Scratch Build – In Progress * r e f l e X i o n *

This window cut looks like the Casemodbr Logo, the biggest brazilian casemod forum :

 

Hey, guys.

Thank you, murtoz!

Hi, Bob.. they're made by Dangerden and are the Cross-SLI fittings. You can get them at performance-pcs.

Thanks, TotalGaos!

I drew a diagram to show the flow of the water in a parallel flow setup.

It has to do with pressure. In a closed loop, the pressure is constant. So what happens in parallel is that you basically fork your flow two directions, like this:



The liquid will travel in two directions at equal pressure and eventually exit at the same flowrate (given that you are running equally restrictive blocks.)

The advantage of this method, like a few mentioned earlier, would be that both GPUs are getting cool water instead of in-series where GPU1 gets cold and GPU2 accumulates the heat from GPU1.

This will be the first time that I've attempted this, but guys have had good luck with it, and the logistics of it make sense.

Thanks, Matt!

Hi, Unicorn. I'm running Dangerden on the CPU and Koolance on the RAM. For the chipset, I'm running an EK full chipset block. Dangerden didn't have a full chipset block for the X58 at the time, and the northbridge block that they had did not fit the board that I was using.

I don't usually like to discuss the intricacies of sponsorship deals in public, but I just want to say that EK was willing to partner with me on the project to a certain extent but not with a full sponsorship like Dangerden. That's why I went with DD instead. And they have been an excellent partner for refleXion. I have nothing against EK and we didn't have a fallout of any sort between us.

Never seen it before. Although there are some vague similarities, I believe mine is quite different. The galaxy image has two arms spinning in opposite directions of each other (instead of a single-armed spiral) and has an oval center cutout.

With all the designs that exist in the marketplace, it's difficult to come up with something that doesn't at least somewhat resemble something else that is out there. But I felt that this logo had enough pizazz and originality that it would stand out well.


I'll be working over the weekend on the build and hope to have an update by Sunday.

 

Oh yeah, i now =D
I told you it just cause i thought that was similar of the logo of the brazilian forum
Your project is being awesome, and i'm accompanying it .

 

Ahh that really makes sense now! Thanks.

 

I'm still in awe about you polishing the caps on your motherboard and that was a while ago. I've been in awe for a while now then.

 

Hello, bit-tech.

I just wanted to provide a status update since I've been away for a while.

There's no "pretty" way to put this, so I'll just say it.

First off, refleXion is still in progress. I am not delaying or discontinuing the build, although it's become clear that my timeframe of end of May isn't going to happen. It's looking more like end of June or possibly July.

With that said, the reason things have been delayed is because I've ran into some financial difficulties that have caused me to change the path of the build a bit by downgrading some parts. I'll be documenting what's been changed as soon as the new parts come in.

Let me just say that the core theme of refleXion hasn't changed, and I truly feel that after it's complete (and it WILL be completed, eventually) that this change won't detract from the identity of the build at all. In fact, my belief is that this change will actually improve the overall aesthetics (I will be explaining how when the new parts get here) by quite a bit. This, however, was not the sole motivation for the change in parts.

Will the build be a little less 'epic' after this change in relation to hardware? Probably. But sometimes, sacrifices must be made based on real life circumstances, and I simply don't have the budget at this time to keep dumping as much money into refleXion as I have for the past 4, 5, 6 months.

Lastly, this "change" in hardware is only going to delay things by a week or so beyond the original timeline, so there won't be a waiting game that seems to extend on forever. I'm hoping that everything will go off to paint by end of June.

I'm headed to the beach over the weekend and so I won't have time to work on the build much. Because of this, I'm going to share my last update which was never posted since there's been a famine of updates lately. The update doesn't show as much progress as I would like, but it will clue you guys into some of the latest work that's been done. I'll try to have this on here tonight. If not, some time tomorrow.

-Michael

 

Ok, I have a whooole lot of pictures.

As many may recall, the shelving tactic I've decided to go with for the Zero-G chamber (custom SSD drive and water pump mounting bay) will be constructed with dovetailed Lexan.

To cut the dovetails, I use a combination of a handheld router and template guide. But before starting, I needed to set the depth of the cut at the router bit. I can't remember the exact depth of the cut that I decided to go with for these shelves, but it seems like it was around 4mm (?) It was very shallow, as the Lexan is strong enough that you don't need that deep a groove for a strong bond.

Measuring the depth of the groove cut or "dado" cut as is the correct technical term for it:



And then setting the router bit depth:





That depth will be for cutting the groove or "dado" for the lip or "tenon" of the shelf to slide in.

Cutting some Lexan on the table saw:



And I'll slide the unsanded shelf into my dovetail jig:



You can see how rough the edges are after the saw. These have to be sanded out with my Black & Decker power sander.



