Scratch Build – In Progress Dimidium - A Build In Two Parts

That's amazing to hear! I'm glad you stumbled across my little comedy of errors. I hope it's provided you with even a smidge of entertainment or inspiration

A little

I haven't seen superfast unfortunately, as I've only gotten into PC modding recently. It sounds awesome though! I'll definitely be searching for it. I love the idea of engineering custom solutions for water cooling, which is why I incorporated what I could think of for Dimidium.

Sketchy workholding is how us hobbyists get much of anything done, huh?

 

God bless the internet wayback machine. I found it. Edit: crap... only the first page

 

Sad looks like it was some outstanding CNC work , wish I could admire the finished thing

 

Brass machining porn
Looking awsome, mate

 

Update 17: The free-for-all Begins

Finally, the home stretch of the milling for this project is upon us! I have yet to do some parts such as the motherboard tray, cable combs, PSU mount, etc. So this log (and probably the next 1-2) will be dedicated to that stuff. We'll see.



Whew!! Just mounting a sheet of aluminum to the machine bed can take an ungodly amount of time. Still, it's worth the effort given what can happen with subpar workholding...



A quick peek at the g-code. Like all the other parts, I need to face this entire sheet of aluminum. Just doing that will take upwards of an hour...




Evidently the metal isn't quite the same thickness along its entire width. Or my machine's axes aren't quite perpendicular to each other. Oh well, the thickness of this isn't crazy important.




Starting off by drilling and countersinking these mounting holes for the motherboard tray.



The replacement 3mm single flute end mill is here! It'll be doing most of the rest of the tray.






Alright! The hexagon pattern is finally done. Took like 2 hours. Now time to cut the part out and it's pretty much done! Well, minus a set of mounting holes on the opposite side...





Done! Single-flute end mills are amazing for slotting. You really need to be cutting a gummy material or with some wacky speeds and feeds to clog these bad boys. Though maybe I should stop talking before I end up eating my own words

I still need to drill some holes on the backside of this like I said earlier, but I'll do that later when I cut some more parts from this stock.



Milling the PSU mounting bracket! It'll be completely inside the PC, so I won't be mounting it directly to the side of the case like in most off the shelf models. Hence the need for a bracket like this.







Done!

Last but not least, a cover for the cable window that will be inset into one of the large wooden panels. It's a bit hard to describe what this is for in words, so I'll just show it in pictures when the time comes.








Some of these stringy chips give me the heebie-jeebies. They can easily wrap themselves around your cutter and turn it into a whirling metal-nado of doom that will kill everything around it and then itself! Fortunately, these chips got themselves out of the way before that could happen.



Alright, now I just need to cut the center piece out and then the part out of the stock. The final product is counterintuitively the thinnest section of aluminum in this photo.



WELP this is why you always have an emergency stop on your home-built machine! I overlooked the cutting parameters in SolidCAM and it started cutting this material at way too low of a depth, causing insane amounts of chatter. I can't believe this tool and the machine were fine, but my pants sure aren't anymore...



Unfortunately, I made a slight miscalculation, so I'm having a b**ch of a time getting this part out! There's still a thin section of metal holding it into place that the end mill didn't reach down to. It's just enough that I can't take it out easily... so I'm just leaving it for now. Shouldn't be too hard to get it out once I'm done with this stock. Hopefully.
Alright, that's it for now. Until next time!​

 

Is it thin enough to use a carpet knife on? That and a heat gun to soften the tape glue.
Wrong feeds: I've done that twice now. One rounded the end of the bit, and the 2nd broke the bit shank in the collet.

 

Yeah more or less! I've had to cut parts out of aluminum stock by hand plenty of times already. It's really not that difficult.

Geez. If only the tendency was to screw up by having the feed rate too low than too high....

 

Update 18: Milling About

Well, I have good news and bad news. The good news is that I'm almost done with the CNC work of this project! Hooray! The bad news is that I still have like 25 parts left to make. To explain, I need to cut all the itty bitty little parts like cable combs, cable covers, mounting brackets, etc. So each one should only be ~10-15 mins of cutting time max, but I'll need to be careful about repositioning the work coordinates between parts.





Just a little cover to hide some fugly cables.









The keen-eyed among you may remember the presence of some indentations on the top and bottom panels of the case. These little magnetically-attached plates are made to cover up the screws to make a more seamless look.

Alright, time for the cable combs! Which also means drilling a kajillion holes. My rather high speed spindle that likes lots of RPMs isn't the best fit for drilling, but I've done a little bit of it in aluminum already so I think it should hold up. Carbide drills really don't like to be spun terribly fast (they can still go way faster than the standard HSS bit for your cordless drill), so I'll be going at ~10k RPM. I could go a little lower than that, but I've already seen what happens when your spindle stalls mid-cut, and it ain't pretty.






Couldn't tell ya why, but I think the chips from drilling metal are funny-looking. Cleaning them up is less funny though...






Alright, that's basically it for that cable comb!

Time to make like 10 more...












