Methinks we should make a cautionary thread in the modding forum. Would keep many of us from finding stuff like this out the hard way!
Yeah, I know all about brass swarf --it gets everywhere. Luckily Birmingham has a couple of metal dwarf recycling places. I'm trying to keep Ada fairly simple; I want to finish this thing sometime this year as I really need to upgrade my working rig. Once Ada is done, and I have more experience with the lathe and mill (yeah, that will be my next purchase) I will have time to do a more elaborate project that I'm redesigning (possibly around an Asus Extreme Black Edition, or its successor): Camille. Blame Skyrip. He felt that Ada didn't really stretch him CNC-wise, and he wanted a challenge. "You should do Camille", he said. So hopefully next year I will.
Nice! Love a bit of lathe action. For the fan cones, if you had them on the blades the increased rotational inertia would smooth out PWM control very nicely, and would probably make it sound better (what little noise there is).
True, but the trick would be to mount them absolutely dead centre on the propeller hub. Just a micrometre off and you'd create wobble = not good. In any case they add inertia to the motor hub and might reduce what little vibration there is. Although I don't expect them to make any difference except look pretty.
The way to do it would be to dismantle the fans and mount the prop on your new lathe, then you could find and mark the rotational centre etc. If you were feeling really swish you could turn the edge of the hub down a little to smooth it into the edge of the cone. Just for amusement of course! They look great as they are.
Oh, what finish will you be using for your wood? I'm trialing an old, old recipe for black walnut stain and thus far it's been great, will dye almost anything, including me! If you're interested and you can't get black walnuts, I'll gather you some hulls and box them up.
Any metal swarf they will, at least here. And pay good money for it, too. I even take off my brass and copper dust and get something for it. Been financing my archery with TV destruction-all the copper/aluminum gets recycled, the screen is separated out into glass suitable for knapping and the rest gets disposed of, less the dangerous chemicals in the tube. It's made me a pretty penny.
Don't know. I was looking for an ecological way to dispose of it, mostly. Can't be worth more than a few pence. I'm thinking black walnut, waxed. But depending on the result I may well be wanting to try your stain.
Today, I finished the other cone. They match (phew)! Next step: paint the fan blades black --if I can find a way to disassemble them. Contrary to most fans, peeling of the label does not reveal a small hole in the fan casing where you can remove a C-clip and detatch the propellor from the coil assembly in the casing; I am met with a solid, blank wall. Hmmm...
