Hehe, i just made up that title while creating this thread... I am making a Linux server out of Polycarbonate... so the two combined give Polinux... If anyone has any suggestions for a name, have at it. I have a modding thread that had some ideas here. A quick recap: Those are two pictures of case mockups. But, they are subject to change, and probably will... tommorow... So with no futher ado... heres the first bit. The most exciting and itegral part of a case. The motherboard spacers! I acually put in a good bit of work to these, and im proud, although there is ALWAYS room for improvement. Mark out some squares 1/2" x 1/2". I marked out extras incase i messed up or found another use for them. Center marks for the holes. I Did a quick test to see what size drill bit i needed to use to tap the holes correctly. All the holes drilled in all 15 squares. All the holes tapped succesfully! No cracks, or messed up taps. All the pieces cut apart, sorry no pics of the saw work, but i only have two hands, and my freind couldnt be bothered to leave the TV... The stack on the left are de-burred, and the edges are sanded smooth. the middle stack is just de-burred, and the bottom stack is freshly cut. A whole bunch of time and effort in sanding and tapping and de-burring and cutting and etc... My tools of the trade, and a bunch of fine dust thats probably REALLY bad to breathe in... oh wells And a blurry picture... The risers all installed. A closeup to see my fine handiwork The risers are 1/4" Im not sure if i want to polish the riser's edges before i glue them down or not... They wont be visible, and they dont look half bad as they are. Im also not sure what to use for glue... I have some model glue that i tested and it works well until you get pliers and twist it a bit... I inquired about Weld-on from an online retailer, and they recomended Weld-on #16 instead of #3 or #4... any opinions on this? I know that this doesnt look like much, but give it some time. I have some ambitious plans ahead!
I have multiple NICs for reasons... Mainly incase i need more than one for anyreason... The main reason im building this box is to experiment with linux.. but i mainly want it to be versatile. I have multiple NICs so i can setup a firewall, a DNS server, a webserver... whatever i fancy. And whens the last time someone coplained about having to many NICs?
Thanks for the comments on the risers. Unfortunatley, tonight i dont have anything THAT exciting. Just a mobo tray that isnt a tray at all. Its more of a side of the case... so yea on with the pics! I acually lied. The first thing i did was find a NB heatsink from my previous choice of mobo. To my suprise, it didnt have any paste on it att all... But that made my job a lot easier anyways This is the NB heatsink from the P2 mobo... now for the P3 mobo which previously didnt have one... I figure you can only go up from the bottom I put the green heatsink into a tub of clorox as per simon_C in CrazyModders project log. It seemed like a good idea, so off i went to the garage cackaling like a mad man. After about 5 minutes... After an hour or so... There was a layer of 'fat'? on top.. and i washed it off. This is how it turned out... Not bad, however... [edit] those are shadows, not left over annodization. Its still a bit green compared to the CPU heatsink... hmm what to do. I put it in a clean solution, and will leave it overnight to clean some more... Heres the mobo tray/case i promised. Its cut here, and filed down reasonably smooth Heres the light transperancy of it at this stage... Heres the layout of the computer so far. A nice closeup after some wet sanding. I plan on experimenting with flame polishing and polishing this sucker up reaaaaaaal nice. And ther light transparency after wetsanding... It looks a bit dull compared to un wet-sanded, but its better in real life, i just took a crappy picture So thats all for tonight, i am ordering some weld-on later tonight, and hopefully that will arrive soon. I also orederd a nice low-profile video card from ebay... but its being shipped from hawaii... so it will take a while. I know that this doesnt look like much, but give it some time. I have some ambitious plans ahead!
To further assist with the removal of the anodizing, why not put the container on something that is vibrating slightly overnight, maybe an airconditioning unit or something. The agitation should help.
Nooooooo... The vapors super glue lets off will often times eat the surface of acrylic and polycarbonate.
Constructacon: i will see what i can do about the agitation of the heatsink, but it may be more trouble than its worth... Captain Slug: sometime tommorow when i feel like modding, i am going to use some model airplane glue to fix the standoffs to the sheet. It worked fine in the test i did, im ust not sure if i want to dab some glue on all the standoffs and plop the mobo down, or properly affix each standoff on its own and wipe up any excess...
hehehehhee bath ! Just clean it, We actually use it for our RC cars where a lot of purple/blue anodized ****
Really nice work ...especially with the DIY Anodizing...do you mind giving a quick recap of the steps you took with the metal? And why Easy Off ?
Acually i was removing anodization. And paradigmgc was showing another way to remove anodization. I wish i would have known about paradigmgc's method first, as his way seems better than mine... either that or i just have a crappy block Today when i checked on my heatsink... tragedy stikes! For some reason the alu started to corrode? or rust almost... Im going to try sanding it down a bit, and sadly thats proably all thats going to get done today... Maybe some pictures tommrow!
bleach is an oxidizer.... i said quick soak fo a reason i found out that the older the hetsink, and the coarser the finish, the harder it is to remove the color.
Thanks for the info simon_C I did some sanding last night, and the heatsink looks acceptable.. I might take a dremel to it later to spiffy it up a bit, but its not that bad at all. I swear later today i will do some work, mostly because i am up before noon for once this week... So i promise some more pictures tonight.
Ahh, i got a bit done today. I finished up the chipset HS. Did more sandiing on the risers, and then flame polished the risers. This is after a LOT of sanding. Medium, fine, and lots of it. Heres the finished HS block, It looks really nice in real life, but tht camera flash brings out the scrathces. If anyone knows how to get rid of these without more sanding, i would be willing to try it.. although sanding is proably the best bet... This is after flame polishing the first standoff, it kinda burnt a little on the edges, and there are a few bubbles... Heres the rest of the standoffs, and they look a LOT worse in the picture than in real life. In life they are almost tolerable, whereas here they are not so much... Heres a little jig i made so the mobo would be spaced correctly on the poly sheet. I tested the mobo to make sure that it fits Put some glue on the risers atached to the mobo Placed the mobo down, and added some weight. The final result! 4 of the spacers fell off when i was taking the mobo off the sheet... The other 8 are sketchy at best... I think i know what the problem is. On my original test, i clamped the riser down, and it worked fairly well. I just tried something to see if it will work. I coarsly sanded the sheet side of a riser, and a square on a scrap. When the glue is applied, all the scratches dissapear, and i imagine that the hold will be a lot stronger. More on this tommorow!
Something that really takes care of the edges on plexi, is those miniature soldering blow torces. Just so you know
Well my current weapon of choice is this baby: And my test piece that i did last night with scratches is only margnially better... It is still torque-able (if thats a word) I guess i need to wait for my weld-on to arrive before i go any farther in this direction. I also purchased a substantial amout of stuff from newegg last night, so that will be a fun day when it arrives Im starting to think of turning this into more of a media client than a webserver dealy... Im not sure yet, but i will see. I might have to make another matching computer
Good work thus far scifi.. I think we can come up with a better name..What version of Linux are you going to use?
