Scratch Build – In Progress Project: Seawolf, July 20. #40 Getting ready for Assembly Summer 2010!

#32 Heat-treating the fittings

As I mentioned earlier, I wanted to make the watercooling hardware darker. My prior experiments showed that a fitting turned dark when it was heated and then quenched. Now I wanted to repeat the process for the rest of the fittings.



The hardware consists of couple of t-blocks, different swiweling angles and regular fittings.



Like the last time, I burned some chopped wood until I got nice hot embers. I mostly used birch to prevent the fire from crackling.



Here's a t-block resting in the embers. I used a sausage stick to handle the fittings. Conveniently, when the fittings are hot enough the iron stick starts to gleam red.



While heating, one of the fittings got so hot it started to gleam too. The result is a nice blue tone on the bottom fitting. The rest are yellowish-brown black. There is a fine sparkling surface on the fittings. In the picture I used the flash to try and show the tone differece and the sparkle. In real life the effects are not so striking.
I could have heated rest of the fittings to match the blueish one, but I'm afraid if I overdo it the nickel plating will start to come off. Interestingly, the Bitspower logos were untouched by the fire.



I removed O-rings from all the fittings prior to heating. I wasn't sure if the swiwel angle - pieces had O-rings inside. There's no way to open them. So I had to sacrifice one to find out. Sure enough, an O-ring inside the swiwel boiled out of the seam and then burst into flames. The fire ruined the nickel surface burned and started to peel.

The nickel surface is also different than on the straight fittings. It doesn't change colour when heated. The t-blocks have similar surface that refuses to change colour. I didn't heat the rest of the swiwel pieces.



This shows the differences to some extent. From the left there is a heated t-block, a heated swiwel angle, a non-treated angle and finally a heated straight fitting.

I guess I have to put up with some of the hardware looking chrome.
Not that they don't look awesome

I'll show you later the rest of what I did last weekend.

 

BitsPower do make most of their pieces with a "dark shining" option, it's like shiny black, looks awesome.

 

When I bought the fittings, they were all supposed to be "black sparkle" or "shiny black". Perhaps when I got them, they were from some faulty batch.

 

Or they sent you the wrong ones.

 

Oh well... all fixed now

Laz

 

The blue barb looks nice mate, shame you cant get the rest to go like that.

 

Here's what I've been working on for the last couple of days:



http://allthemods.com/project.php?id=349
It's not really related to Seawolf so I didn't post it here. Although, I will need it for the next task ahead. More on that later.

 

#33 Preparing the pump

Now, I wanted to put the pump back together.



I started making a mounting plate for the pump top by sawing a rectangle out of some black scrap plastic. Then I used a 30mm hole-saw I had at hand to make a start for the hole.



I mounted the piece on the lathe faceplate with double-sided tape and duct-tape.



Turning the hole to 60mm was ridiculously fast! Plastics are so fun to work with.



Here's the result with a small chamfer added for good measure. The outer edges are a bit ragged, but I don't mind.



I also wanted to remake the teflon pieces to get nicer edges and a better fit with the acrylic tube. Originally, I was planning on getting 4mm thick tube in 60mm outer diameter. So I had made the teflon pieces to match. The acrylic tube I managed to buy through eBay is only 3mm thick.



I spent the last piece of teflon I had on a new pump top. Last time I checked from Etra, they didn't have any teflon in their scrap bin. I'm not keen on buying 80e/kg piece of plastic, so I'm going to have to wait until some turns up. The reservoir top requires a small d60x23mm piece. If I can't find any, I'm using white POM instead.



When turned upside-down, the new pump top nicely aligns with the pump bottom. So I used the pump top to align the pump mounting plate with the bottom and clamped them in place. Then I used the original mounting holes (4.3mm) to guide a 4.2mm drill bit through to the mounting plate. After that, I enlarged all the holes to 5mm to fit M5 bolts.



Then it is a simple matter to put everything in place. The nuts on the top side have just enough clearance so I can turn them without hitting the acrylic tube!

It also seems I can avoid chopping the bolts to length. As they are now, they are perfect length to support the acrylic piece that will be placed above the mounting plate.



The M5 bolt caps protrude by about 1mm past the end of the pump bottom. This shouldn't matter much because I'm using washers when mounting the pump to the case.

 

Nope your a modder. Thanks for the input on my radiator fins and this mod is definitely worth watching.

 

Thanks for firing the fittings. You saved me some cash sending them to a plater. I didn't realise there was an internal o-ring. Looks like it's wire wheel or nothin.

 

Nice work!

 

great idea with burning the fittings !

 

Yeah I'd love to agree but those were bitspower fittings, I died a little inside when i saw that

Ah well, it did turn out rather well.

 

Really nice mod on the pump, really clean. I wish I had your toys to play around with lol.

 

#34 Foot fetish

This sure is moving slowly. Oh well! I'm in no rush.



It's about time I got the feet off my to-do list. I turned them all one phase at a time. Turning is a lot faster that way but I have to sacrifice some precision in the process. Good thing the tolerances on the feet aren't really that important.



If you look closely you can see how the hss bit is a lot duller on the last piece. Luckily, the fine surface texture is impossible to spot by eye unless you hold the pieces side by side.



I've showed the process a couple of times already, so I won't bore you with details. For the final feet I used two v-shaped grooves with a gap of 5mm.
I tried to make the inner bore groovy (Pun intended! ) so that the vibration dampeners have a nice surface to cling to.



The new surface is a lot nicer than the original. On the left you can see the prototype and on the right a finished foot.

It's too bad aluminium will dimm with age. I'm also sure the feet will be full of dings and scratch marks in no time.
I could coat them but that would diminish the lovely shine.

 

Real nice feet .

 

you just got to love the feet

 

As usual, really good and amazing work!

 

Really nice work man.. I love the lathe work, that plastic looks fun to turn. Got to give it a try.

 

#35 Sleeving test

The sleeving thread at modding got me wondering how my sleeving would look like.
http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=175424

So, I just had to test it on some easy-to-sleeve cable. The easiest cable I could think of is of course the sata-cable. I've used heatshrink many times before, but this is the first time I'm dealing with sleeving.



The white sleeving I'm using doesn't cover the wires too well. I had to paint the sata cable white. The only white spray I have on hand is that awfull gloss white. It takes forever to dry and picks up scratches like nothing else. Although, when it's fully cured it's quite tough.



Next, I just slipped the sleeving on the cable. I wanted to leave a bit of the sleeve on top of the connector to ensure a good snug fit with the heatshrink.



I used a 1 inch piece of 2:1 heatshrink. I can't remember the actual size.



When heated with a lighter, the heatshrink doesn't contract uniformly. I think I got it straight enough, though.



It's quite good for a first time.
The white colour makes it harder to pull it off nicely.
For comparison, the black sleeved cable came with Corsair TX750.