ooo, very pretty. I have to say, I agree with Glider about sheathing the radiator hose, maybe shower hose would do the job, and it's already designed to carry water, how handy!
I gave the radiator hose thing some thought when designing it and came to the conclusion that at most it's a medium destructive risk as opposed to a "stealing my hardware" or "owning my box with a hardware keylogger" risk. It's just impractical for me to try to guard against destructive risks since there are just too many of them. Even if the hoses are guarded the same knife could be used to punch a hole through the rads (which is acutally worse since then more of the water would flow through the screen onto the mobo). Along the same lines someone could ruin the paint job. You could say that I'm guarding against the gentleman theif that wants the goodies inside more than the malicious thug who just wants to wreck things.
Altough a rad puncture will be worse, I still think that it fits the concept better if it's reinforced. Those tubes just seem so weak in contrast with the sturdyness of the case... But hey, that's my opinion, and it's your mod, so my opinion is irrelevant
If I may put my .02cent. Since the case is made of high strength metal and the hoses are plastic. I was wondering why not hard line the part exposed so it gives it a more rounded look. inside the case where the hard lines terminate you could put barbs and continue with soft tubes. I figure some copper pipe cant be all that hard to put in. just my thoughts. Awsome work and gr8 craftsmanship.
Class mod zackbass. It's looking fantastic now. However, I too think the bare tubing detracts from the overall look of the case at the moment, would you consider using small lengths of this stuff around the tubing between the rads and the case? I don't know if it comes in black but you could try asking them. Or even shower hose and painting it black? BTW, good luck in MIT!
I got a PM asking to clarify some of the steps in painting and my reply exceeded the PM character limit so I'll post the clarifications here for everyone: After the first two coats of primer I used 600 grit paper. All sanding operations are wet, the only thing you ever do dry is the rough filler bondo. The purpose of these setps is to fill any tiny imperfections with primer and make the surface perfectly smooth. The entire panel gets sanded down so it's very smooth and bare metal will show through on the high spots. The finishing putty is also called polyester glazing putty. It works just like normal filler putty in that it needs to be mixed with a hardener and let cure for about 15 minutes once applied but it is much smoother and sands down more easily. It's also very expensive compared to normal filler putty so that's why it's only used for finishing. After the last coat the primer gets sanded with 600 grit again, but this time very carefully. If you sand through it this time you need to reapply it to that area so that the paint sticks properly. The sealer I mentioned is formally called "Dupont DTM Epoxy Primer/Sealer" and is used to seal off any body putty from the base paint color. If this isn't done there is a chance that the paint may "bite through" the top coat of primer and get discolored by the body putty underneath. This coat also fills in imperfections a little bit. It gets sanded down with 600 grit again. It's just glossy because that's the way it is, it doesn't have anything to do with the paint being glossy. I'm not sure about the composition of the color, all I know is that it's Dupont Chroma paint and it's pretty much the standard composition for a base/clear job. I know that the single stage paints (one application instead of basecoat and clearcoat) are acrylic so I think these aren't. After the last clear coat the panels get sanded by 2000 grit paper to remove any "orange peel" or bugs that got stuck in the finish. This is what gets the paint perfectly smooth. The clear coat gets all ugly and opaque from this sanding and the buffing with rubbing compound is what makes it perfectly clear again. I've been doing a ton of work and have a ton of stuff to put into the log but I'm so busy trying to get this finished by the deadline that I haven't had the time. They'll be coming as soon as I'm finished.
Thanks for the breakdown, ZB. I'm getting close to the prime job on my case and I'll definitely use some of your wisdom.
Thanks so much. is that the "DUPONT VARIPRIME 615S" that you showed in your previus picture? Or did you use another product (Dupont DTM epoxy primer/sealer 2510S) afther the "DUPONT VARIPRIME 615S" and the "Polyester glazing putty" and before to paint the first coat of red? Good luck for your competition.
