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Anti-Frostidigitation: Heatpipe Gloves
Hettinga writes "A little casemod couture this morning, courtesy of Hongbin Ma, a professor of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering at the University of Missouri. He has developed heatpipe-driven gloves which pump therms from your toasty upper arm down to those aforementioned frosty digits. 'Each glove contains five small heat pipes, one for each finger, that are about 14 inches long and 1 mm x 2 mm in the cross section. Each pipe consists of three sections: an evaporating section, which is attached to the upper arm area; an adiabatic section, which is between the finger area and the arm area; and the condensing section, which is attached to the finger area.' Coming soon to a half-pipe near you..."
I'll take two.
Ride recklessly only when safe to do so.
nature didn't provide us with some kind of fluid that automatically circulates throughout our body to distribute warmth and nutrients.
I could use some of these gloves for Anti-Burnination!
Life is the leading cause of death in America.
That sounds like an idea that could equally apply to those with lower circulation, not just those on the slopes / in the cold.
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If you wore these long enough in cold weather (-20C or less) would you risk decreasing your core temperature to critical levels?
Ride recklessly only when safe to do so.
My fingers stiffen up and I can't type very well in chilly air. I'm rated at 73 WPM at standard room temperature. Imagine the productivity boost with these babies on! At least 5-10 WPM for sure!
Sounds neat and all, but they've already shown that maintaining a certain temp in your torso area will help keep those extremities warm. I'd think it would use heatpads on your chest.
Damon,
http://actionPlant.com
He has developed heatpipe-driven gloves which pump therms from your toasty upper arm down to those aforementioned frosty digits.
If he has 'developed' these gloves, I would like to see a picture of them. It looks like these are just as 'developed' as those night-vision contacts over at Popular Science.
Or we could just make gloves out of Aerogel.
The city is being overrun by a herd of Lucy Liu's.
But a while back Discovery had a mini series about extreme survival, and one of the shows was about artic survival. The main character, so to speak, tried on an electrical vest of sort, which heated his torso. This allowed him to stay in a -40(I think) degree windtunnel with I think 5 mph winds for more than three hours without losing any dexterity in his fingers.
When the guy who supervised the dexterity and mental acuity test took of his gloves, it took less than three minutes for his hands to be freezing cold, while the infrared camera clearly showed that the main characters fingers were still warm.
Seemed fairly conclusive to me, that the trick was keeping the torso heated, as that would prevent the problems, these gloves are supposed to fix.
Besides - if you can have warm dextorous fingers without wearing gloves, I'd go for that any day of the week, as long as I'm not working with objects, that can hurt my hands.
We do not live in the 21st century. We live in the 20 second century.
my GF is a Raynaud's sufferer and if she get's her hands in anything cold it can stop the circulation in her fingers and feet. causing frostbite even in warmer temperatures like 40degF.
this would make life for a Raynaud's afflicted person much easier on day's like today when it's 6degF outside and expected to be -1 later tonight.
Do not look at laser with remaining good eye.
It's actually better to keep your torso warm.
The draining of blood and heat from your hands and feet happens when your core temperature starts dropping. This is done to protect the vital organs, heart, liver etc over the non-vital, hands, feet. If you can keep your core temperature normal you can actually work without gloves even below zero (celsius). This because the body is warm and needn't cut the heatloss from hands or feet.
There was a good documentary on the Discovery channel about the very subject not long ago.
So, while heatpumping gloves seem nice, I'd go with keeping my body warm and be rid of any gloves hindering my hands.
Yeah, bring on the puns..
Nope. Heatpipes use a fluid and working pressure such that the fluid is almost-boiling at the optimum operating temperature. Heat one end, and the fluid boils, vapor diffuses rapidly to the other end, condenses giving up heat of vaporization, and is absorbed into the wick that runs through the pipe. It then goes back to the other end by capillary action.
That said, it IS more efficient if the bottom end is the "hot" end, 'cause the rising warm fluid vapor and the down-flowing condensed fluid are both assisted by gravity. However, gravity is NOT an essential part of the process (some satellite instruments use heatpipes to keep-em cool in free-fall, for example).
A friend of mine does heat pipes as a business: koolpipes.com
"My strength is as the strength of ten men, for I am wired to the eyeballs on espresso."
Yes. So if you are out in the snow naked except for these gloves, then you should take them off. But the problem then isn't really the gloves.
Solution to fend of heat-pipe-glove-induced hypothermia, buy a warm coat to go with it.
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A lot of readers seem to be missing the point here. The real advantage of this prototype is that it's passive - no batteries, no chemical reactions, nothing. It keeps your fingers warmer by absorbing some heat from your body (that would eventually have ended up in the air) and transferring the heat to your fingertips.
So yes, hand warmers are cheap and effective, but they'll die after a few hours once the reaction finishes.
Keeping your core temp high is a nice idea, but let's say you already have a nice coat and things - I think having some gloves that would passively heat my fingers would be nicely appreciated. Their was a post about how if it's a matter of life-or-death, you should maintain your core temp, but I think the more realistic application of these gloves would be to maintain comfort of your digits when you know you're going to be outside.
Again, the system is passive - no batteries, no chemical reactions, nothing at all. You'd put them on and forget about it.
These gloves work by shifting some of the heat from more core parts of your body to your extremities.
So, your body notices the core temperature dropping and says "Crikey! Better shut off those extremities even more."
So, aren't these gloves self defeating? And possibly dangerous because they will lower your core temp while simultaneously reducing the options your body has to naturally fight that drop.
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