be 0.2 mm smaller, i.e. they must be 5.8 mm. I’ll explain the reason. Drill scratches heavily the inside of the hole. This is an obvious harm for our object because any surface imperfections will impair heat transfer. It’s not difficult to contend the scratches. There is a special tool, the reamer. It is shown in the photo.
 

   In the photo above you can see a machine reamer for spindle. In the photo below there is a hand reamer for reamer holder. Reamers, like taps, have three marks 1-3 which differ in the pass quality. There is a roughing reamer, a medium reamer and a finishing reamer. Like in drilling, you should take the reamer frequently out of the hole, brush the shavings off and add lubricating oil. Don’t push the reamer heavily because the tool is fragile and the drill can break having stuck in copper.
 

   Thus, having drilled 5.8 mm holes don’t change the position of the workpiece not to disorder centering; then ream the holes to 6 mm. Finally we get a high quality holes. The first sample which I made without reaming had worse characteristic. If you don’t have a mill of high precision it’s better to perform the procedure manually. This is not difficult. Recommendations are the same: lubrication, brushing, and frequent removal of the reamer. But don’t twirl the reamer invertedly if you use the manual variant.