4 ms·

What's important is not only the amazing products, but also that they solve problems and that they can actually be bought by people who need solving those probl

What's important is not only the amazing products, but also that they solve problems and that they can actually be bought by people who need solving those problems. My anecdotal experience is that every time I run into some amazing 3M product, it costs $300/liter. Nile Red recently posted this cool video of extinguishing a book with this fancy 3M liquid. Looked, yup, that's about the price. If you wanted to experiment with fancy computer cooling, Fluorinert is also an arm and a leg in the quantities that'd be needed. It was apparently used in the Cray waterfall, but it seems after more than 30 years the stuff is still bloody expensive. And so on.

onion2k 5y ago
it seems after more than 30 years the stuff is still bloody expensive Fluorinert is a super niche product. The price reflects that. I imagine the cost to produce it has dropped dramatically in 3 decades. 3M just make more profit from it now. As products mature there's no reason to believe the production process and efficiency savings will always be passed on to the consumer.
- dale_glass 5y ago
  > Fluorinert is a super niche product. I mean, that goes both ways. At that price it will always be a super niche product, and never graduate to "plain niche". Look at the enthusiast market, there's no lack of fancy water cooling gizmos out there. They're bought by a small segment, but there's still a market for fancy gizmos to provide the best cooling for overclocked high end hardware. And that's exactly what I'm getting at -- it's not enough to make cool stuff. The cool stuff also has to reach the people interested in using it.
  - imtringued 5y ago
    Every ARM Server SoC failed to make their chips available. They do deals with "hyperscalers" and then wonder why nobody wants their chips or the hyperscaler just designs their own chip and makes a dedicated SoC vendor that only sells to "hyperscalers" obsolete.
  - michaelt 5y ago
    I suspect some of these products have a funny price curve. If Fluorinert costs $300/litre today and you cut the price to $100/litre - that's still far too expensive to become a mainstream PC coolant. It's not like there's a proven market for mineral oil PC cooling. Could be, if you cut the price of Fluorinert by 2/3rds, you'd just be giving a discount to your existing customers, for whom price is no object anyway.
    - kadoban 5y ago
      Mineral oil is _very_ messy, which really doesn't help at all. And the one company that sold the tanks had to stop due to some patent nonsense.
      - michaelt 5y ago
        According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorinert#Toxicity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorinert#Toxicity Fluorinert has to be limited to closed systems because it has "high global warming potential", it can decompose into a highly toxic gas, and "care should be taken to avoid contact with eyes and skin" (I'll admit I'm not sure how all this squares with the 'inert' in the product's name) To me this sounds more difficult to use than mineral oil, not easier.
        kadoban 5y ago
        It does, yes. Seems like they have another product that fixes that issue, but it also sounds toxic. Not something I'd want to play with.
    - deleted 5y ago
      [deleted]
  - MauranKilom 5y ago
    Isn't Flourinert a PFC and thus really dangerous/impactful in terms of accelerating global warming? I think we do well to keep its use to niche applications.
    - Someone 5y ago
      Yep. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorinert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorinert: “As perfluorinated compounds (PFCs), all Fluorinert variants have an extremely high Global Warming Potential (GWP),[1] so should be used with caution” That page also says “Although Fluorinert was intended to be inert, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory discovered that the liquid cooling system of their Cray-2 supercomputers decomposed during extended service, producing some highly toxic perfluoroisobutene. Catalytic scrubbers were installed to remove this contaminant.” Perfluoroisobutene is a schedule 2 substance, in the sense of the Chemical Weapons Convention (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Schedule_2_substances_(CWC) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Schedule_2_substances_...), so it’s a substance that “can either be used as chemical weapons themselves or used in the manufacture of chemical weapons but that have small-scale applications outside of chemical warfare and so can be legitimately manufactured in small quantities”.

onion2k 5y ago

it seems after more than 30 years the stuff is still bloody expensive Fluorinert is a super niche product. The price reflects that. I imagine the cost to produce it has dropped dramatically in 3 decades. 3M just make more profit from it now. As products mature there's no reason to believe the production process and efficiency savings will always be passed on to the consumer.

dale_glass 5y ago
> Fluorinert is a super niche product. I mean, that goes both ways. At that price it will always be a super niche product, and never graduate to "plain niche". Look at the enthusiast market, there's no lack of fancy water cooling gizmos out there. They're bought by a small segment, but there's still a market for fancy gizmos to provide the best cooling for overclocked high end hardware. And that's exactly what I'm getting at -- it's not enough to make cool stuff. The cool stuff also has to reach the people interested in using it.
- imtringued 5y ago
  Every ARM Server SoC failed to make their chips available. They do deals with "hyperscalers" and then wonder why nobody wants their chips or the hyperscaler just designs their own chip and makes a dedicated SoC vendor that only sells to "hyperscalers" obsolete.
- michaelt 5y ago
  I suspect some of these products have a funny price curve. If Fluorinert costs $300/litre today and you cut the price to $100/litre - that's still far too expensive to become a mainstream PC coolant. It's not like there's a proven market for mineral oil PC cooling. Could be, if you cut the price of Fluorinert by 2/3rds, you'd just be giving a discount to your existing customers, for whom price is no object anyway.
  - kadoban 5y ago
    Mineral oil is _very_ messy, which really doesn't help at all. And the one company that sold the tanks had to stop due to some patent nonsense.
    - michaelt 5y ago
      According to https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorinert#Toxicity https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorinert#Toxicity Fluorinert has to be limited to closed systems because it has "high global warming potential", it can decompose into a highly toxic gas, and "care should be taken to avoid contact with eyes and skin" (I'll admit I'm not sure how all this squares with the 'inert' in the product's name) To me this sounds more difficult to use than mineral oil, not easier.
      - kadoban 5y ago
        It does, yes. Seems like they have another product that fixes that issue, but it also sounds toxic. Not something I'd want to play with.
  - deleted 5y ago
    [deleted]
- MauranKilom 5y ago
  Isn't Flourinert a PFC and thus really dangerous/impactful in terms of accelerating global warming? I think we do well to keep its use to niche applications.
  - Someone 5y ago
    Yep. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorinert https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fluorinert: “As perfluorinated compounds (PFCs), all Fluorinert variants have an extremely high Global Warming Potential (GWP),[1] so should be used with caution” That page also says “Although Fluorinert was intended to be inert, the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory discovered that the liquid cooling system of their Cray-2 supercomputers decomposed during extended service, producing some highly toxic perfluoroisobutene. Catalytic scrubbers were installed to remove this contaminant.” Perfluoroisobutene is a schedule 2 substance, in the sense of the Chemical Weapons Convention (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Schedule_2_substances_(CWC) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Schedule_2_substances_...), so it’s a substance that “can either be used as chemical weapons themselves or used in the manufacture of chemical weapons but that have small-scale applications outside of chemical warfare and so can be legitimately manufactured in small quantities”.