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

Can't wait until you finish, looks really good!!!

 

Update 22: The Raid Boss's Boss

There's not much left of this project to do now, just gotta anodize these aluminum parts and dye them black to tie this system's colors together! I'm hoping this ends up being relatively straightforward once I get the process down.

ha.

hahaha.






straightforward, he says. How cute.


...


I think most modders at this point would simply send their precious parts off to be done by a pro, but I have an illness. And I'm broke after blowing my disposable income on this pc lol Therefore, I'll be doing this myself. Anyways, my setup.



Behold! Here's the jist of it: a pile of buckets and cleaning supplies on a fold out table. I'm really not sure how the guys who do this for a living manage without such a extensive and professional anodizing setup

Anyways, I don't want to unleash the true power of this setup just yet (and, you know, I've never anodized anything in my entire life), so I'll perfect the process on a few pieces of scrap first. I feel like this is a bit redundant to say at this point too, but this was very hands on (with nitrile gloves and safety glasses of course) so I didn't quite get shots of every part of the process.

So basically, the steps I took to anodize my parts successfully were:

1. Get all the supplies you may need to anodize parts. At minimum, you'll need:
   i. An anodizing bath. I used 20% sodium bisulphate solution (which was distilled water + a few kg of hot tub pH decreaser). You can use sulphuric acid too, which is usually recommended, but it's less safe + harder to get + L + ratio. Mix acid into water, not water into acid, and wear safety gear! The pH of my solution in the end was like 1-2 which is hella acidic. Also, make sure the temperature of the solution is less than 19-20C (70F) or so. If it gets too hot, your parts will end up with a super weird, sort of wavy texture that will leech dye everywhere and generally look like garbage. Ask me how I know
   ii. A power supply. You can use basically any DC source if it has enough juice for the job you want to do, but I used a DC power supply from amazon with voltage/current control for like $60 USD for extra control/current headroom
   iii. Latex/Nitrile gloves for the acid (nitrile in case you're allergic to latex)
   iv. Some kind of agitator for the acid so bubbles don't form marks on your parts. I used an el cheapo aquarium air pump and it did a great job
   v. A cathode. I used a lead one (you can use aluminum too but it's not as good)
   vi. Some kind of conductive flat bar and titanium wire (you can use aluminum wire too but it's not as good) to hang the parts you want to anodize from
   vii. Cleaning supplies. Degreaser helps a lot, but I simply used a heavy-duty soap bath
   viii. Sodium hydroxide/lye. This stuff means business! Use all the safety precautions available to you when you work with this stuff. A 2% solution of it in any random tap water for a minute or two (no longer than that, this stuff eats aluminum for breakfast) works wonders to strip a faulty anodizing job. You will need to re-finish the part after the fact, though.
   viii. (OPTIONAL) anodizing dye, and a way to heat it up in solution to about ~60C. Clothing dye can work, but it's not as good
   
2. Mix the anodizing bath in some kind of acid-resistant container (plastic works fine) and put the lead cathode into it. You will probably want to do all this in a well-ventilated area like a garage or outside if possible. The cathode will be where you connect the negative end of your power supply to.
3. Put the agitator in the solution and turn it on. You might want to cover it so it doesn't spit little acid droplets everywhere that make unsightly etch marks on all your stuff.
   
4. Take the parts in hand, with your gloves and safety glasses on, and scrub the parts like your life depends on it, making sure not to let your grubby un-gloved fingers touch any of the cleaned parts. Well, unless you're going for one of those avant-garde finishes with fingerprints permanently embedded in the surface of the part. Oh, and make sure they don't touch any unclean surfaces after this too. Your parts need to be mega clean for this to work!
   
5. Once the parts are clean, affix them with your titanium/aluminum wire to the flat bar. I usually balled up the wire a bit and then stuck it in a hole on the part since the wire will leave an un-anodized mark on it. Here's an example! This is me about to anodize my cable combs for the build
   
   
6. Attach the positive lead of your DC power supply to the flat bar you're hanging parts from. Then, you can set the the power supply's current/voltage. I usually didn't mess with the voltage much, as the exact value is sorta irrelevant and depends on the resistance of your system. I usually saw anywhere from 8-24 volts, with 16 being a good baseline. However, your current is determined by the approximate total surface area of the parts you're anodizing. I just googled the "720 rule" for anodizing and used an online calculator to figure out how much current to use.
7. Fire em up! Bubbles generally form on the surface of the parts throughout the anodizing process so you know it's working. It's hard to see them when you have an agitator though, so this isn't that reliable a metric.
8. Wait however long the calculator says to, and check on the setup periodically to make sure the anodizing bath doesn't get too hot, isn't burning the house down, etc. If it does, I find putting the anodizing container in a larger one full of ice water helps a lot. I found doing this for an hour was good; the longer you keep the setup going, the thicker the oxide layer will be and the better it will generally take on dye.
   
