So,
I'm testing some porous ceramic wicking material, 8micron hole size ~45% open space.
First tests involved comparisons between a 6mm diameter rolled wick of 500x500 SS mesh, twill weave, .025mm wire diameter side by side with the aforementioned ceramic, same length, but 6mm x 6mm squared (best I could do for the moment)
The ceramic seemed to wick slower at first but it turns out the mesh was only 'appearing' to wick faster visually because the outside wicked faster than the inside so it appeared wet. after noticing this I put them in separate containers with equal levels of PG and inserted them at the same time, the fluid levels in both containers dropped very evenly over the same span of time. The ceramic does appear to wick slightly slower but more evenly. The ceramic appears wet on the outside and when the PG reached the top, the entire top appeared wet at the same time, with the SS mesh, moisture showed up at the top of the wick in a couple of spots and then spread out unevenly across the top. This makes sense due to the fact that this mesh is pretty uniform as far as porosity throughout the entire volume of material whereas the mesh is uniform while flat but we then roll it up which changes things quite a bit, distorts the mesh pattern and creates some spots that are tighter porosity, others that are larger, etc.
One thing that was unrelated to comparing SS to ceramic but that I found interesting... I did some wicking tests a while back with some 2.5mm wicks made out of 325, 400, and 500 mesh and the 6mm wick pulled liquid up WAY faster. I'm going ot be prototyping a few fat wick RBAs in the near future.
If anyone else is out there working with porous ceramic, please feel free to pop in with your results.
I'm testing some porous ceramic wicking material, 8micron hole size ~45% open space.
First tests involved comparisons between a 6mm diameter rolled wick of 500x500 SS mesh, twill weave, .025mm wire diameter side by side with the aforementioned ceramic, same length, but 6mm x 6mm squared (best I could do for the moment)
The ceramic seemed to wick slower at first but it turns out the mesh was only 'appearing' to wick faster visually because the outside wicked faster than the inside so it appeared wet. after noticing this I put them in separate containers with equal levels of PG and inserted them at the same time, the fluid levels in both containers dropped very evenly over the same span of time. The ceramic does appear to wick slightly slower but more evenly. The ceramic appears wet on the outside and when the PG reached the top, the entire top appeared wet at the same time, with the SS mesh, moisture showed up at the top of the wick in a couple of spots and then spread out unevenly across the top. This makes sense due to the fact that this mesh is pretty uniform as far as porosity throughout the entire volume of material whereas the mesh is uniform while flat but we then roll it up which changes things quite a bit, distorts the mesh pattern and creates some spots that are tighter porosity, others that are larger, etc.
One thing that was unrelated to comparing SS to ceramic but that I found interesting... I did some wicking tests a while back with some 2.5mm wicks made out of 325, 400, and 500 mesh and the 6mm wick pulled liquid up WAY faster. I'm going ot be prototyping a few fat wick RBAs in the near future.
If anyone else is out there working with porous ceramic, please feel free to pop in with your results.
thanx for sharing. Oh and you should see this...