Great, now I need to make one more of these specific cable combs in the gap between the recently finished one on the right and the edge clamp on the left. I'd rather not cut so close to that edge clamp, but I have a good amount more parts to cut so it's the best spot for the job.






Alright! That went pretty smoothly. It won't be the last nail-biter operation though.




This is! Man, that's terrifying. That end mill can't be more than ~2mm away from the edge clamp. In hindsight, I probably could have cut this part from elsewhere on this stock piece, but it was fine in the end so... who cares!







Finally.

FINALLY!

This isn't quite it for the CNC work, but I can say confidently that I will be done with it next update, and starting with the surface treatment! As fun as it is to use the CNC, I'm pretty burnt out on milling for the time being. The components for this build have been languishing unused in my closet for far, far too long. That doesn't mean I'm going to rush the rest of this project though

Until next time!​

 

Interim 03:

You thought I was done there? HA! That's cute.

...a-anyways, that last update got a little too big for its britches, and there's like 2 things I have left to do on the CNC for the entire project, so I'm just throwing them into here.




Just doing some probing. This motherboard tray is a double-sided part, but I just need to drill like 3 holes. Told ya I barely had any CNC work left to do.





I know the project is far from over, but my God, I am so SO happy to be finished with the CNC work of this project! CNC milling is great, but it's also very stressful-especially when you're the one footing the bill of any and all mistakes made. And with a lightweight machine as slow as mine, it's also incredibly slow... and it's all going on in an uncooled garage in the summer and an unheated garage in the winter, etc.



I didn't feel like busting out the thread mill, so I'm doing these guys the old fashioned way.

Alright, that's it for this short update... thing. I just couldn't leave the last update as-is. Next up: sanding + polishing! My favorite
​

 

No minor oops moments, I think you are getting the hang of it.

 

coming along nice~! and LOVE the hand tap!

@Cheapskate, I have a jobber for you, check your gmail account, the excite email bounced.

 

This is a fantastic log, more so because you actually made your own damn machine to build the other machine! Are you powered by Skynet?

Still don't get how that probe works though. How do you point it a section of material and probe holes/cutouts etc. you haven't drilled yet?

 

Thanks a lot! Unfortunately, I'm powered by cheap beer and a bit of insanity, not so much skynet. Maybe one day.

And to answer your question, I create the CNC cutting program/g-code with one of the features of the part I'm about to cut as the coordinate origin of the program (usually an outside corner of the part). All the features it will cut are in relation to that origin - e.g. Hole A will be at X +5mm, Y -3.75mm, etc. from the origin. Then, I'll use the probe to touch off on the part a few times, which tells the machine where the part's corner (aka the coordinate origin) is located on the machine bed. Once the machine knows where the part is, it can cut the features out in the correct spots. If all goes well, it will work within a small tolerance: maybe <= 0.1mm (at least on my machine)! Though industrial machines can do something silly like <= 0.002 mm in some cases...

 

Aha! That makes much more sense - cheers!

I can follow the build story much better now

 

Update 19:

Well, all that's left of this build is surface treatment, and then putting it all together! Should be easy.


...


It was not, in fact, easy.

To start with, I REALLY want to see how well the distro plates will hold a water seal. Before this project, I had scarcely seen a distro plate in person before, let alone made one. Maybe in the times I've frequented the local micro center? Either way, it means I'm starting off with making the o-rings.




Looks good! Unfortunately, I had to re-do all of these o-rings because my dumb*** used too much superglue, which hardened part of the ring, meaning it wouldn't compress under pressure, so it wouldn't form a seal, yadda yadda yadda... On the bright side, I have a ton of extra o-ring cord so it didn't matter.



My o-ring creation strategy simply followed the very helpful tutorial from the bit-tech YouTube channel. Alex's process works like a charm.

If your eyes are bleeding out of their sockets at the finish on the acrylic in that last picture, don't worry-so are mine. To remedy that, let's get onto polishing the acrylic parts now, shall we? Unfortunately for me, that entails a metric crapton of sanding.







UGH, sanding. I hate it. Even with the help of the orbital sander, I still need to do most of it by hand since the sandpaper I have for it only goes up to like 250 grit or something. To get a good polish going, I need to work my way up from 120 or so -> 200 -> 400 -> 600 -> 800 -> 1000 -> 1200 -> 1500 -> 2000 -> 2500 -> 3000 and only then can I start actually polishing the acrylic parts. The worst part is getting in all those nooks and crannies. In hindsight, I should have toned those down way more in my designs. Oh well.

On the bright side, it is nice getting a lot of those crusty machining marks out. Some of them were UGLY.



OK, after a grueling few afternoons of sanding, time to start the polishing step! You can see I sort of half-polished the acrylic parts on the top of this stack ^ already. I couldn't help but see how it would turn out.




Progress!





The polishing steps were pretty straightforward. I'm using the classic Novus plastic cleaner/polish that everyone and their mother uses for acrylic. Start with the #3 and rub it into a washcloth, and then scrub your part like your life depends on it until the big scratches have been buffed out. Once the part's finish stops changing much, you can move onto the #2 (using a different washcloth, very important!) to get it nice and clear. It sounds simple, but in practice, it suuuuuuuuucks. You have to apply monumental pressure with the cloths and it takes hours just to get a satisfactory result on a few parts. Add in a pinch of wacky geometry like on my stuff and well... you start to go a little insane.






