I just read through the entire worklog and must say that this is some truly epic work, I think we may already have a strong contender for MOTY this year. I am actually angry at myself for not finding this project as soon as it started. I really like your design, your work and your renders. Very nice work. I am looking forward to seeing more of this project.
Wow! I can't believe I didn't see this sooner. I actually live in Mountain View, and I'd love to see this thing in person! Really high quality work, and some amazing machining. From start to finish, this is one of the cleanest mods I've seen. Subbed
Long overdue update. I've been mucho busy apartment hunting in the bay area since my new job is up in Oakland. What a hassle! Anyway, I remade the front-plate aluminum pieces. They came out much, much nicer this time. Here's Mr. Smiley face hoping I don't press the big red button. Aluminum Front-Plate, Part Deux Oops. They came out much better this time. Top Pieces, Part Deux Starting off with stock... Cleaning everything up and getting ready... Along comes the mish-mash of pictures. Enjoy the bath! Machining some holes on just the aluminum piece... Cleaning up the aluminum piece... More to come!
I was wondering if anyone had any experience with IR visible acrylic. I know that typical acrylic is IR visible (transmissive, whatever you want to call it), but the opaque black stuff isn't (Acrylite, brand name). I've found one site where you can order some, too bad it's about 150 bucks for a huge sheet. All I really need is a 2"x4" piece, so I was thinking of asking for a scrap or test piece. Anyone have any other luck in this department?
Did You google IR Visible Acrylic ? I just did. What are you up to now? By the way, I've been watching your project, sweet. It just dawned on me what the front looks like... cross between ET and the Mac finder face. OMG, with a booty! Sorry, I had to say it!
Yeah, the only place I found with opaque IR visible stuff is eplastics.com. The piece is waaay expensive, though. And yes, apparently it has a face, an ass, and breasts.
Yeah, I see ONE company with the stuff. EPlastics aren't big on small quantities. You might try to sweet talk them into it by padding the order with a large purchase, then asking if you could have a small bit of IR tacked on. They do custom orders, but they tack on huge fees for just cutting. That is the company I got my crooked, undercut, and non-matching sheets of glass green from, BTW... I'd contact Tap, and see if they have any lying around.
Unfortunately I have almost no need for large order of acrylic (just quite yet ). I was going to see if they have a smaller scrap laying around, since I only need a 2" x 4". If they can't do it, I'll deal with the black translucent acrylic I have (smoked black). I actually went to Tap the other day (there's one right around me) and asked them about it. The opaque black they had was a brand named Acrylite. He had no idea whether or not it would transmit IR, and the manual didn't help. I took a small piece home and lo and behold, it blocked it right out. Sad.
I have a few more pictures of the creation of the top piece. These are in no particular order relative to the last post I had. Aluminum Top Piece Shiny! If some of you remember, my hard drive hangs from mounts. Half on the acrylic piece, and half on the aluminum piece. I figured I would work on creating the slots in the acrylic piece for the mount, since the mounting piece is actually a part of the acrylic piece (and not removable, like the other mounts). Here's the tool we use: Sweet Tool This thing allows us to drill at any most any angle (adjustable). However, if you notice, the slots are waaay too close to the edges for my liking. I would rather not crack this piece and cry in a corner having to make it again. The reason this happened is, well basically I had the wrong hole size in SolidWorks. Thinking through it, however, I would rather have this piece separate and beefier than flimsy. So, off we go to create a removable acrylic mount as well! Going, Going, Gone! More to come soon, but for now, I leave you with BUBBLES!!! Bubbles!
This is all just stunning. Just spent 20mins reading through all the updates with my jaw on the floor. The amount of time invested in this is breathtaking! Amazing work.
Aww! All that awesome playing around, and you lopped it off without even a test fit? You gotta cater to the fans, man!
Oh it fit, my model was spot on. However, I was worried that the repeated mounting and unmounting (or one time mounting) of the hard drive would put stress on that tiny piece of acrylic and break it off. I didn't want to chance it. I do need to take more process pictures (something I'm gradually learning).