9. Take the parts off, rinse them off, and then:
   i. If you want to dye the parts, go to the next step.
   ii. If not, go to the last step.
10. Next step is to dye the parts. I bought some anodizing dye from amazon and that worked pretty well (after some uh... trial and error ). I made a dye bath with distilled water and heated it up indirectly to ~60C with some el cheapo pool water heater. You might have to get... creative to find out how to heat up the solution. My parts were all large and flat, so I used an unused baking pan and put it on top of an old griddle (I had a previous method that worked... less well as you'll see).
    
11. Let the parts soak in the warm dye bath for about 15-20 minutes.
12. Take the parts out, contemplate self harm when they look like s**t, and then try again with a quick lye bath. If you live in some bizarro world where they somehow turn out good, proceed to the last step!
13. Lastly, boil the parts in some water to seal the part's surface. Anodizing parts creates a fine, porous surface on a microscopic scale, and the dye particles (if you dyed them) fill in those pores to get you your pretty colors. This closes those pores to make it nice and permanent *side note: this step caused my parts to look like trash for some reason, so I usually skipped it. But if it works for you, you should do it. My parts DID end up fine in the end without it, even weeks later.

With that little guide out of the way, onto the highlight reel!




Some more pictures of the setup I used. For a one off job, it did alright.




OOF. Yeah, on my first few attempts to heat the dye, my hand slipped while holding the tray. Ugh, this is painful to look at even now. If there's one thing dye is good at, it's sticking to things forever and never washing out... Fortunately, I somehow didn't get any on my clothes!




The first test part that succeeded! The color wasn't quite rich enough for my taste, but it's a good starting point for sure.



A quick continuity test with a multimeter shows that the surface is non-conductive anymore and has, in fact, been anodized. Most likely.





This test part was a lot closer to the color I was looking for I also sealed the surface to good success.

Also, anyone recognize this scrap piece? It definitely didn't spell the untimely demise of one of my end mills or anything after dislodging from my cnc bed.



THIS scrap piece looks absolutely gnarly, and it didn't kill the end mill that made this "cut". CNC milling makes less sense than AI, I swear...



Here's the part post-anodizing, pre-dyeing. Apparently the anodized surface changes the index of refraction of the surface and gives you this nice piss-yellow color in some cases.



It took on dye like a champ though!



Oops. I heated the dye bath too much and it warped the container I was using... the el cheapo pool heater was ruined too. Good thing it didn't do anything worse
Either way, I decided to use a griddle and a baking pan for the dye after this. Dye is real expensive, so I need the most space-efficient containers I can find.



Enough test parts! This batch has the real deal in it. Lots of little parts that could all go together.



I don't have too many pictures of the whole process as it's hard to film with your dye and acid stained gloves, so apologies if the order of these is a bit all over the place!






Looking good! I did have to redo the last part a few times though as the temp of the anodizing solution was too high. This part is kinda big and needed like 5 amps of DC current, which came out to like 100W of power at ~16V or so. That much power into 20 or so L of solution will heat it up in no time.




The lye bath of shame. Refinishing a part after an anodizing fail is a special kind of pain. It ended up fine in the end, though.



Freakin gloves keep getting these tiny little holes in the fingertips





There's a ton I wasn't able to show, but I think this was a good highlight reel of the anodizing process of this project. I can't say for sure if I'm glad I did this myself or not just yet, but what I do know is that I learned a TON while suffering through all the ups and downs of one of many surface treatment processes. It probably didn't help that I dyed these parts black, which is notorious for being the most difficult color to get right in aluminum anodizing... Though I personally found that finding a freakin container for the dye to heat up was the hardest part.

Anyways, there's just one last surface treatment step that needs to be done (I'll leave it a surprise ) and then I can start assembling Dimidium! I'm dying to see the finished product with my own two eyes.​

 

Your work is awesome. I always was afraid setting up an home anodization station in my basement.
Good job, parts looking great

 

They came out great. YOU did great. Home anodizing is such a dicey operation.
Purple finger is far better than acid finger. Although I tore something in a finger once, and it looked like that. -It would still be better than acid finger, I guess.

 

That is wicked commitment to the cause. Kept expecting to see Bryan Cranston pop up in the background applauding.

 

You guys flatter me! I'm glad my first real go at anodizing metal provided some level of enjoyment for y'all.

Hope your finger healed up alright in the end

 

Update 23: Some Assembly Required

IT'S TIME MY BOYS

Finally, these shiny, expensive computer parts will languish unused in my closet no longer! Though the more I think about how this is all gonna go together, the less straightforward I'm convinced this entire operation is going to be...



