Scratch Build – In Progress GET A LIFE - COMPLETED

Case is looking great. Love the passive concept. Your attention to detail is wonderful
I would think a single row of venting slots at the top of side panel should be enough for good convective cooling.

Really great work man, this will look great in your living room

 

Ah okay.. my bad. All of the audio connectors I got from here. The black rubbercasing is removable so you can solder your own connectors. It's a swedish site but I guess you will find it it any radioshack/electronic stores around you.

The RJ45 connector I needed was actually pretty hard to find because I wanted one with the pins on the right side and without LEDs. There are several RJ45 connectors available if you are not as picky as I was with the looks. I ended up scavenging it from an old PCI Network card, like this one.

Thanks man, you actually gave me a pretty good idea to test with only air out on top of the backcover first and then add some at the bottom if it turns out it's needed. If it's enough it will look much more cleaner.

 

It reduces chatter. The less material you have to take off, the better finish you're going to get because of the reduced pressure on the end mill. Less pressure = less force = less side-to-side movement = better finish.

You can do the same thing on a CNC by making roughing passes and then small finish passes that are on the order of 10 thou or so. Same idea goes for roughing out the hole first with a smaller end mill, then taking a bigger one and finishing.


TLR: Angel is right.

 

Yeah I've used that teqnique from time to time.. Thanks for the reminder.

Btw I just noticed that in my previous reply to AngelOD it could be interpret that I wanted reply from someone with more milling time than Angel. I hope it was understod that I ment he was the one with more milling time than me, and his feedback was apreciated.

A small progress check:
I have just finished the audioconnectors and I just need to find some black hot glue to clean it all up.

 

WOW Gnu, thats amazing, i just recently startet milling without cnc and its such a tedious work, respect !

 

Thanks lenne, Yeah patience is the best tool when going manual. And I expect to see some nice milling projects from you now since you got that "new" big mill.

 

Its about time we had an update.....don't you think?

 

Yeah you are definetly right about that..

I have been doing some soldering and milling lately but this update will only show the soldering.
The cablemaking hit a dead end and was stuck there for a while until I could find some black colored glue for my glue gun. I wasn't satisfied with the looks of the normal translucent (read urine yellow) glue and I was searching every store and weppage I could think of without luck.

I ended up trying to make my own and suceeded on the second try.
Anyway , here is the update.












It's glue dyeing time.


The black ballpointpen is slaughtered and it's blod is dripped into a pool of molten glue. One drop is just about enough for this pool, to much and the ink will not try and you will have black ink all over the place.


The results. Black glue, it was reaheated with a hot air gun and applied with a gettho tinfoil funnel.


The black glue is covering up the solderjoints and holds the cables securely inplace.



Next up was the HDMI connector. I realised that these orange cables just wont look good so I had to make them black. They were also a bit to long. It won't be vissible once the whole case is closed but I still want it to look good while assembling


So I desoldered it and started over.


I deliberetly made the cables on one side slightly shorter to have it curve naturaly. When I did the DVI cable, I cut the final length of the cables before it was soldered inplace. This resulted in a not so tidy mass off cables. However on this HDMI cable, I cut them to the right length after soldering the first end inplace. The results were much nicer than on the DVI cable. Lesson learned.



I just had to sleeve it but it was really fiddly. I was happy with the result at first, but It turned out that the sleeve was making the cable to stiff and it wasn't possible to mount it in the foot as I wanted. ..


..So I had to cutt it off and settle with the regular look.

 

Those look great, nice work with the black gluemod a good idea!

 

black glue! I didn't know about that.

*writes down note for future reference*

Oh yeah: great stuff here...

 

Nothing left to say. You sir, are a genius!!!!

 

Black glue was an awesome trick & wow the cable work & soldering is perfecto .

 

+1

And rep for the glue trick!

 

ghetto black glue... fantastic +rep for that!

 

I'll move on and let the previous applause for the black glue die down ( by the way).

Nice soldering job to replace the orange wires. Keep vinyl dye in mind for the next mod. All you had to do was spray them black. You can do a couple of coats in just minutes and it is absorbed into the insulation.

 

Like the potting trick - for future reference, though, can't you just mix up some epoxy glue with a little black ink in it? You can either spudge it on like normal, or inject it from an el-cheapo syringe if you really need accuracy. That should save the tinfoil/reheat trick.

 

Hmmm. Hot glue- something else to toss in the dye bottle overnight.

 

Thanks, It does the job

Thanks, just remember that it can make quite a mess.

And you are a genious and an artist. Thanks

Thanks Waynio, your cabling is really nice aswell

Thanks, Hat of

Thank you , ghetto is the shitt.

Thanks a lot for the tip, didn't know about that stuff. Sounds awsome, seems a lot better than paint. I'll make shure to remember it.

Yeah I probably could, I guess there is a lot of ways to do this. I havn't used epoxy that much so Im not that familiar with how it behaves.. However I really like the way hot glue works. When I use it, I usaly slab a blob of it on the piece and as it sets I keep reheating it with a lighter/hot air gun. By spinning/turning it and adjusting the heat you can shape it pretty well. If it fails, you could always reheat it and try again.

Hehe...BlooBalls maybe?

 

Fap-tastic work, as always...

FYI though, I'm not sure what you can find/ not find locally to you in Sweden, but typing in 'black glue sticks' on google or ebay turns up loads of results for various lengths and sizes.

However, making your own is so much more fun & cheaper

 

Thanks , most of the results I got when searching was of something called "black keratin glue stick" used to pre-bonding hair extensions. I just had this feeling that those wouldn't work. But who knows, I don't use extensions myself so I have no idea but maybe there is someone here who does and can fill me in.....

I know there is regular black gluesticks around, trying to find them localy was a lot harder though.
But as you said.. DIY is more fun. For future work though, I think Ill just try to find some bigpack on ebay. Maybe I should throw in some extensions while Im at it