The most common screen mesh heat pipes consist of a smooth walled copper tube with a woven copper mesh as the wick structure. This wick structure is created from a metal fabric or mesh, the mesh is wrapped around a forming mandrel which is then inserted into the heat pipe. After placement, the mandrel is carefully removed leaving behind the wrapped mesh. The mesh tries to unwrap itself leaving the wick held by this tension against the inner wall of the heat pipe.

The capillary force that is generated by the mesh is determined by the size of the rectangular openings between the individual threads. Heat pipes with this type of wick structures are capable of operating in gravity-aided and horizontal orientations, and are capable of returning the working fluid against gravity at angles up to 5? from horizontal.

These heat pipes can also be used in applications with radial heat fluxes up to 40 W/cm2.