Nothing more terrifying than seeing a year+ of your life chilling on your bed while you figure out how your past self expected you to put it all together into something coherent. Without instructions.




Time to finally install this bad boy! I've never used a monoblock before but I can clearly tell this thing is going to look absolutely sick. And you know, lower VRM temperatures I guess. Also doing some test fits of my motherboard and it all goes together smoothly. Careful planning really pays off.



Speaking of uh... not careful planning, I went through a minor crisis when I realized this USB 2.0 cable for my corsair lighting node pro is butting right up against what's supposed to be the roof of this half of the build. There are channels for it, but I'm not convinced it will be enough clearance. Just gonna have to leave this one to lady luck I guess.



As you can all see, this is an extremely professional operation here folks. I did get some of the cable combs and whatnot into the build, so that's nice. You can also see the top half of the build that will contain the radiators + PSU in the background. It's just the outer shell at the moment as we're still in the early stages of assembly.



It wasn't long before I busted out the ol' heatshrink and wire strippers. There are plenty of custom wire runs in this build on top of the usual sleeved PSU cables to do all sorts of stuff, like handling the power button, RGB, etc... Stuff that won't be visible, but will enable crucial functionality later on.




Time for the rads to come out to play

Before this build, I pretty much always bought EKWB stuff for all my custom loops. They make good stuff, but I wanted to be a snob about every little detail this time around, so I opted for the HardwareLabs 240GTS radiators. From the reviews, it seems like these rads are pretty much the cream of the crop in terms of cooling efficiency/radiator space. That's pretty important for me since I'll be squeezing like 3-500W of heat generating stuff in this system when all is said and done.






Well, that was a pain in the a$$. Turns out my past self's tiny pea brain didn't realize that PC fans are not always exactly 25mm thick and that you need to account for things like chunky vibration dampeners or loose tolerances.



So unfortunately, I had to liberate these rubber vibration dampeners from these LL120 fans from Corsair to make it fit. I would really rather keep them in if at all possible so my system doesn't potentially sound like the percussion section of a mariachi band, but my hands are tied. Fortunately removing them wasn't (physically) difficult, but still. Sadness.



On a brighter note, I got the GPU into the system! And it looks absolutely sick if I do say so myself. Though that was also a slog, I had to bend the riser cable in some very uncomfortable angles to get it in there, and squash an astounding number of cables into the little gap between the bottom of the case and the little wooden cover beneath the GPU itself. Still, I really like it. It's probably the most secure I've seen a GPU held in much of anything, let alone a PC case.

Last for this update, the case feet! I'm quite proud of this one.





They turned out quite alright in my opinion. And the best part? They are completely interchangeable with some similar covers on the top half of the case! So basically, I can slap these feet on the top and turn the build completely upside-down. Kind of a happy accident from making its geometry so vertically identical. No idea if I'll actually use this feature, but it's fun to think about.

Well, there's a lot more to putting Dimidium together than this, but I'll have to continue this in another update as this one is getting pretty long. Still, I'm cautiously optimistic about this build's chances at viability so far! I've already cleared some hurdles I was super worried about, like if there would be clearance for the GPU riser cable, or if the panels would all fit together without issue. Anyways, see y'all next time!

!!BONUS!!



I wired up the D5 pump with these nice custom sleeved cables, the power button (the two smaller sleeved cables in the corner), and the front panel 10Gbps USB C. Oh, and I installed the drain port too. ​

 

That is looking SICK!
I never understood mobo designers putting 90 degree connections on the ITX board. It's a given they will be stuffed in the tiniest case possible.

 

Yeah I agree, it's not always a given in SFF builds that there will be clearance for the cables poking out of the side of the board in many spots... Hell, one of the main reasons I chose this board is that it has the 8-pin CPU power connector right next to the 24-pin instead of in a random corner in la-la land. Makes cable management WAY easier!

 

Also, looking back at these photos is funny to me because you can see some weird continuity quibbles, like how my RAM is installed in one photo and then taken out in a later one (chronologically speaking).

Just a testament to how much re-arranging I had to do to mash this thing together. Guess I could have designed this system with build-ability in mind a bit more, but oh well. Ain't no way I'm re doing major stuff at this point unless I absolutely have to.

 

I have one that I'm part way through rebuilding and re-documenting, but am reluctant to put myself out there with for the moment. At least until it's in better final form. But what you've just said summarises my build experience.

 

I've been incrementally adding extra space for cables in each design I do, Then I turn around and build in a syrup keg. Reading this yesterday made me realize I didn't leave an edge gap in my current build either.
Anyway, There's always a need for more space.

 

Got that right. The amount of space cables take up in builds are way too easy to underestimate in designs huh?