RED Overheating - still a big problem?

[Peter Moretti]

...

Shade and air flow, fins and fans....

 

 

 

 

-- J.S.

 

That's funny John, I was thinking the exact same thing. Essentially use some thermal paste to glue heat fins (like those used by computer overclockers) to the Red body.

[Robert Starling SOC]

I was the Steadicam Op on a short filmed in Phoenix with the RED last month; despite the crew's best efforts of courtesy shade and even ice packs there were times when we had overheating issues and the camera needed to be cooled off in the MOHO. The temps ranged 105 - 112 F +/- and at those temps pretty much everything including people start to overheat. I don't think the camera ever completely shut down or that we lost any footage / clips, but we did lose a few people to heat stroke and fatigue.

 

It would probably have helped if the designers who did a very nice job of building a great looking and great flying camera would have included some form of heat sink with cooling fins like most other professional video cameras have to help dissipate the heat.

 

It was my first shoot with the RED and overall a very good experience to fly on my rig; especially since the DP / owner had all the extras and options such as CF cards, adapter plates and the breakout box for standardized connectors. It may simply be that this first production version of the camera is not particularly suitable to environments subject to excessive heat.

 

Robert Starling, SOC

[Keith Walters]

It would probably have helped if the designers who did a very nice job of building a great looking and great flying camera would have included some form of heat sink with cooling fins like most other professional video cameras have to help dissipate the heat.

 

Robert Starling, SOC

Nothing succeeds like big holes in the case. :lol:

 

Since there are no moving parts except the fan(s) I can't see why the RED couldn't have had more open air circulation. They could have had some sort of trapdoor arrangement that you only open when it it gets hot and isn't raining. Properly designed, the rainwater shouldn't bother something running on about 1.8 Volts anyway.

 

Some military equipment has heatsinks made of nickel plated sodium, which is very lightweight (sodium floats on water) but has extremely high heat conductivity. However metallic sodium is somewhat hazardous if the plating were to scrape off.

 

Oh well, when the warranty runs out...

[Dan Diaconu M]

I can't see why the RED couldn't have had more open air circulation.

Prehaphs because of .... dust? and humidity? I think the solution is in any laptop (diferent shape and size though).

[Keith Walters]

Prehaphs because of .... dust? and humidity? I think the solution is in any laptop (diferent shape and size though).

There are no moving parts, so dust should not be a problem, except in the sensor area, but the whole thing doesn't have to be opened up, just the signal processing parts.

 

As far as humidity goes, most of the chips would be running off very low supply voltages, and you would likely find that they would run perfectly well even under water as long as it's not salt water! That was always one of my favourite "party tricks", dipping a working digital circuit board into a glass of tap water and showing that it would still run faultlessly. The only thing likely to be be affected is the clock crystal which would probably stop oscillating, but that was on another board.

 

Once I was given a 240V operated digital clock with one of the segments of the LED display not working, so it was a write off. Just out of interest I lowered it (still running!) by its cord into a bucket of water. The bloody thing kept running! The transformer was obviously hermetically sealed and the rest of the low voltage circuitry wasn't affected by the low conductivity of the tap water. Probably after a few days electrolysis would have eaten away some of the PC board tracks, but I tossed it out long before that.

 

This would be a great topic for Mythbusters, actually :lol:

[Jamie Lewis]

There are no moving parts, so dust should not be a problem

 

Dust isn't a problem in electrical gear with now moving parts? First time I ever heard of that and I don't think my surround amp heard of that either. Dust can cause many problems on any electrical component it can get into.

[John Sprung]

Some military equipment has heatsinks made of nickel plated sodium, which is very lightweight (sodium floats on water) but has extremely high heat conductivity. However metallic sodium is somewhat hazardous if the plating were to scrape off.

Isn't sodium also extremely soft? Wouldn't that make the heat sinks really delicate?

 

 

-- J.S.

[Tom Lowe]

Couldn't someone just whip up a liquid cooling system for extreme heat shooting? I mean, nerds have been modding out their overclocked PCs with liquid cooling systems for years.

[Keith Walters]

Isn't sodium also extremely soft? Wouldn't that make the heat sinks really delicate?

 

 

-- J.S.

The setup I read about (quite a few years ago now) was that the naked processor chip was mounted onto a special PC board by first screen printing hundreds of solder paste dots onto the PCB pads, and then "sweating" the processor chip into place by pressing a hot cube of copper onto it, just hot enough to melt the solder.

 

(Of course just about common microprocessors used in PCs are now made that way, but this was real cutting edge stuff back then).

 

To extract heat from the half-inch-square chip fast enough, they used a magnesium alloy heatsink containing a wedge-shaped void with a square access hole the same size as the silicon chip. The void was filled with sodium which was then was leveled off flush with the aluminium surface. The exposed sodium surface was then nickel plated, first by exposing it to nickel carbonyl gas to give it a thin coating so it wouldn't blow up when it was placed in the electroplating bath, where a thicker layer of nickel was added.

 

The purpose of the sodium "insert" was to transfer the heat out of the small surface area of the chip as fast as possible and diffuse it into the much larger magnesium heatsink. They didn't say whether the sodium melts or not during operation of the chip.

[Keith Walters]

Dust isn't a problem in electrical gear with now moving parts? First time I ever heard of that and I don't think my surround amp heard of that either. Dust can cause many problems on any electrical component it can get into.

I couldn't tell you how many TV sets I've seen that are twenty and more years old, and choked with so much dust and carpet fluff you can barely see the circuit boards, and almost invariably, whatever the reason was for taking the back off, it had nothing to do with the dust! OK your surround amp may have been full of dust and it may have failed, that does not guarantee the two events are connected.

 

And you very quickly learn not to get carried away with a vacuum cleaner and try to clean it up, because you run a great risk of "waking up" any number of bad solder joints that have been peacefully snoozing under the "covers":-)

[Jamie Lewis]

I couldn't tell you how many TV sets I've seen that are twenty and more years old, and choked with so much dust and carpet fluff you can barely see the circuit boards, and almost invariably, whatever the reason was for taking the back off, it had nothing to do with the dust! OK your surround amp may have been full of dust and it may have failed, that does not guarantee the two events are connected.

 

And you very quickly learn not to get carried away with a vacuum cleaner and try to clean it up, because you run a great risk of "waking up" any number of bad solder joints that have been peacefully snoozing under the "covers":-)

 

Static buildup in the dust caused the circuit board to short, told by a technician. Also, due to humidity level in my house, dust collects moisture and corrodes electronic equipment. I have to take great care with dust.

[John Sprung]

Thanks, Keith. That makes sense now. (About the sodium heat sink)

 

As for dust in electronics, I've had CRT's arc over due to somewhat conductive dust. It might be from fabric softeners that are supposed to reduce static cling in the dryer. I take them apart and clean them out if I find a really dirty one.

 

 

 

 

-- J.S.