Scratch Build – In Progress BaDassumption - Photo Shoot...

Stiffening Up the Dome

This needs a bit of explaining... its more "backyard machining"...

During a load test on the ring with a weight for the reservoir the dome ring twisted on the way up... not much, but enough to give me concern. Although the dome would stiffen the ring, the original plan of epoxying it to the ring was kinda iffy. It would mean the ring would be hard to polish later. Just screwing the dome to the ring would mean washers and nuts and well, that just seemed hoakie.

So my "new plan" was to make a second ring below the first, that would make a sandwich of the dome's flange between the two rings.

So... into the metal pile for a piece of 1/4" thick 5052 aluminum. Then I cut a circle out of a piece of plywood to use as a guide for the router to cut the inside of the circle with a 1/4" bit...



If you try something like this, close off the bandsaw's entry cut like this. Without the cut locked down, it made a "whoopdy-doo"... so I added the brace... re-cut it with a 3/8" bit... no harm, the ring was going to "reach into" the dome 3/8", now it will be just a little less.



Next I cut the outside on the bandsaw after marking out some hole locations...



The edges were radiused with an 1/8" round-over bit on the router and the holes drilled and counter-bored for #10 allen screws...



I polished up the rings a bit and bolted the sandwich together with stainless #10-32 allen screws and chrome plated bullet head acorn nuts...



With the dome on, it stays in the office... can't chance the plastic getting scratched with aluminum shavings (which are everywhere )



Here you can see the lower ring...

 

A Great Compliment...

Is that cool, or what?

 

Cutting the Dome Hole...

Yep... more backyard style whackery...

I started by cutting most of a circle in a piece of 1/2" thick plywood on the bandsaw... because I didn't have a handy piece for a full circle...



A 1/2" starter hole was drilled in the main pod to let a 3/8" router bit drop in... then the jig was clamped to the main pod...



The jig had to be flipped to make the full circle... then a couple of more times to clean up the cut with a 1/2" bit...



And there she is... one big arsed hole... 13-1/2" in diameter...



The edge of the hole was cleaned up with a 1" diameter drum sander mounted on an air powered die grinder...



Next I set up a little jig to cut a rectangular opening for the dome activating shifter...



It was cut with a 1/4" router bit...



Next... I got on-line and ordered a car cover...

 

A Little Polishin' and Fittin' Together...

This isn't as easy as it looks, but damned, it sure is worth it. Grey metal turned shiny... fun stuff.











I stripped the anodizing from this DigiDoc bracket and polished that up too... left over from the original BaDass (and in the background on BaDass II)... it might go somewhere under the dome... maybe supported by that Arlen Ness mirror from eBay...



p.s. that bd is my logo... also why its spelled BaDassumption...

 

The quality of craftsmanship here gets better and better . This is incredibly impressive work - keep it up!

 

Oh wow. This is just superb

 

^^^ Thanks...

The Shifter...

Using a couple of 1/2" thick aluminum brackets (that I screwed up building the actuator bracket), that Mustang 5.0 short shifter (20 bucks on eBay), an SPDT switch, a nylon spacer and a piece of 1/4" aluminum that was watercut... we're gonna make the shifter trigger the lifting mechanism...



The nylon spacer was "dremeled" down to size to fit into the oblong hole on the shifter, to fit a #10-32 screw...



Those 1/2" thick brackets were cut down a bit more, then drilled and tapped for the pivot screw and attaching screws...



A piece of aluminum attaches to hold the switch and a couple of larger nylon spacers center the shifter...



So the switch uses the lower oblong hole...



It all goes together...



Tapped holes in the brackets and countersunk holes in the main pod allow to attach directly to the pod...



From below...



From left to right... lower the dome - neutral - raise the dome...



The cover plate was carefully filed to limit the shifter's travel, so it doesn't stress the switch. I still need to attach the cover plate somehow... those acorn nuts are just sittin' there...

 

sweet once again....i'm following this....

 

Looks great. 1 question though. Does the ram automatically stop when it reaches the end of it's stroke or does the pump/motor/whatever keep trying to exert further?

 

The actuator has a limit switch on each end of the acme screw, that stops the motor just before the physical end of the stroke... so yah, it stops automatically in each direction... it kinda slows down smoothly right at the end.

