Scratch Build – In Progress Project RabidCicada (Mineral Oil Computer) - 20th October 2010

Pics Show up for me....Whats the problem with them? Any particular symptoms?

 

of coarse NOW they are working. earlier the first one was just a big empty spot and the second one was a tiny red X.

and holy cow that desk is gorgeous! im extremely envious. how much did it set you back, if you dont mind my asking...?

 

Tank construction Begins

Alright. Got off my lazy ass today and got some work done.

Went to Lowes and got 4 Bessy Corner Clamps and 2 - 36" Quick Grips. Then I got home and called my brother and friends to come get in some trouble with me. My wife ran off to go cook some baked goods at a friends house. I definitely win that one.....I get to play AND I get baked goods....

So. After everyone got over here and we deliberated over the best way to get it together we decided I needed to use 4 more corner clamps...so we hopped into the car, went back to lowes, and bought 4 of the last 5 they had......phew.

Got back and clamped up the polycarbonate. We clamped all the side panels together loosely, just to hold them in position.

Full Pic of Clamped Polycarbonate:


Inside View of Tank:


After that the real work began. We put it across an old plastic shelving unit I had since the clamps could sit off the edges and not have any weight put on them.

Crew Hard At Work:


My Brother and I sealing the edges: (My right hand has a syringe with Weld-On in it.)


More Tank Work:


Even More Tank Work:


Had A Little Spill:


Close Up Applying solvent:


The Entire Crew Basks In Their Glory:


So it was a productive afternoon. Tomorrow I'll be putting the tank bottom on the side panels. I'll also be finishing the Weld-On applications right near the top and bottom of all the seams...due to the clamps, we couldn't properly open up the seam to aloow the Weld-On to wick in properly.

We had an accident or two and I've marred the surface of one panel of polycarbonate a little, but it's nothing bad. I can buff it out a little bit:



Desk Question From Wicked
Oh...Wicked...It's the CF91Max desk from MartinAndZeigler and it costs $1850 for the desk itself and about $2100 total to have it shipped to Bristow Va >.<.

 

I planned on only doing 2 seams (3 faces) so I could drill the bulkhead holes in the final side panel but I forgot about it in the middle of everything. So I'm just going to go ahead and attach the base panel tomorrow to shore up the strength of structure.

Then I'll drill the bulkhead holes later.

 

Looks great. Why didn't you drill the holes for the bulkhead unions before you glued the whole thing together?

 

Legoman......I'm getting the feeling you only look at my pretty pictures.

In the comment directly preceding yours I explained why...I got distracted with the drinks and my friends+brother over. We got too gung-ho about getting stuff done finally and I got carried away. I know I'm going to pay for it but oh well....live and learn.

 

Great work and original plans, I will follow this definitely...

 

Lol, I saw that, but I wasn't sure if that was said jokingly or not Be careful when drilling those holes; it'd suck if you crack the acrylic after having already glued it.

 

Small update

Taking my time getting the Base panel of the tank together. It'll be finished after thanksgiving.

I drilled out the socket weld fittings today and I'll tap them after thanksgiving with my mechanical engineer.

I'll order the Bulkhead here shortly and drill out the tank after thanksgiving also.

Koolance QuickDisconnect information:
They are BSPP (Parallel) as opposed to BSPT (tapered). They mentino that the QDC's are BSP but don't inform on Parallel or tapered.

Their O-Rings are EPDM...which is pretty bad with mineral oil according to an informational website. I'll be replacing with vitton or something resistant.
They don't list information about the Orings (ID/OD) etc. I've got an email to them right now to acquire that information.

 

Damn......Koolances QDC's are off the table. They have internal O-Rings that cannot be replaced.

I'm asking them about creating a version using vitton or another oil resistant substance.

Unfortunately, I don't think I have any pull. If any Bit-Tech god would mind trying to throw their weight behind my suggestion with them that would be great.

I did point out in my email that it would be a first and they would get great rep for having mineral oil capable NoDrip disconnects (As opposed to standard disconnects that already exist in the hydraulics industry).

I do believe the only change they would have to make would be with the O-Rings. There might be a slight performance change in terms of No-Drip due to viscosity...but it would be great to have something as nice looking as the koolance QDC that work for Mineral oil

 

External Frame Done...Theme Idea For Tank.

Good progress has been made!

Teaser Pic
​

Summary
So I finally got around to getting the external frame done. Ran into a large unexpected dimension issue while cutting all the metal.

Along the way I also got started on the makeshift G3/8BSPP connectors and had my bulkheads show up. While I worked on all that I also had the Sunbeam Rheobus fan controller show up. I've read the reviews on the Sunbeam and it seems many have had problems with many also singing it's praises. Well see how that goes for me.

Random Tank Theme
I think I've decided to use a kind of tribal theme inside the tank. I'm going to be looking around for a wood carved Tikki Mask to shove in there. My plan is to light the entire case with eerie green and orange leds. I'll add other tribal decorations in to taste when I get the main attraction up and running (maybe some leave/tree stuff ). To go along with the color theme I've decided that I'm going to chope up the SunBeam Rheobus fan-controller and change all the LED out for green/orange ones.

I'm also getting Orange colored fans for the Radiator. The Orange peeking out from the black should make for a nice color scheme. I might even light some of that with led's...probably not though.

I like the idea of a eerie green/orange glowing tribal mask in the tank with bubbles coming up around it all.

Bulkhead and Connector solution
When I thought I was going to use Koolances QDC's I had planned on creating a good connector for going from the male bulkhead end to the male QDC end. To do this I basically needed a double female coupling. No-One sells those outright. They are all reducers, meaning each end is a different size. So I bought a massive G3/8 Tap and some socketWelds from mcmaster and Rob and I drilled out then tapped the socketwelds. Still need to tap one more socketwel, and I need to redo or buy another socket weld to tap cause one' socketweld's threads didn't turn out well.

