Case Mod - In Progress Project: Bärsärkar-gång, 25th December, no update; Every Who down in Whoville says...

Thanks the feedback and the comments! I'm very pleased at how everyone's contribution spurred the ideas. +Rep all around.

That's a tough question....not sure I can give you a definitive answer except multiple places. Since my "thing" is found object modding, I get a lot of ideas from a collected "idea" folder of several hundred pictures of old appliances, tools, and architecture. Example:



Also for this mod, I knew I wanted it to about Bioshock, so I've got a wealth of material to work with from the game. I'm using the art books from BS1 and 2 for inspiration. 2K's viral marketing campaign for "Something in the Sea" certainly helped the mod as well as the modding story.

 

Browsing through this project's topic it at times feels like I'm somewhere in the 1920s or so. This project is somewhat like a museum brought to life

Thanks for the rep, BTW

 

From the 2 new i would say the one on the right (the old number 4) It is by far the best!
btw very nice project log.. I really love your work

 

Thanks Elledan and DBA!

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From well intentioned beginnings, Operation Paperclip quickly devolved into unethical and morally questionable sub-projects. Conspiracy theorists suggest that the turning point was the recruitment of Kurt Blome, an expert in bacteriological warfare. Likely, the USA's recruitment saved Blome from the gallows as he had freely admitted to conducting human experiments prior to the Doctor's Trials in Nuremburg. His recruitment also signaled the end of any limits imposed by Truman on Operation Paperclip. Additional scientists engaged in human experimentation were actively recruited including Hermann Becker-Freysing (later convicted and sentenced to 20 years for, among other things, force feeding prisoners seawater), Brigid Tenenbaum (camp prisoner turned "das wunderkind" scientist), and Siegfriend Ruff (acquitted of killing 80 prisoners in experiments in an isobaric chamber set to simulate high altitude flight).

Emboldened by their success recruiting these new researchers, the CIA broadened their recruiting to other countries including Japan, the former USSR, and China.

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I've been busy with a little research regarding block graphics. Let's start from here and work backwards.

Part of the reason that I wanted to build a set of layered block for this project was so I could etch the blocks or rather, sandblast them. I haven't seen too many people use this technique but have seen glass carvers do amazing things. Here's the top piece of brass polished for blasting.

By the way if you are trying to tap a waterblock and have a drill press, a 1/2" hole in a 2x4 makes a good guide. I tapped the holes now instead of later so the thread is to bottom.

It took asking 4 sign shops to find one that could cut vinyl as small as the design. They did an awesome job. Some of these lines are tiny.

Let's talk sandblasting equipment. This is the gun that I bought from a discount hardware store called Harbor Freight. Its pretty bad but serviceable if you're optimizing on costs vs time.

Here's my $20 blasting cabinet. One clear storage container and a couple of rubber downspout couplers.

A pair of old rubber gloves glued in place with a hole for a vacuum line and compressor line. Its not completely sealed but is at negative pressure with the vacuum so no worries.

5 lbs of aluminum oxide. With the cabinet, I was able to recycle most of this to shoot it multiple times.

Great compressor for airbrushing not so much for sand blasting. Too small.

Shop vac to keep the dust down and negative pressure in the cabinet.

Blasting a couple of test pieces.

Shooting until the compressor kicked on and then waiting till it stopped, I was able to etch some relief but it took a long time and multiple goes.

The vinyl sticker worked very well as a resist. After about the 4 or 5th pass, it did cut out the holes but it patched ok with some painters tape.

The detail is impressive; both with the vinyl and the etching. You could etch PCBs using this technique.

All in all a successful experiment. It worked reasonably well but I'm going to find someone with a serious setup before I try the big block. My compressor and the gun hopper setup is too small. Off to see if I can rent a pressure pot and a real compressor.

Oh yeah it works very well on acrylic too.

Next time, how do you braze a layer block? More experimentation underway.


Thanks for looking and many thanks to my sponsors!

Bitspower


Galaxy


HardwareLabs

 

Impressive! The design of the "etched" figure is tops, and the results from blasting are very clean. Very nice attention to detail and professional result.

 

I am really interested in that sandblasting, I must look into it. Nice work mate .

 

I'm waiting for you to fire up the particle accelerator in the back yard I mean it's
the only thing you haven't tried yet!
Great stuff.

 

Glad to see you reclaim the blasting material. Everything looks good

 

You got some fantastic detail on that etch. My Sears rig would have obliterated the little triangles. I think the fine grit you used helped a lot. I've always used sandbox sand. (What's my name?)

