Well i started another cube project a while back now, called Qubix and well it didn't take off very far its just sitting at work in pieces at the moment waiting for some spare time to finish. Well a lot happened between then and now as my company has taken a few sharp twists and turns which sucked up all my spare time for making things so everything I had on the go had to be put on the back burner till everything was sorted out Well with out further delay here is the Follow up of Cubix its bigger brother Qubix H2oT which is basically Qubixs' bigger brother , this will be around 350mm Qubed and will have a lot crammed inside it. Including 4 14” TFTs, 1 on each of the front faces[top, sides, front]. These will show visual affects and system specs and tempratures as well as other things that I fancy showing. The main idea was to create a visually breathtaking cube that would house all of my hardware plus if possible in such a small and space deprived space to put some water in there as well just to take some of the heat away. Well the system will be built around an EVGA SLI mATX motherbaord which I sourced from the USA and have had for a fair few months now burning a hole in my table waiting to be used. There are also 4, 14” TFTs with an active panel size of 300mm by 230mm which will leave some room around the panels and give me some space for buttons and switches . I will also fit a reservoir onto one of the panels most likely the top in the shape of a fill port or 2 just to keep the simetry. Well anyway thats enough chatter lets get stuck into what I've got so far, as I'm sure you are all eager to see what I've done. Right lets start off with the designs that i have got so far, I've done all my designs and CAD work in SolidWorks, SolidEdge and MetalSOFT these are the 3 main CAD packages that i use they each have there advantages and i know each of them to a degree that allows me to do what i want. Heres a few concept renderings that I've done while I was messing around with the project, shows the cube and a fan housing plus the foot that will sit on the bottom as in a single foot so it has an illusion of floating kinda thing. Well there just a few test samples i did but the Cube one is the real deal that is what it is like, Its rendered in blue plastic as I couldn't render it properly in the materials im going to use as it didn't come out right but you can get the general idea anyway. Now this is a new thing im sure for everyone but if you would like to download my cube in full colour 3D glory where you can dismantle it and rotate, zoom in, zoom out, hide parts to get better look at other parts and generly just take a damn good look at it. I have uploaded an e-drawing, if you havn't heard of e-drawings they are interact drawings that you can send to friends or clients so they can get an idea of your design also they can fiddle with it if you wish and add comments but i've taken all those features off i don't want you messing it up lol j/k. If you want ot download it its around 2mb and in a .rar file just run the exe and it'll self launch itself and away you go just use your middle mouse and wheel like you do in any CAD software and you can move around the Cube etc... DOWNLOAD HERE Now lets get onto what I've got so far and what I've done. Well to start with i have made the corner brackets that will hold the whole thing together. They are made form 1.5mm Aluminum and are folder up with holes in to screw everything together and hold it in place. Also I have the material in stock for the edges, faces and motherboard tray. What I have got consists of 3 lengths of 1”x1”x3mm x 6m Aluminum Angle, 1 off 2500x1250 2mm Aluminum sheet 5251 H22, 1 off 2500x1250 1.5mm Aluminum sheet 5251 H22, 200 M4 x20 CS S/S screws. Thats about it for the materials i have got some of the TFTs and the motherboard plus the CPU, RAM, HDD etc.. which I will be taking from my current PC but I still have a fair amount of hardware to buy. Anyway onward to more pictures Well 2 TFTs arrived today from the nice girl that was driving the Parcel Force lorry today . Well I had to wait all day before I could take them apart as I couldn't justify going home early had a big quote to do at work. Anyway here's what I've done so far, i got them out the box then i dismantled the casing and removed all the guts from these beasts . They were really easy to take apart only 6 screws around the outside of the casing and it just poped off, a further 6 screws holding the main body the screen to the front bezel and that was off. Then it was just down to removing the speakers and the buttons and it was all ready for the next stage which requires me measuring it and altering my panel drawing so to fit them in. Anyhow here are the pictures they do a better job at explaining . Oh and a quick shot of my webcam as a mate was watching me take the monitor apart lol . and a quick shot of the Motherboard. And thats it for today more to come when i take my camera to work again to get the pictures of the construction stages. Comments and questions.
looking good but please resize your pictures to 640*480 (it's mentioned in the sticky in this thread) they take ages to load.
There 1280x960, Do i really have to upload a seperate set of images cause thats just a pain in the arse.
Yikes! You need to reduce those pics - 1280x960 is killer, especially since your server is slow. I'm on a T3 and it took 4 minutes to load this screen. 600x480 is the prefered size in this forum. The rendering looks great, and I like the floating fan. Can't wait to see it take shape.