Bulkheads


Tap (This thing is Massive!)


SocketWelds (Middle One Not Tapped)


SunBeam Rheobus FanController
Not Much to say here...Just happy I got it. I'm planning on building a lid for the computer and putting the controller in there as well as organizing cables etc that come out of the tank.

Sunbeam Front


Sunbeam Rear (Those massive M's are heatsinks for the regulators)


The Victims that will be replaced by Orange and Green Bretheren


Actual Tank Work
So we started out running along at a fairly good pace. Rob had a cut sheet generated by a cut optimizer program which took into account the length of the raw stock I had. We marked up the raw stock soas to not mix any up and got to cutting. I noted all of the heavy duty machinery in his shop then we got to work. Rob is certainly the man to know with this kind of work to be done.

Robs Industrial Drill Press


Rob's Industrial Lathe


Fully bonded case Sitting on a trash can in Robs workshop


Marked Up metal


Getting Ready for Metal Cut


Mid Cut


Cut Up Metal


So we were going along at a pretty good pace. He's cutting pieces and I start putting stuff together. I grab the joint plates, bolts, nuts, and the freshly cut lengths of aluminum stock and saunter on over to make tank to start assembling:

Joining Plates


Initially Assembling Base


Assembling Base on top because it's easier to start


Then we hit a big problem when we went to position the cross struts on the base....They don't fit.

It turns out that everything we cut was a little smaller than what he had modeled. Everything....The polycarbonate and every piece of metal so far. Somehow...when the measurements got taken out they were all scaled down. We panicked for a second then calmed ourselves and thought it out. It turns out we had enough play room in the project so that the scaling issue didn't kill the entire thing...phew. So we just needed to cut the struts short a little. We lined them up and chopped off the ends where they overlapped:


Problematic Cross Struts


Fixing the Blasphemous Cross Strut


After that issue it was smooth sailing. We kept bolting everything together. I gotta say...It came out just like I planned (minus the whole smaller than planned part ):

Magnificently Finished Case on Trash Can


Side View


Corner View


Diagonal Through View


Internal Down View



From here, there is still a large amount of work to do for me. I still need to figure out my lid solution. I need to finish the internal frame and motherboard support tray (already have that one laid out). I need to order all kinds of small supporting HW like the orings, tubing, and barbs/QDC's. I also need to acquire my tikki stuff to finish this thing out right.

I'm forcing myself to wait till after christmas to make any more progress because my family coninced me to put some stuff on my christmas list. So from here till then I have to wait and see what shows up christmas day. Until then I'll plan the lid and look around for stuff that fits the theme.

My Cat Thanks you for your Time

 

Mod cat is watching you mod

thanks for the update. the tank looks great with all the metal bits in place.

where will the fan controller be mounted? any ideas for a lid yet?

 

I like your kitteh.

 

I like your project.

May I also compliment you on the correct declensive use of "My brother and I...". Many people would incorrectly say: "My brother and me..." (or "...my brother and I..." in the dative/accusative declension). Which always irritates me immensely.

I'm such a grammar Nazi...

 

Be wary of the fact that aluminum and plexiglass do not have equal rates of thermal expansion. I don't remember which is higher, but if it's plexiglass and your aluminum frame is too tight, the frame is going to end up squeezing the tank and possibly cracking it.

It's for this reason that I set my fans to really ramp up when the oil temp starts to go past 30C or so.

Edit: http://www.engineeringtoolbox.com/linear-expansion-coefficients-d_95.html

Looks like acrylic has 4x the expansion rate of aluminum.

 

Ouchies! Good point. Neoprene padding between the aluminium struts and the plexi might help?

 

Good point about the differing expansion rates...didn't think about that. Thanks for the linkage. I looked at the numbers for Polycarbonate (what I used) and it's better then acrylic but not by a lot.

But...I should be fine in either case. The entire aluminum chassis is held together by friction from the bolts and washer-nuts. I can adjust the lengths in all directions a little without issue. If I have to do it too much then aesthetics will be hurt a little.

I already tested the entire assembly out for strength and it'll do perfectly fine. I sat on it and rocked and jumped up and down...didn't move.

The polycarbonate and aluminum chassis weigh 38 pounds (tested on a typical bathroom scale).

Choosing the polycarbonate, as opposed to regular acrylic etc, was a good choice in terms of strength... (polycarbonate + Weld-On=awesome strong)
I had it in my truck, upright on the passenger seat, on the way to work to show some people (before getting the aluminum chassis put together). I forgot to strap it in with a seatbelt. I had to hit the brakes pretty good and the tank slammed forward into the dash. It shattered my adjustable vent on the dash and it only has a less-than-one-mm dent in the corner edge of the tank.

 

about the quick desconects, why don't you use some that are used in the mould industry? like the ones from Hasco or Rabourdin?
they may not be pretty, but i'm sure they'll get the job done.

 

I've said it before....I'm completely new to modding. I don't know where to look for solutions.

So with that in mind...I will take a look at those and see if they work. Being as I'm without QDC's at all right now any options are worth considering. I'm new to navigating the industrial solutions. I took a quick look at some Hasco, and Rabourdin, and I just saw a couple from Snaptite.

Snaptite has a 23 series drybreak disconnects which look interesting, but I can't find info on threading....so I'm going to give them a call tomorrow and see what I can find out.

Thanks for the pointers.

 

no problem always a pleasure to help. remembered yet another brand from my old mould design days, Staubli
link here...