Just as a quick update, it's 12:50am on Saturday. That's negative fifty minutes to the deadline. I'm preparing to power on the system now. I'm going to write the missing work log pages on the car ride up to Boston, there is so much to write that it's going to take several hours to put the log together. The last three days have been twelve hours each working on the box and there have been so many major problems and breakthroughs that it's absolutely maddening. Some of the worst stress I've ever been under.
Well you're sure as heck getting good preparation for the stress at MIT Amazing mod! I'd like to echo a previous comment about seeing more mods.
Pholus is right, this is good practice for them all nighters! I'm sure the mega update will rock... I'd sure like to see more mods as well, but I get the feeling that the peeps at MIT are gonna keep your nose to the grindstone!
I'm on my way up to Boston and finally have the time to put together a log for the past few days. I don't have pictures of everything since I was literally running around trying to just make the thing work in time. Here we go with the flashback: T minus 4 days: The clear coat liquid when mixed with the activator before spraying is eerilly like water and makes one hell of a mess when it gets sprayed. This is the one part of the operation where something like a Tyvek suit would be a real help since even a good painter with an HVLP gun ends up with a little sticky reside on the arms and face. I had enough clear for three coats and all were sprayed by 11:00pm. T minus 3 days: This morning I picked up my finished panels from the paint shop and did the last bit of sanding and polishing to get the clear coat into good shape. When the clear is sprayed on it isn't perfect like how a finished panel looks, it has a little bit of dust and orange peel (the bumpiness in the paint that looks like an orange peel) depending on the temperature, humidity and clear coat mix. Bugs seem attracted to the stuff too and while you can pick their bodies out of the paint before it dries sometimes their legs stay stuck. You can also get an especially determined bug that doesn't stay stuck but proceeds to do a death march on the panel before it gets stuck (unless of course you have a paint booth). To get the panels into near perfect shape you have to take a what seems a couple steps backward first by wet sanding the panel with 2000 grit paper to get it all nice and flat. You have to be extremely careful not to sand through it, especially around the edges which will sand through by just looking at them the wrong way. With all that sanding work done the panel now looks like a horribly scratched mess. This is where rubbing compound comes in. The rubbing compound is like liquid sandpaper that removes all the microscopic scratches to make the panel clear and shiny again. The stuff I used was 3M Perfect-It 3000. It gets rubbed with a clean cloth for what seems like an eternity before the panel shines up. If I did it all by hand it would have easily taken a few hours but I used an air powered polishing tool to speed up the process a bit. With the panels done it was time to finish up the frame which involved welding in the water bungs, adding a couple finishing touches, pressure testing, and polishing. The bungs are normal 1/4" NPT half couplings. The locations where they belong were all marked out beforehand so the first step was to plasma cut rough holes for them and then finish the holes with a die grinder. The next step is to weld the bungs in place which would normally be a very easy opertion but there is only about 1/8" between the bungs and door strip so a few tricks have to pulled to weld around that area. The gas cup of the torch is way too big to get down there so what I do is use a 1/16" tungsten extended about 1/2" past the edge of the cup and use an extra Argon tank and regulator to supply shielding gas via a separate hose. The only problem with this method is that it can only handle a very low amperage since the point is extended so far from the water cooling element of the torch. And now I run into the first big problem: It tuns out that when I planned the location of the bungs I didn't take into account the door locks. It was 11:30pm and I needed a solution fast. It looked like I could get out of this bad situation by plugging the bungs I had already welded in and making a few more on the lathe since it would take too long for new ones to come. The one piece of stainless round stock I had on hand was exactly the OD I needed and I also had the right tap for the job. Face cut: Drill: Part: Tap: Fast forward an hour and I have one bung made and a broken tap which meant work was over until I could get a new one.
Ahhh. The old "measure twice, cut once" fairy strikes again. It always seems to raise it's ugly head when rushing to finish something late at night. Good to see you had a workable remedy. Why didn't you make them in the first place?
