ISRU Cooling

[Drethon]

After travelling most of the Kerbol system I'm finally diving into ISRU.  I've done some reading but what I found seemed to be a small radiator per drill was all you need.  So I put two large radiators per drill on my test ship as I start with overkill, but I can't seem to keep my drills cool.  Here is a shot of the ISRU ship in work, any direction of what I'm doing wrong?

(Edit: Answered)Also, can I embed imgur anymore or should I go looking for a different image hosting site?  Yes I haven't posted an image here for quite some time.

 

Edited November 14, 2018 by Drethon

[4x4cheesecake]

5 minutes ago, Drethon said:

Also, can I embed imgur anymore or should I go looking for a different image hosting site?  Yes I haven't posted an image here for quite some time.

You need a direct link (the one with a .png extension) to embed the image. IMO the easiest way to get one is by right clicking on the image -> copy link location and paste the link here

7 minutes ago, Drethon said:

So I put two large radiators per drill on my test ship as I start with overkill, but I can't seem to keep my drills cool.  Here is a shot of the ISRU ship in work, any direction of what I'm doing wrong?

Two possible solutions:

1) Did you actually turn on the radiators?

2) If the radiators are running, they are probably too far away from the drills. Not quiet sure what's the max. allowed distance but you may want to try to move the radiators to the same part, which the drills are attached to or use some of the extenable panels since they can cool any part of the vessel regardless of the distance.

[Gargamel]

The radiators you are using only cool the part they are attached to.   The foldable ones will draw heat from the entire ship.  In your design, you have to wait for the heat to build up and propagate through the ship and into the radiators before they will start working.  And I'm not even sure if that's even a thing. 

So in your design, ditch the 8 radiators you have, and place 4 foldable ones in the same orientation as your landing legs.   You've got the space to do it. 

[Drethon]

Perfect! I had read that the radiators work from anywhere but I didn't realize that was just the foldable ones.  I went with moving the drills to the smaller tanks I use more for landing gear attachment so I could keep the non foldable radiators.  This setup keeps things away from the exhaust of the LV-Ns (I blew up the little solar panels attached in that area and need to test if the new position will avoid that).

 

 

I might go to foldable but at the moment I think this works good.  Thanks guys!

[Drethon]

Yeah, that layout is great for the miners but less so for the converter.  Even four small foldable radiators don't quite cover the converter, so I'll probably be putting in four medium.  The design is intended to leave the miner on the surface while the fuel is brought up to orbit, then the tanks are flown back to the surface.  IF I can make this work, bringing the tanks back down without hitting or burning up the radiators should be entertaining.

[Guest]

The fixed radiators work fine for me. Trick is, I bolt them to a fuel tank which is bolted to the ISRU, and the drill bolted to the same tank. The tank wicks out heat from the ISRU and drill, and the radiators cool the tank. 

[Drethon]

I might have enough space on the big tank under the ISRU, I'll try that to keep stuff out of the way of the rockets.