The power sander is good for getting the teeth marks out of the Lexan, as you can see. I use a rough 120, 220 on the power sander and then jump up to 400 grit on the sanding block and then wet sand the rest of the way home.







As you can see, the jig really comes in handy by allowing me to clamp the shelf in a vertical position while I sand and polish the edge. A belt sander would work better, but they're quite expensive when compared with other seemingly more complex tools, and so I haven't dropped the cash down for one yet.

After some wet sanding all the way to 3000-grit, this is what you get:





This stuff right here doesn't hurt, either. It seems to layer a gloss over the wet sanded edge to give it just a little more 'shine':




Next, it was time to mark the drill holes for the shelves. To do this, I'll use the same method that I used with the shelf brackets before by placing wooden blocks underneath to level small increments at a time, only this time I'm not using brackets. I'll be drilling and tapping directly into the shelves.

For this procedure, 'Lil', my microscopic little leveling pal, makes another cameo appearance.







(You can never have enough Irwin clamps. I have 8 of them and STILL run out occasionally...)




After this, I did something stupid. Instead of clamping the shelves down and drilling straight into them from the outside shell, I decided to mark them with a sharpie. Although this seemed like a good idea at the time, it would cost me later.

Anyway, I marked the drill holes once I had the shelves level and began to drill them:



This wasn't as easy as it could've been. My press didn't sit high enough for me to use the attached base as a platform since the shelf had to be sitting vertical to drill into the sides, so I had to move it to the side and just use a vice clamp and several spring clamps to hold the vice clamp down as a drilling platform:





"Lil" makes another appearance as he helps me level the shelf so that I'm drilling down at an exact 90-degree angle. This way, when I screw into the shelf from the outside shell, the screw and screwhole will align (theoretically, anyway..)



A few scuffs that I'll have to sand back out. This stuff scratches sooo easily.



Then I began to tap the holes. I'd never done this before and was expecting it to be a pain. But it was actually very easy.



And I'm using MDPC black oxide screws into the shelves. I can't remember the exact size of these.. 6/32, perhaps?



And here, the bottom shelf, is how these look when mounted inside the chamber shell. Look better without brackets, I think.



The top shelf was still sitting on the installed bracket from before. I think the bottom looks much better.




I haven't figured out a way to hide the screw threads yet. I thought about using an overlaying bracket, but then that would seem to defeat the purpose of not using brackets in the first place.

I could try drilling shorter on the shelf as I went too far with this one. Could probably back it off by 1/8" or so.

One more thing that some of you may notice is that the pumps now line up with the windows perfectly while resting on top of the shelves (no recess cut needed, as before.) This will clean up the look a bit as I wasn't really crazy about having to recess the shelves for the pumps.



That's it for now. Thanks for looking.. and for your patience as I know that things have been progressing slower than usual. Hope to have more soon.

 

I have to say your worklogs are very nice to read, with superb pictures to match it. Maybe you've already mentioned it, but what kind of lens do you use?

On topic question about how you tapped the holes. I can see in the picture that you've used your bench drill, but did you tap the holes manually or did you power the drill up? It seems a bit overkill to tap on power, but then again I couldn't see the benefits of using the press. I never use it anyway..

 

Hey, Total. I drilled the holes with the press but tapped them manually. Tapping with the press would've destroyed this stuff because it's quite soft. It taps very easy by hand.

 

Yeah i get it now. I thought that you put the tap bit into the press and then turned the press head manually. Lol I can be pretty dumb now and then.

 

man, awesome build, been following this in a couple of forums (since you're there ).

Could you take some shots of your shop and the various machines? I need to build a decent shop and you seem to have the right stuff and I could see me working my way up to this. Cheers!

 

Actually, that wouldn't be such a stupid idea. It would make sure that you held the tapping bit at a 90 degrees angle. Might be overkill, since you've most likely drilled the hole at a 90 degrees angle, too, but you can never be too careful, hehe.

 

Specially with plexi.. You don't want to break 17 years worth of sanded edges lol.

 

Is it dead?

*pokes with a stick*

I would be so disappointed if I never got to see the end result of this wonderful project

 

so would I - if I had a few bob spare I lend you some Michael just to see it finished!

 

Epic thread revival.
I want to see this finished!

 

Thats not a stupid question at all, they make tapping stations that are geared specifically for this. Typically personally work would be done by hand like in this case but at work we have several pneumatic tapping presses for tapping cast iron because it would be an absolute bitch to do by hand. They oil the tapping bits and remain perfectly 90 and all you have to do is hit the correct spot with the arm.


Also, wheres the freakin progress here!
I'm with everyone else, I've been following this since the beginning and since the revival I'm itching for some more pictures

 

Thanks Nutman for reminding me of this epic build.
Hoping this topic will get revived