Thanks all . It takes about three days per grit, taking into consideration job, sanding my fingers off, etc. I've been sick the past week so I haven't really touched it lately, but hopefully I'll get around to it soon. Hopefully I can figure out some more creative things to do other than give fairly boring sanding updates. I may be designing a steel mount for the copper heatsink pretty soon, I just haven't gotten around to it.
Three Days per grit! True Grit! no fingers no problem, use feet next. he he Take your sweet time and make her shine
Will be interesting to see what it'll turn out like in the end. You DO realize that those scratches WILL be visible through the anodizing layer, right?
Those are most likely very small scratches from my fingernail or accidentally scraping it with a piece of sandpaper. I'm meticulous about the sanding. Every time I go up a grit I turn the thing 90° so it's easier to see how deep the previous grit left the scratches. But yes, I do realize that anodizing magnifies scratches, not hides them. I plan on getting it etched a little too so that should help in the end.
I apologize for sounding lazy, but why not just media blast the whole thing? You're pretty much guaranteed a good finish with that, right?
For one, I don't have access to a media blaster. Second, it would eat away at the acrylic and aluminum at different rates, making things quite ugly.
Hi Achron, it's me the idiot that didn't have his head screwed on when I first checked in on this, sorry about that moment of me being a bleeping bleep bleep . Wow, 3 days per grit, thats gotta hurt , I just spent 5 or 6 hours sanding today & have big blisters, damn that sand paper gets hot lol . Looks like what a ufo should look like on the night shot, honestly stuck for words how amazing it is, I'm dazzled, 3d cnc just blows me away, 2d can be attempted to match by hand, but not this which is why it's the best & most amazing cnc work I've ever seen done in modding & OMG it's slick .
It's actually not that bad. I use latex gloves to keep the aluminum gunk off of my hands and wet / dry sandpaper to keep the dust to a minimum and surface smoother.
Alright boys and girls. It's been two weeks since my last update, and I think I owe you one. I didn't want to keep giving you sanding updates for the next 2 months, I think you may get quite bored of that. Thus, something different, except this first picture. I finished 180 grit, wet sand. Up to the 200s now!! My 'something different' is a test fit of some of the hardware. Both the motherboard and IR receiver were installed, with the slim slot load blu ray drive (say that five times fast) just sitting in place. The hard drive and blu ray drive weren't installed completely since they require pins be put in the mounts, and I don't have the will or means to do that at this very moment. I'm still deciding on a CPU heatsink as well. That will probably be the very last thing I do. Adding to that, everything has nice black oxide hex head screws now. So very sexy. This is on the underside of the case. They had to be low profile heads or they would stick out, which is unacceptable! Also, keep in mind here the inside is not sanded at all. Well, the base is a tiny bit (400 I think) but not even close to the quality of the outside. Here's a shot of the internals minus the blu ray drive. Here's a close up of the mounting of the motherboard. Notice I didn't use any stand-offs (I couldn't find any that matched the black oxide). So, I have a 6-32 hex head going through a washer and the motherboard, through a black anodized stand-off (hollow aluminum 'tube', if you will) into the acrylic. I may have to get more of these...they're sexy. Here's where I want some more of those aluminum stand-offs. Turns out I made a minor mistake in calculating the distance the IR receiver could be off of the mount. I just used a simple 1/16" for a washer, only to find out that the back side of the receiver has very lengthy solder joints (shown in the third picture below). I'm using three washers for now, but I think some of those stand-offs as mentioned before would do the trick, as long as I can insulate them from the PCB. Here's where the copper heat sink will sit. I didn't really feel like trying to squirm it in there since there's no set mounting for it yet, so it isn't included. That hole in the way back on the cover is for the power supply connection. I also wanted to test the fitting of the blu ray drive. Things get very tight in this case very quickly. Again, it's not mounted since the mounting process involves press fitting pins. It does, however, sit almost flush to the bottom of the case so the positioning is fairly accurate. The bottom has a layer of plastic on it but I think I'm going to add another to both the bottom and top for aesthetics and to prevent shortage with the motherboard. There is very, very little clearance here. Things were designed to fit almost perfectly. I could add a washer or two to the motherboard mounting to give a little more height if need be. The 'business end', if you will. It's not screwed in or properly fitted, but I think it looks alright. Some of the circles are not completely concentric with the corresponding plugs, but do you know how hard it is in the first place to make one of these from scratch? Ugh, it's my second one since the first was off by more than I could stand. And for le pièce de résistance, a fairly sexy, if I do say so myself, shot of the entire case. Don't mind the scratches around the vents on top, those are going to be long gone soon. Enjoy .
This is coming along nicely. How many hours or days do you think you've invested in this so far? Can't wait to see the final project.
If the sandpaper gets hot, even to some degree, then in my limited experience, you are putting to much pressure on. To my knowledge, the best results is achieved when sanding with a loose hand. Especially with a material as soft as Aluminium. Keeping the sandpaper "loose" will help exess material to slide away from the sandpaper, reducing build up of materials on the sandpaper, and improving work comfort. trust me, your fingers will worship you as a god afterwards. (and you'll be able to stretch your fingers without kicking back a few painkillers..) When working on items that needs painting a sandpaper with "foam" ( can't remember the name for it ) on it's rear is the most pleasant to work with. And another note, when sanding, speed is not recommended.. Hope this helps. As it's my own experience, results may vary, since my own results is 90% luck and 10% help from others
