I was about to drop the Tie interceptor comment, but saw that I was beat to it Looks great so far man
This is looking lovely. Can I ask what may be a silly question? Given that the reservoir mounting uses five screws (and therefore has rotational but not axial symmetry), why did you elect to have one screw at a cardinal point to the side, rather than top or bottom? (Hope that question actually makes sense). It could of course be 'because that's how I wanted it to look' but I was just wondering if it's something to do with how the res fits or some other reason.
You're right. If I rotated the reservoir so that e.g. one of the screws points straight forward, that would put the side ports at a 54 degree angle to the radiator outlet. There are no angled barbs of that angle. It would also make for a very short a run from the rad to res to improvise something with bent brass pipe. Moreover the bottom ports are in line with the side ports, so they would end up at a 36 (or 54) degree angle to the midline of the case. I decided the screw arrangement was less obtrusive.
Sneak Preview: fun with lathes So I bought a metal working lathe (A small 45kg one; I don't have a ground floor workshop which would accomodate 150kg beasts). It't the only way to be sure... This allows me to make more parts myself and expands the range of refinements I can introduce to the design. Including... Well, you know how we always paint over or cover the back of fan hubs in some way, because frankly those brand name stickers can get a bit fugly (Phanteks excepted). I have been thinking for a while how we have flashy fan covers; why not have fan cones as well? They are easy to make, can come in all sorts of shapes and forms --and indeed materials: acetal, aluminium, brass, copper... Because my steampunk-ish design has a lot of brass accents, my fan cones will of course be made in brass. Le cutting the brass bar: Le parting off: And introducing: fan cones. Cutting it was easy; the trick will be to produce another that is exactly the same... You can imagine the possibilities. Concave cones; streamlined cones, cones with bevels and chamfers... with a mill even more detail could be added. Bill (MNPC Tech), if you're reading this: commercial possibilities here? I should point out that I did not invest in a lathe just for this modding project. That's crazy, right? Right? It is in fact something I have been wanting to do for a while and been saving up for; I love model engineering, from steam engines to clock mechanisms; a whole craft that I hope to explore more of (hey, I still have 20 years until retirement. That's the opportunity for three more skills to master in preparation for an old age dedicated solely to blissfully pursueing my interests). Lathes have been around since well before Victorian times and some of the antique ones are beautiful machines in their own right: ^^^ That one is not mine, BTW. ^^^ That one is not mine, either. To the extent that rather than being tools to craft ornaments, the small clockmaker's lathes became ornaments themselves: (Nope, not mine either.) So is it not appropriate that when making a Steampunk-ish computer I should (try to) reconnect with Victorian engineering and metalworking skills and tools? And there just so happens to be a lot of that hobby that can be transfered to PC modding --especially where water cooling is involved. Milled pump housing? Yes please. Brass settings for the nixie tubes? Think so. And I have crazy plans for some control levers to actuate on/off and reset switches... More to come.
I would! Let's face it: The design thread went for three years, and he just bought a lathe. At some point he will be re-making the reservoir to bigger specs too. -It will be awesome, but there's no way it will come that fast. BTW, Beware the brass shavings! I know I've said it before, but that stuff is just like microscopic shards of glass. It goes right in your skin and burns like fire if handled.
