Hello all Time to get started on my second big project. My first Angry-9 has been permanently benched due to some hardware issues, and money. No doubt I will finish it but right now the focus is on my new project Orbitoid. The latest update can be found on the second page here. orbitoid update For the longest time this project was nameless. It vaguely ressembles orbitoid from one of my favourite comics the perry bible fellowship the PBF about me: I'm in my final year of my welding and fabrication degree and after that I'm moving on to welding engineering. I have an entire class devoted to a custom project. We have to design and build anything we want. What's better than class credit for modding? I'll even be getting some sort of letter grade, the only catch is that I have to pay for the majority of my materials save for scraps and welding consumables. Our school has one of the best welding programs in the nation which means I have a few million dollars worth of tools at my disposal and some of the best welders in the country train and teach here. suffice to say if it's possible to weld up or fabricate we'll know how to do it The plans: The Complete designs are a closely guarded secret not because I think anyone cares but I'm constantly reviewing the sketches and drafts for part are constantly changing so even now I'm reviewing about 6 different designs for the legs and I can't build the res until I install the rad (more on that later). If you want to look hard enough I've posted a picture or two on other websites. The design so-far. The major design element of the case are a 24" 1/8"acrylic sphere surrounded by concentric copper circles which will be roughly 50 feet of 3/4" schedule L annealed pipe. The interior will be a mild steel cube that will support all the weight as well as hold all the components. In case your wonder This part of the design was just me bobbling around I've been meaning to make a passive radiator for awhile now and I was wondering how I could experiment with pipe to make interesting radiator designs. Ive been wanting to depart from any sort of angular or box cases so I figured a sphere is the furthest you can get. I did some math and the design seems feasible enough and my teacher and I have not found any problems we couldn't stopm out. The performance of this radiator has been debated 3/4" pipe with no fins and passive radiation isn't the best design BUT it will hold approx 1.5 gallons with approximately 1 gallon in a res. The brute force strategy makes me hope that the fluid will thermally balance at a reasonable temperature roughly four hours of work later I have this cube. 3/4" mild steel square tube. originally I planned to make it out of aluminum but the frame as-is, only weighs a few pounds the weight savings wouldn't be worth the extra work. It was a pretty painless process to tack weld with MIG and leave it at that 1/8" clear acylic dome 24" diameter with a 1/2" flange. two shipped from the manufacturer in canada cost $140. I thought about metal domes which would be about 100x easier to work with but to find one of exacting dimensions is hard and fabricating two that fit perfectly together would probably cost me more in the long run. They are fragile and cutting them in any fashion will be a huge pain. Everything is within my 1/8" tolerance which is about the most you can plan for with a piece of plexi this big. This is more or less how it will fit although it will hover around 1/16th- 1/8" off the "bottom" of the sphere. phew everything fits just barely. The globes aren't perfect sphere's so my math is naturally slightly off. also when finally assembled there will be a 1/4 spacer to attach the sphere to the frame. Price so far $43 for 20' of metal $150 for 2 domes shipped total : $193 I'll post some more work as soon as I can find my digicam and take some pictures. I'm hoping to get some of the shop but alas I'm very busy during the class and the environment isn't camera friendly. So much remains unanswered including how I will mount the hardware how the case will sit on a table how the components will come out, and how I will fabricate the rad, most have been resolved I just like the suspense, but until then a trivia question; The cube frame fits perfectly inside of a sphere. If the sphere has a 24" inside diameter how would one figure out the biggest cube that could fit inside it. I'm sure there's some math buff's here who will get it right away. I had to ask some math majors to get an answer. -Meta out
Project: Orbitoid This is the Orbitoid discussion thread. the project log can be found here Kudos to who ever answers the trivia question: The cube frame fits perfectly inside of a sphere. If the sphere has a 24" inside diameter how would one figure out the biggest cube that could fit inside it. I'm sure there's some math buff's here who will get it right away. I had to ask some math majors to get an answer myself
Mini update: just sent some plastic out to get milled. Found out we don't have the capacity to cut 1/4" acrylic with any precision or reliability. I can't buy in time on my employers waterjet for maybe 2 weeks so alas I sent it out to a local plastic fabricator. Well long story short my Cad files weren't compatible with their CAM program! this would have been a big deal if not for the fact that this was the simplest tool path I've ever written. so while I dictated all 2 dimenions to the plastic engineer, we got to talking. He was from russia I believe, he was thrilled to find out I was an engineering student and knew CAD and CAM software. He went on and on showed me some of the crazy files past clients gave him ( apparently if you use a 3d model it gets converted to 2d and adds all the z lines on at wierd angles) talked a lot about plastic and he just was plane crazy. telling me how to identify lucite from acrylic and going into how you mill plastic. in order to properly cut this acrylic I found out you can only plunge 1/16th of an inch per pass or it will crack, so in order to do 1/4" it will take 4 passes or 45 mins with a 1/8" bit. Tooling time was $60/hr so this was gonna cost me about $45 Price so far $43 for 20' of metal $150 for 2 domes shipped $40 for plastic $45 for machining total : $273 I almost forgot, this piece will be what connects the inner cube to the sphere, it will have a bunch of holes drilled through the flanges of the dome and will then connect with many Bolts. -Meta out
thanks I suppose? I picked an ambitious project as the motivation of getting a good grade alone should make me finish it
It was a compliment, never seen it and its a good idea, like i said, will be interesting to see in the end.