In case you want to know more, here are the specs: http://www.aeicomp.com/image2/IMD3.pdf

 

Attach the cover by bolting it from the bottom through the pod, not comeing out the top of the cover, then thread the holes so you cant see any screws and it looks clean and matches the style of the shifter...
But awsome work man. you have some madd bandsaw skills keep up the great work

 

I second this idea, it makes sense, so unless you love seeing your case speckled with arocn nuts, i think this is a fantastic idea...
Like so: (bolt on the left coming up, shifter the stick on the right)

____| |_____
| __ | |
||=| | |
||=| | |

 

What a great case. So unlike the norm and kinda kooky. Brilliant, I love it.

I gotta agree with the above though. I think that top would be better left clean. A few of those nuts about will look ok, just don't overwelm. My 2 cents.

Keep up the good work.

 

That's... awesome :O just the amount of shiny parts is enought for me

 

Orca 3 & Dark Blade move over - this is surely the single greatest mod we are yet to see anywhere.

 

Hehe, but in all fairness, I use the beltsander to fix things too...

Not so fast, but thanks... Dark Blade, in my view, is an absolute masterpiece and is made with the mind and skills of a true genius and master craftsman.

I've put the shifter aside for awhile...

HDD Cage...

The drive cage is going to be seen through the dome, so at least the top of it and one side has to be kinda kool... it also has to be raised off of the floor because coolant lines are going to run underneath it.

One other thing... my present rig, BaDassII, runs four 74gig Raptors in a RAID5 array, using a RAIDCore controller and it just schmokes... so I might build another cage so I go do that again, but am concerned about room. The second cage (if there is one}, will probably have to wait until the system's in. At least, we'll use two drives in RAID0 and a third for storage. But, I'd love to be able to use more drives, so if there's room, I will...

A big thanks to Invalid for letting me have his LianLi cage...

So, let's get to it...

Here's a sketch (with the drives in backwards... )...



First thing was lifting the rack with 3/8" thick aluminum flatbars...



Here's a pile of stuff to work with...

- a LianLI V1000 HDD cage
- 120mm fan with an aluminum housing
- 1/4" thick aluminum left-over from the dome ring
- a couple of 3/8" thick aluminum bars to raise the whole mess up
- a piece of 1/4" thick aluminum with some ball grooves machined in it (leftover from a prototype from a few years ago)
- some hardware...



After a little takin' apart of this and that, cutting things to size and some sanding to shape...



And after some more sanding, then polishing, sanding, polishing, polishing, polishing and reassembly...



This gives an idea of how this rack will look from the outside... and how there might be room for more drives on the other side, below the shifter...



You get a hint of what I'm doing for cooling the non-liquid cooled schtuff... the fan(s) in the center of the main pod will draw air from the back to the front... a bit unconventional, but hey, why not? I've grown tired of dust in the back of the 'puter where things rarely get cleaned...



But... it turns out that the 120mm fan is a bit too large. It would possibly interfere with stuff on the mainboard... so next we'll change it out for a 92mm fan and an mnpctech fan grille...

 

Revising the HDD Cage Fan...

We're gonna change that 120mm fan to a smaller 92mm fan... with a twist.

I was looking for a grille and decided on using mnpctech's new fan grilles, but with an aluminum model airplane prop spinner bolted to the hex mesh he provides...



It was kinda simple, drilling and tapping the top of the fan for #10-32 studs to match the studs on the 120mm fan and drilling the normal fan holes out for #10-32 screws... its mounted with a nylon spacer and rubber washer at the two hangers to help with vibrations...



It also involved forming the hex mesh grille into the shape of a shallow dish, so the screw holding on the prop spinner properly clears the fan hub...



I'll do some polishing later, but for now...

 

Your design is so incredible, it's the kind of thing that could sit around forever and never grow old. It's so futuristic and at the same time very retro.

Simply amazing

 

I don't know how I've missed commenting on this so far. Dutch, this is awesome.

I think the part I appreciate most about it is your resourcefulness. This is not a CNC lathe job, and instead is all done with stuff anyone can get quick access to. the great use of parts designed for other functions is incredibly inspiring...

This is true proof that you don't need a thousands of dollars expensive workshop to generate something incredibly high quality, even by today's (very high) standards.

 

Looking BAD ASS!