Creative chip on something? its not a sound card? how about an old hard drive? I'm tempted to root around my crap... Just wondering, is this guy gunna walk around? I think the dead hard drives would be neat to use to scare people, someone touches the case and the motors spin up real fast making a whirrr like its powering weapons
I'm not dead, I promise Been quite a bit of stuff going on outside modding so here we finally got a little update... The main baseplate will be the carrying part of the bug and is made out of soft 3mm balsa wood. For added strength 1/4" x 1/2" balsa sicks were glued to the underside. To make it a bit stronger 1/4" x 1" balsa sticks were added to the top in the other direction. No this is not Kon-Tiki built by Thor Heyerdahl, just a test layout to see if all components will fit. The radiator and PSU will end up underneath the baseplate. Balsa wood is extremely weak so it's purpose is to be used as a soft core between two layers of carbon fibre. This was the second attempt to apply a layer of carbon fibre to the balsa wood. The first attempt failed miserably since I miss judged how keen the fibre mat was to stay in the shape it was told to be... So this is the solution, a few drops of 3s gluee here and there and the fabric was forced into the preferred position before the epoxy could be added. A few hours later the first side was done. By learning from the previous mistake, I used 3s glue on the other side as well. And with the epoxy hardened the piece ended up very strong. I put all hardware intended for the case on top of it and it didn't even bend the slightest. It seems the sandwich construction with carbon fibre and balsa can be really useful for future parts/projects. The screws for the motherboard has been installed and the hole for the radiator has been cut. The scrap piece from the cutting became a quite fancy drink coaster... Well this was all until next update.
Looks good mashie. Never quite thought of using CF and balsa wood like that, or using balsa wood at all really. Has turned out well. After the CF has set, is it easy to work with? Cut? Drill?? -cLoWn
Yeah it is very easy to work with, especially when it only is one layer of CF on each side of the balsa instead of six layers of only CF that I used in Oenone. It also seems to be more stiff this way as well.
Did you ever find a red gigabit card? The closest I could find was a "copper" netgear gigabit card which really probbably wouldn't look to bad. http://www.newegg.com/app/Showimage.asp?image=33-122-105-02.JPG/33-122-105-01.jpg Cant wait to see the finished case. Idea - if you wanted to make it move, maybe some treads on the bottom. L J
No I never found any red gigabit NIC. It looks like the "copper" one at newegg is a blue card with a bad flash reflection though. The bug will be standing still but threads had definately worked.
geeze your right, I didn't look at that second pic, sure a lot different. BTW - nice coaster! Much better than an AOL CD... it'd look pretty cool if you rounded it. L J
i'm sorry i didn't mean to sound rude...i also forgot that was my first post. I have been following mashie's mods on [H] for almost a year now. I'm just new to bit-tech.
you beat me to it with the next carbon fibre project - my 2m sq arrived this morning for my weekend work - doing a bit of research - the twill pattern cloth is better for forming to shapes as opposed to the normal weave we get from cfsnet - kong posted a link to fibretech who do it - although they are more expensive spose i better start my project log eh'?
You could just spray paint the card I've seen it done in the past on mobos? And they are only cheap to replace if it doesnt work Top work so far mashie
Phew! I guess it's a bit late to say now (and doesn't matter so much, as that's more structure than shown exterior) but if you want to avoid air bubbles when you're laying up, look into getting one of these. You can also get a "penny roller" for well defined inner edges, if they're needed anywhere. Keep it coming though, it's gonna be great.
In that picture no epoxy is added only 3 second glue in the inner edges. The roller had not helped in this case since the CF mat itself was too stiff to stay in the position intended and bounced up from the balsa. I had no problem with bubbles either, I used epoxy brushes this time compared to medispats that I used for Oenone.
awsome project! I got to know though how much for a coaster ;-) seriously though I can't wait to see this finished I love your projects and your CF work