got the plastic back today! There was some problems with the mill so I went back to help him sort out everything out and help him jig it up. Interestingly enough all American made plastics don't follow their nominal dimensions 1/4" extruded acrylic is rough .2276" whilst 1/4" cast acrylic is I believe around .23" which makes a big deal when you are milling or have tight tolerances. Anyways it doesn't look like much and since it is extruded acrylic I have to debur all the plastic bits.
work is coming along fast just a quick look over and the flange fits up perfectly I cut the flange exactly 1/32" of an inch smaller than the globes as they aren't cut very accurately and the actuall flange width varies by as much as 1/16th" of an inch so I'm going to sand it down to be flush with the more perfect flange. The frame has had some design changes and times like theres are when designs evolve. Originally I had fabricated this little thing to hold the legs its 7/8" O.D tube that 3/4" tube will telescope into perfectly, so the legs would slide into it and then it would be bolted onto a central beam on the bottom of the case, like so. Now two problems arrived, all the force would be acting on this beam and some would be torsional. So in my mind I knew this part needed to be very stiff. so I offset the vertical joints to make room for a spacer which I could compress down and get the thing stiffer. I think I measured off the wrong line and somehow I got some wacky gap I could of rewelded the piece closer but that would of been a pain, so I was just planning on shimming it then using a spacer. So when I get the drill out and the 1/4" bit I realize I'm a fool, the space between the bars is about 6.5" a 1/4" drill bit is about 4 inches long, guess how long a drill is? This is where progression of build is critical i should of pre drilled and mounted the piece up beforhand, instead of having to find a right angle drill and having to clamp everything up real strange. right then and there I just decided to weld this piece on and then use bolts going through the 7/8" tube to secure the legs to the frame, If I can say so myself the welds here came out pretty nice too. Of all the common types of metal profiles, square tube is the weakest when it comes to torsion L channel is the best although transversely tend to be the worst for compression in certain directions, every profile has it's strengths and weakness and picking the right one is another balancing act. Because of this weakness, I used a giant shear to stamp out some little gussettes and then welded them in place to really stiffen it up. it was just some 14Ga scrap we had laying around but it does the trick.
I just have to point one thing out: You have not MIG welded, you have MAG welded, you can only MIG weld on aluminium and stainless steel(?), because of the protective gas, wich i believe you already know, but anyhow everbody else knows now EDIT Think this will look great when its done!
Just seeing how everything fits together, It's nice to watch ideas go from paper and sketches to the real world. everything fits nicely and the gap on the flange is perfect, its a little less than 1/8" to big and slides over the cube perfectly. the leg holders hover about 1" off the "ground" which works out just nice, all I need to do is drill out a hole for them now small problem, it is very hard to get the flange and spheres to line up properly when the frame is inside. you see the cube will basically rotate in the sphere whilst touching with it's 4 vertices, this means there's no "right way" yet and it will just sort of float around, I'm guessing that this is pushing it off center. This will be a slight problem in terms of leveling and squaring everything, but I don't see it being show stopping I myself was having a problem visualizing how big this case is, so here it is, next to a standard mid tower. Did I forget to mention the legs rise the height about 2 ft? here's a micro-atx board I had lying around, exactly how it will mount up is still a mystery. dun dun dun. should have some more up in a day or two when I can get in some good work on the legs, and when I can drill and mount up everything together. the only other thing of note is that I sand blasted the frame during a lull in the class and it gives a nice flat primered look. -meta out
You got me there! The technical name is GMAW for gas metal arc welding. MIG and MAG are just slang, MIG is metal Inert gas when you use a inert shielding gas on aluminum or magnesium. MAG is metal active gas when you add c02 or 02 to the inert gas. I will contend that you CAN weld mild steel with inert gas, but it would be more expensive and the 98% argon 2%C02 (or is it 80/20?) mixture gives good control with little spatter. straight MAG welding with just c02 creates too much spatter. you can weld stainless with Active gas although I don't think we have any stainless wire right now. heh thanks for keeping me on my toes and thanks I'm hoping it will turn out nice aswell
