Need advice, scratched heatpipe of my MPB16

[brokenpc]

Hi,

I have a problem for which I cannot find any answers, the cause of the issue is my own stupidity and I am completely aware of it

Yesterday I opened up my 16 inch MBP to clean it from dust since it was working under full load in a rather dusty environment. After cleaning it I tried to reassemble it and had a hard time with the bottom case because of these metal clips which are above the fans.

After successfully reassembling it I was not sure if I did it right an reopened it.While reassembling it again I scratched my heatpipe with these metal clips so that the black paint came of a bit and some of the copper too.
Of course I cleaned it with a vacuum (again) to not have any of the copper left inside it

I reassembled it, it is working, everything is flush but I have a bad feeling about it. I also used a permanent marker to “seal” the heatpipe back so that no more copper can get off.

Do I have to worry that it breaks after some time or so? I mean if there might be some copper dust left or so?

 

[simonmet]

You have absolutely zero reason to be concerned. Nobody is going to look at the inside except you; and no, you have no reason to be concerned about a scratch on a heat pipe affecting reliability, so long as you cleaned up any metal bits!

Apple only paints/coats the heat pipes for looks anyway, because they’re famously “particular” about the look of their products—both inside and out. Jobs cared a lot about how they look on the inside and famously said “the inside of our computers look better than the outside of yours”.

 

[brokenpc]

Thank you a lot, this gives me at least a bit of calmness at this point. I did not even touch a part of the insides besides removing the dust on the lowest setting of the vacuum with some distance to not hit anything or so. What bothers me now is that I only vacuumed the area near the heat pipes and the fans :/

 

[simonmet]

it’s extremely unlikely anything will happen. Probably more likely to get hit by a car!

In future, I’m not sure if vacuuming is the best idea unless you have a very gentle vacuum with a brush. Was it visibly dirty?

Short, sharp bursts of compressed air and taking out and fluff/dust balls with (plastic) tweezers or a tooth pick or something is probably better.

 

[brokenpc]

There was definitely some dust, but to be honest, it was not much which actually was surprising. We have a very nice vacuum which can go very low with its settings. It did not use a brush actually, I kept the opening of the vacuum away from everything by putting it on my finger to not touch anything. My pc looks like a catastrophy inside compared to the mac