I originally loaded mine at 800x600. No one complained, but when I noticed that everyone sayd 640x480 was prefered, I resized a coupla hundred pics. I thought it was the considerate thing to do. With a batch re-sizer, it actually makes it faster to upload to the server. And if they are smaller I'll watch your mod. Otherwise, I'll just hit the "Stop load" button and go look at someone elses.
Fair enough i've resisezed them down but meh people are too impatient can't wait 2 mins for some iamges to load Im not fussed if you look at it or not tbh.
Well, thanks for resizing them even though it doesn't make sense to you. I'm looking forward to seeing this project progress!
Cube design looks good. The monitor pic sequence is perfect modding. So I got this new monitor and BAM it's ripped apart. Oh and what is/was your webcam? It looks awsome and quite mechanical.
For the love of god! Noo! Don't use that horrible Photoworks default enviroment with the red bricks and all! Other than that, looking good. Can't wait to see what else you're putting in.
Yo, he uses SolidWorks, SolidEdge for the 3d design work and photoworks for rendering, then uses MetalSOFT i believe to control the CNC punch... The webcam he tells me is a rather expensive piece of kit (~£3000) designed for visually impaired people, it has a nifty 40x zoom, and the quality is surperb as i was on the other of it the night watching and talking to MDK as he took the 14in screen apart.
Cheers dude bang on hehe I will have another update on monday as im off flying this weekend . Oh and the default brick thing was the first enviroment that came up lol, its easier rendering in that then damn 3D max
Well took the camera to work so I could get some pictures of the bits I've done there. The other day I made the corner brackets from some 1.5mm Aluminum and cleaned them up and then folded them. I have a few pictures of the brackets and the machines I used to make them, will try and get some pictures of them in action but there not that exciting. The machine I used to make the brackets was my CNC LVD Delta Shape, which is a CNC punch it uses shapes and punches to cut things out of upto 6mm material. I've got a whole rack of draws full of different types of punches, accumulated a fair few over the years. Adding tool charges into jobs then buying another tool is always the best way of getting new ones , its also the cheapest way. Then after that a quick whip round on a fibre wheel and a file to get rid of the pips on the corners and there ready for folding. The folder basicly uses different dies and punches to get the designated radias you want on your fold and the angle. Im using an 88Degree V which is the big bottom tool, its got an 8mm opening. You generally go for 6 times the material thickness which gives you the size of V you should use, normally i stick with 12 but just got these 8s in and there really nice and it doesn't matter that much really. The top blade is the standard 3mm Radias blade its what is generally used for all our jobs, it does a clean bend which is what everyone wants. Quick five mins and the program is ready to go, set the X and the Y which is your back stops how far apart and back you want. The little pie like symble is the tonage that you want to use, 25tons is the norm for 1.5mm ally should be around 25-30 tons. S is the angle, L is the length of your job, in my case its 50mm. N is the punch and D is the Die im using 1 and 24 this all corresponds to the punch library on the machine were you set the angle, height, width etc.. of the tool. All the rest is auto calculated except for the force which is F thats set too 10 on that screen as i was aligning the tooling, it goes back up to 100 when folding. Now that all that was done I went on and cut the angled pieces today and got them ready. Set the saw to 45Degree cut and get some scrap as the angle im using is too small to clamp on its own. Then it was just a case of measuring, setting up the back stop and then cutting pretty easy and very quick, the saw goes through angle like a hot knife through butter. Thats all 4 cut up to start with just working on doing one frame at the moment. Time to check that its all square. Looks good, lets grab a bracket and check that everything fits nice and tight. Now that thats all square and it all looks like it'll go together easy, time to put the fittings in the brackets so that It can all be drilled and screwed together. Each of the brackets will have 12 self clinching M3 fittings this will allow me to screw the whole frame together which is neater and stronger in my opinion it also means that i can get the pieces painted quicker as they'll be separate instead of in a big chunk. Thats one of the fittings snug in the hole and squashed down with the press machine. Only another 11 of these little buggers to go oh and another 36 for the other 3 brackets of course. Its a simple process to put one of these things in so doesn't take long. Place the insert onto your anvil Set the pressure so that the insert just bites into the material, then hit the pedal and it squashes it down. Pull the job away and the insert is left in the job. And your done, repeat till all the inserts are in Done 4 studded up corner brackets ready for fitting . All I had time for today was to get them done and clamp everything up, tomorrow i need to mark everything and then drill it all, countersink and fit it together. Comments and questions
UPDATE at last !!! Very sweet , you've got skills, I'm very impressed !!!! Can't wait to see the next update !
It's a bit like putting together LEGOs BTW numerous duplicates of photos in the older post make this site enormous..