Work on the legs has been the most interesting and complex so far. We fired up the giant hydraulic 3 ring roller. I'm not even sure why we have it as no one can recall the last time something was bent up on it. My original plan called for 3/4" tubing being bent up, but I ran into a problem. Tubing has a great tendency to collapse without the right bending tools. which of course I don't have, It was a gamble the hydrualic rollers have a tendency to pinch the tube and in the case just decimated it. I went back to the metal supplier and got some 3/4" bar instead. This bar took the bending much better alhtough it was a shame to waste about 6' of tube, ahh well I'll find a use for it sometime. Bar bends up wonderfully save for slight teeth marks It's a manual roller so once we got one leg looking right we had to memorize the bending order, magnitude length etc for about the 5 bends. this mean each leg comes out just a little different. After some tweaking everything looks pretty even visually. I welded in 4 little braces to make the legs one unit and stiffen everything up. I'm surprised how little flex these legs had and they could easily support my weight and wouldn't twist. here's where problems start occuring, as you notice they are all different heights and slightly bent in, this helps with the fitment as as it will mechanically lock the legs into the holder, taking any wiggles or flex out of it. Unfortunately I overexxaggerated the effect ( I did it by hand) so the legs fit while on the cube frame (this is how I welded it) but they won't want to come out or go in easily, it was hard to get them off and once off the holders sprung back and now it's impossible to get them back in the fix should be simple, I think I'll just bellhole the holders starting with the one corresponding to the tallest hole and work my way to the shortest leg. If I bell hole them too much it might flex more so now is a time to be prudent. I'll be sorting that out this week, as well as cutting out the holes and mounting everything together. hopefully I can start as early as next on the rad, until then -meta out
The legs would have all be the same, if you had done it this way: bend all four, then readjust (making the radius smaller) the roller, bend again all four, readjust, bend... and on, and on...
good idea jrs77. The only problem was some of those are mid bends where you have the bar midway in the rollers then you bring the back roller up further and only roll a section, it just means thatyou would have to lower the arm again to feed the next barn then raise it again. All and all I'm satisfied with the legs they only deviate about 1/2" or so from eachother when all put together and I can always fire up a torch and bend em some more by hand
Just a quicky here, I got drilled up the holes and mounted the sphere's and flange together. 12 screws 22.5 degs apart, with 4 spaces where the flange is at it's thinnest. Which is the same point that the flange mounts to the frame so I didn't want a drill hole there weakening it. I probably could have gotten away with fewer screws but you won't even be able to see them. when the radiator is in place
just fabbing the last few bits to get the case together. I made 4 triangle brackets to hold the frame to the domes, it was surprisingly hard to figure out how to measure, align and weld those 4 little brackets so that the flange would lay level. Also the legs tilt the case a few degrees forward so I tried to compensate for that. Took me a good 3 hours to mount them all up, which goes to say how ever long you think it will take to build, double the time. The next thing to take care of was to cut out the bottom hole for the legs. I was really concerned about chipping, or crazing or cracking or just destroying the hole. Thankfully we have a nice radial drill with variable rpm that lets you lock in all the axis of travel and then use a manual feed, or set a plunge rate. The hole saw produced an excellent cut and it was relatively painless. I put a bell hole on the legs using a gas torch and a center punch to do the expanding. Wasn't hard but it did get hot in the booth as well as take a little muscle. finally the more important pieces! hacked a mobo tray and back plate out of a case I had in the computer grave yard. funny story here is that it was a crack house computer (long story how I got ahold of it) At any rate I used a hydraulic shear to take off an extra 2 inches to allow it to fit, shears have a tendency to twist lighter sheets, so it's a crooked cut but works all the same. I'm going to mount it on rails to allow it to slide out to reveal the water cooling bits below Here it is coming together! And a shot to give you a sense of scale. That is a standard mid-tower. This case is enormous, and If I raise it a few more inches I could fit my monitor below it! I would consider most of the work for the frame to be done, I'm going to tackle the rad next. Only one month until my class ends so I'm picking up the pace, I hope to have the rad done before the class ends. The rest I can build at home and my Job.
funny you should mention that, just working on it today, as always my cases take painfully long to completely mostly cause I'm dead broke, I'm actually using the case, it's sitting right next to me on my desk right. I got a new digi cam so hopefully I'll get some pics up soon
wow i forgot about this case! looking foward to the pics, have you done drasticly more work or just a little bit more, cause i would love to see this case done!