The worst part is, I had to do some of these parts multiple times because I kept half-***ing it. Or they would get scratched after the fact by... something. Acrylic tends to get scratched for no other reason than to spite you.

Anyways I think that's enough complaining for one update! These parts look way better now and seeing them go from cloudy and scratched up to crystal-clear was nothing short of magical. The polishing and o-ring stuff aren't 100% done, but I'll slowly work on the finishing touches on them in later installments. Still, I got most of it out of the way this time. I think. Maybe. Hopefully. This was a bit of a shorter update, but I didn't really take too many photos of the polishing process. Not that I can blame myself, it's boring AF. Until next time!​

 

You did great. I'm not the crazy-anal polisher I used to be since my eyes are going bad,
but I can show you the way.
For the channels, roughing it out with 240 grit is plenty. You can finish up with felt or a cotton ball loaded with Comet cleaner. It's somewhere in the 400 grit range. Felt and Novus can finish up. To get really clear you can use the Novus on a CD or lens cleaner wipe. The channels will hide most flaws when wet anyway.
I usually don't go past 600 grit and let the buffing compounds handle the rest.
For super-tight spaces: Q-tips. I polish screw holes with a Q-tip in a drill or dremel. -Take care if you go the dremel route, they can turn into centrifuge-launched arrows if not in a hole.
-Anyway, a ton of my tricks are in the glass green log in my sig, as well as MY learning cycle on the cnc. Most of the pics are back up, but there's stuff lost.

 

Thanks for the tips! I'll definitely use them to clean up a few of the spots I missed. I do in fact have a bunch of q-tips lying around...

 

Interim 04: Shiny "New" Parts!

As is often tradition (maybe not, idk) in builds logs such as this, I have gotten most of the parts I need for this build in the mail. I figured I might as well show them off! Due to the current situation with all the supply issues, these parts (particularly the CPU and GPU) were a complete PITA to source, and I ended up paying more for them than I normally would have. I still waited a long while to ensure I wouldn't be getting completely ripped off, but anything even approaching MSRP is a blessing. Fair warning, I took these pictures as I got the parts, and some of them are pretty old. I got a handful of these puppies before I even started this log.




The CPU, RAM, PSU, and motherboard, all in one spot. These things have been sitting on my shelf collecting dust for a hot minute now.




As is always good practice, a quick sanity check/test is in order! The GPU was still in the mail at this point, so I was just checking to see if the motherboard, CPU, and RAM would all turn on and light up.



Here's the CPU waterblock! Isn't it fancy? I've never used a monoblock like this before so I'm pumped. I've never had issues with VRM temperatures before, but the motherboard won't be getting a lot of airflow over it. This should help.



Looks even nicer when it's mounted to the motherboard!





finally. Finally. FINALLY!!!

It took at least 6 months of waiting, but this shiny new 6900xt (nice) is in my grasp! Allow me to indulge myself a bit by showing it off here, because I've earned it. I sat in so may queues. I refreshed online retailer pages a billion times-with nothing to show for it. So many promising best buy drops slipped through my hands like grains of sand. And I still overpaid a decent amount for this particular card, but I'm past caring at this point.



Here's a sampling of the hardware that's gonna be crammed into this build



The cooler on this beast is HUUUUUUGE!! I won't be using it in the actual build though lol



A stunning photo, I know. Absolutely masterful.

*Ahem* in all seriousness, getting these new parts to the post screen shown here is a very good sign. It's vital that parts are checked before they go into a watercooled build, because you don't want to put it all together, only to realize the card you got is dead on arrival-meaning you have to tear apart the entire thing, RMA the dead part, and put it back together again. Fun stuff!





Hexagons are the bestagons!



Last but not least, the GPU waterblock from alphacool! Here I'm leak testing the distro plate I made a while back and the block. It passed the test... after I remade the o-rings like 3 times. Pro tip: don't use too much superglue when putting them together.

In my infinite wisdom, I forgot to take any photos of me putting the waterblock on the 6900xt (nice). In fairness, it was not a terribly straightforward process compared to cards I've done in the past. I had to take off the backplate to access some screws, and the stock thermal pads had a death grip on the card itself and anything it was attached to, which made this whole process incredibly stressful. Wouldn't want to kill an $1000+ (USD) graphics card during a chip shortage while in the process of smashing its warranty into little bits and pieces

(...though I think warranty stickers on screws and the like are unenforceable anyways on products like this, but I'm not a lawyer and this is not legal advice!)

Anyways, that's enough showboating for one build log. I need to get back to the garage and start media blasting all the aluminum parts! That should be fun.​

 

Looking good. Getting parts is... yeah. That's my current hurdle too.
Bestagons: I've had clearance issues even with the round ones, so no.
Pro tip: Use silicone glue instead of superglue.
Super pro tip: Use NEW silicone glue so it doesn't take 2 months for the O-ring to cure.

 

another masterpiece!!!