Scratch Build – In Progress Epic PC Kyubu: Help me donate to the Tsunami! | 21.3.2011

Thanks for the votes guys!

I know the voting is quite tight and there are many good projects out there so I thank all of those who have voted for me! If you want to vote for any of the projects for mod of the month, here is the link .

Anyhow, Its the weekend and I have been busy but I thought I would take some time off and show you guys how I develop.

1. Design the part

So this is fairly straight forward. Once you know what you are designing, you turn your idea's into a DXF which is basically a file that houses graphical vectors. It goes without saying then that this file can be scaled up and down without any loss in quality. This is a particularly useful format to design in and these DXF files can be imported directly into....


2. Do up the "proof", the toolpathing for your cut.

...your cutting software. I personally use cut2d from vectrics as I feel that other vendors who mix cad software and toolpathing software in one package often do a half ass job at both. This is just my opinion though and because of it I will always use seperate cam and cut programs. All you need to do is set the depth, whether or not your cutting inside, outside or on and what tools youll be using to complete the job.

Cut and bend! Once cut, if you need to bend, bend.

Bending is easy if you have the right tools but the right tools cost money, lots of money. The way around removing a kidney to fund a plastics bender is to mod your own. Heatstrip, fibreglass tape and some ply is all thats needed.



I want to show you guys the finished mid plate but its not finished. I have a few more black acrylic cuts to do and I want to mount the motherboard first as well. Until then, here is a teaser

 

Looks awesome! :O

 

Cut2 and 3D seem to be the way to go. Judging by others works I watch, imo of course. Are you using a stripped down vs of XP as well or some other config? Thankx for mini tut ... all tuts are welcome, and nice tip on the heat strip!

 

awsome, so much details

 

No worries, cut 2d and 3d is a good package that they have but I only have 2d as I would rarely need complete 3d machining as the blocks I am working with are usually quite thin, around the 3mm mark.

As for my OS I am running everything on windows 7, The cut down student version of autocad isnt too pricey (especially the 2010 version) and cut2d is of reasonable price as well. The only thing thats costing me a fortune is my power bill atm, those vac pumps max out a single 240v socket each pulling some 51amps! I honestly dont know what that really means, I just know my power bill is relatively high

Thanks Dralix, btw if you guys have more questions, feel free to ask.

 

probably a stupid question but why did you call it epic pc?

 

Alright! I would like to present my latest sponsor!



Mach Xtreme Technology will be throwing their weight behind this project with their flagship 60 gig MX-DS SSD Drive. I will be upping the ante by adding a second and putting it in raid 0 (yes, TRIM doesnt mean much to me). Of course I will also be doing the rounds with reviews and benchmarks and I really cannot wait to see what kind of results I will get.


Today is a pretty massive update as well because I finally bought the 3 ltrs of require distilled water of which I will test the Mayhem Dye. I was told this stuff is fairly strong and that I wouldnt need to buy two. Advice I promptly ignored.


So I thought, hell how concentrated can this stuff be and went ahead pumping two drops in.



Doesnt look too powerful right?





In comes the water...



Anyone else waiting for Jaws? At this stage I knew I was a fool for buying two of the dye bombs instead of one but ah well, I can use it in the future when my res eventually evaporates 3 ltrs of water through the tygon tubing.....



Above: Two drops of Mayhem Red....





This stuff is so thick that you really do need a pump to get it around to fully mix.



Lets recap on this panel. It has the red strip from the watercooling, all the engraved strips glow red and for the clear part, you can see all the way inside the case

Ah I was wanting to start this up and didnt have any ideas for a name, he joked that my computer cases were "epic" and I was like hell yeah, I'll call it that.

He didnt believe I would until it was actually registered (of which it is now).









More to come and if you havent voted for MOTM yet here is the link. You don't have to vote for me (although if you did, that'd be pretty sexy) but at least have a vote

 

I really like the Mayhem dye, I need to get myself some of the blue. IMO your mix needs a little more red, needs to be a bit richer. Just my opinion.

 

Wow Mate your build just keeps getting better & better, don't know how I've not commented on it so far but here I am lol! I saw that Mayhem dye the other day on oc3d tv over at youtube ...looks like real potent stuff, I was thinking of getting some, has the clear coolant you put it in got all the necessary algae prevention ingredients you need to keep the system clean?

 

Wooow awesome job Djayness !

 

I have been most entertained by this project, fingers crossed for it as its looking fantastic

 

"There's Blood in my Water" sounds like you need to go to the doctors.

But, nice build, looks sweet.

 

Another update? Say wha?




Okay before I start I want to say that if I update before I reply to comments, those comments will be replied to at the bottom of my update, not the top. I know its a break from convention but I am sure you will forgive me when I show you what I have been doing for the last few hours.



Here be dragons....or a RAM block prototype that I wasnt too happy with. This was of course the original design I had and I thought it would work quite well but it turned out like pants.



So back to the drawing board then. I made the channel wider to increase flow and flow is kind of important when you only have one poor pump doing all the work.



The 3d preview was the RAM block equivelant of Jessica Alba on the beach chair, on all fours. If you are an Alba fan you know which photo Im talking about






So anyhow visualisation is only part of the process and luckily my CNC helps reduce the amount of time spent making this stuff. I mean imagine how much time it would have taken to do this by hand, we would be here until Christmas!




This is a very expensive tool and I only use it for one thing....


Countersinking...and how often have I done countersinking? Once...actually this is my first time. Investment justified? (Not really lol).

Also before you ask, I use alfoil to reduce the amount of suction lost when cutting smaller materials.






So here is the not so finished product. I have basically used the most expensive and reliable silicon I know of and pasted it on the entire block. I was going to use the O-ring it came with but that didnt allow me to provide the flow I wanted or to have the look I wanted either. I know of a guy from another forum who did a similar thing and it looked pretty awesome, hopefully when I am finished with this block it will be just as awesome.

I have to wait for the silicon to dry before getting a knife to the squished outwards bits and then its all down to polishing. Not sure I like those countersunk screws so I will probably create nicely polished bits of acrylic to go over the top.

Oh I got plenty mate, no worries about that!

Mayhem biocide plus over $600.00 worth of pure silver *check*

Thanks Marius!

I am sure it will turn out just fine

 

"Mayhem biocide plus over $600.00 worth of pure silver *check*" , Ok I've decided to go with the Mayhem stuff but I know one thing for sure, I can't afford to go spending more dosh on pure silver too lol! Another plus to that is if the price of silver goes up, the value on Epic will increase too lol!

 

That's one sexy block you made there, though it looks kind of bulky in my opinion. Can't wait to see it up and running .

 

I would think you know but give the silicon 24 hours in a nice room to cure out fully befor u trim it really nice block

 

Stunning work mate! wish i has access to them tools

 

I should had said this before but are you using Aquarium silicone? it's 10 times better than the industrial stuff and wont contain any nasty fungicides that might affect the blocks.

Other wise it looks wicked mate

 

wow that cnc is nice......but not as nice as the parts you made,stunning work there mate

 

Great work man.