An auxiliary tank will help you keep the pressure up during blasting. Blue tape can fail on you. I use electrical tape for masking. 2" clear vinyl packing tape works well too.
I'd also fill the vac with water to cut down on dust escaping. You do NOT want that crud in your lungs!

 

Thank you Zds! I appreciate the comments.

Thanks! Its pretty easy to do if you can source the equipment. Acrylic is a cinch.

Thanks 500mph!

Heh, thanks! It won't be a particle accelerator but I have upgraded my crawfish boil burner for the next update.

Yeah, I should just suck it up and spend the cash on a real setup but we all have our inner Cheaps to deal with. Good idea on the auxiliary tank and tape. I'll keep that it mind along with the water in vacuum.

 

You've got lots of really good ideas in this mod. I especially like how you've used the brass quite a lot, it fits really well with all the rest of the case, and looks really good.

 

Thanks Quavr!

I'm going to try to hard silver solder the blocks together. Two problems with that. I need about 1400F to hard solder which is near the melting temp of brass and well beyond annealing temperature. To test if it's even possible to do this, a little trial run is in order.

Here's the brass and copper pieces with cutouts of solver solder. Note the breaks in two of the solder pieces.

Here's the "sandwich" test block assembled. The pins are there to keep the pieces from sliding around under pressure.

I said that there were two problems. The second is how to keep the layers in place and under consistent pressure.

These are clamping plates made from 1/4" steel plate.

The bow in the plates is real and caused by the the screws.

30 PSI propane burner for seafood boils.

Clamped block in places and soldering underway

The solder melts at 1280 F and flows at 1370 F.

Steel glows dull red at about 1250 F and orange at 1400F+. It took about 15 mintues to get to this point.

After the plates were pulled apart, the pattern is from flux boiling out of the block.

The top piece coppery color is due to the zinc and copper beginning to separate in the brass.

Very ugly looking

You still can see and feel the edges of the silver. Interesting as they should have melted and flowed if temperature peaked above 1400F.

A quick trip to the disc sander.

The annealing that I was worried about doesn't seem to be a problem.

The threads held up ok too. Interestingly the copper at the bottom is coated in what looks to be brass but nothing appears melted.

You can see the solder layers. Note the two dark spots in the middle of solder layer 1 and 2. I believe these are the splits in the solder.

Not sure what the dark line in left corner of solder layer 3 is.

My fear was that I was going to melt the brass or anneal it to the point of softening the threads. This did not happen. The block appears to be solid; although I don't believe the solder flowed. This week, I'll test it under water to see if it holds pressure.

Pressure test success or no, I learned enough to try this for real on the sand blasted block from the last update...with a few tweaks that is. A few more heat bricks would help to hold in the heat. Longer time at higher temperatures would likely help too. More on the pressure test later.

Thanks for looking and many thanks to my sponsors!

Bitspower


Galaxy


HardwareLabs

 

Get some massive pressure through it just to make sure there's nothing wrong with it. Otherwise, it looks great. Especially the brassy coating on the base.

Oh by the way, I just started a new quarter at Univ, and this pretty cool TA in one of the courses I'm taking has "berserkrgangr" as his email handle. I instantly thought of this project

 

Cool Projekt with many details.

 

Technology "mokume"( http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mokume )

 

It looks solid to me.

 

Will do. Any idea who it was that was pressure testing loops with, IIRC, a vacuum tester? I'm rigging up something now but suggestions are welcome. On the berserker-gang handle, get yours now, pretty soon everyone will want one.

Thanks ringo! Glad you like it.

Thanks tarator! Very cool stuff, looks like I can take the temperatures higher if need be. Gives me more than a few ideas. Imagine making an entire block out of mokume gane http://www.ganoksin.com/borisat/nenam/manufacturing-mokume-gane.htm

What do you suggest, hammer or saw to find out?

 

That was voigts. Always seemed like a sound method to me, but I'm a lazy git

 

Ahh Voigts of course. Thanks! (Post here by the way in his antique radio thread; such an awesome build.)

I went low tech and hooked an aquarium pump up just to see what would happen.
Check this out:



That's a bubble out of the split in the silver pieces. Pretty cool huh? Lesson learned solid silver pieces and heat it hotter until the silver flows, not just fuses.

One of the nice things about hard soldering or brazing these things. Soft solder works very well.



Cleaned up


We'll see how it holds up to more pressure later.

Split sheets shouldn't be problem with this block but will be with the GPU block.

 

Cr*p! Someone's going to beat me to it.