I thank you . Definitely it would. To keep the vibration from transferring to rigid plastic and making the upper shroud airtight I will soft-mount it. Basicly it will be sandwiched between acrylic and rubber foam. The corners are the main mount points and they will have rubber foam on five sides.
Update 4.12.2005 This weekend was very productive in modding front, altough I didn't get any major parts finished. On IRL side we went on to buy new apartment this week. The modding part of the news is that it is a two-story apartment and I will get a dedicated workshop at the upper floor - yay! Upper floor means there will be no neighbours on downstairs and as the whole building is just on the foundation stage, I can still order enough acoustic dampening to the walls to make it possible to mod all night long :-]. Additional bonus is that Leena, who is my fellow computer hardware enthusiast is living just half a kilometer away from the new apartment. Not bad, not bad at all. We mutually agreed that I need a dedicated room for modding - I guess the half a year of acrylic dust in our nowadays shared study has softened her :-D. Luckily also the next Tuesday is our Independence Day and thus free from work. More time for modding . But back to business. I continued the mobo rails: These are my new drill bits. They are meant for wood and have spike in the center and blades at the outer edges. The spike does not really bite the acrylic, but melts it, but as the center will be anyway cut away, I can do with these: Cutting M5 bolts to more correct length: All assembled, for now: At this point I noticed that yes, the spacing is right and the rails are parallel with each other, but in vertical direction they are not level. Oh well.. Luckily I have some extra spacers made exactly for this kind of problems. I believe some support on the other direction attached to the base will fix this, and then heatgun will take care that the corners stay in that position. So into cutting the piece that will attach rails to the lower shroud cover: Using spike to make sure the drill starts at the correct position: To make sure all the pieces were perfectly aligned in vertical direction I first drilled just half of the hole and then used it to mark the same place to opposing piece: Perfect alignment: Discuss this post in the discussion thread.
Update 4.12.2005, part 2 While I was working on the mobo rails, I had to remove the lower shroud top cover so I took a break and proceeded to finally cover the side openings. First tracing the shape to the cardboard: As I'm now entering the realm of bending acrylic into 3D shapes, I needed some sturdy material that's easy enough to machine, cheap and does not melt under heatgun. As I have few pieces of chipboard lying around from the previous apartment renovation, it was selected to this task. Shape copied from cardboard: Sawing: Quite nicely the correct shape, altough it looks a bit wrong in this pic: As I do not have yet any real countersinking equipment, I used a big concrete bit to do some countersinking: And the reason for countersinking: attaching the chipboard into plank to get it stay in place while stretching plastic over it: Then I continued by bending foamcore sheet into the desired shape. Its purpose is to soften the chipboard a bit so that the acrylic sheet does not get any unnecessary marks: This is a part I am a bit proud of. It was by no means easy to get this kind of shape bent: And now that I was satisfied with the foamcore result, it was time to go for the real stuff: And as you can see, the foamcore model is there as a buffer between the wood and the acrylic: Oh my, not a bad fit for a first try: This was pretty expectedly the part that required some more attention: The heated acrylic behaves pretty similarly to soaken rawhide, so I knew how to deal with it - no little force will be enough to get it streched. Unfortunately while I tried to cushion my pliers, they sill left some marks: Nevertheless, it's now almost perfect fit. Notice the nice curved profile: I think I can live with the plier marks; maybe add some piece of acrylic to cover it or something. Gotta think about it. Discuss this post in the discussion thread.
for the plier marks, use a blow torch/ hot heat gun, and you can make the acrylic smothen it self out if you use just the right amont of heat.
Thanks, gotta try that . I guess if that does not help then heating and pressing between flat surfaces and repeatedly should work. I have found that the 3mm acrylic is in some aspects harder to work with than thicker ones. It easily expands on the side where you apply heat, but then retracts back when cooling - it's painstakingly hard to make bends with angles exactly right..
I want, I want, I want. Beautifull work. I really have to get started on more acrylic work. Your work is inspiring.
Update 5.12.2005 After spending some frustrating hours in bending the mobo tray rail spacers into better shape, I decided to relax a bit and put some thought on the mobo tray. On the front side will be standoffs, but the backside, and especially the bottom layer of the tray, will have to keep nuts in place when motherboard is fastened or removed. I started by drilling a 8mm hole for the M4 nut: 7 mm would maybe have been better, but all my bits of that size were of unsuitable type. OTOH, I would maybe have had to heat the hole to have the nut fit and there is a risk in that when working on narrow piece that needs to stay completely flat. Some tape to make double sure the layers do not get glued to each other at this point: As the hole was a bit on a large side, I decided to add something to keep the nut from falling even under moderate pressure. I wanted it to hide the glue, and I had this paint test piece lying around: It's actually made of the same smoke-colored acrylic than the rest of the pieces, but painted black from the other side. The painted side looks dumb, but the other side is nice and shiny: Of course I didn't invent this painting technique, but learned it from Chris Newman and his breathtaking Cinemedia PC project: Then I drilled circular piece from that painted acrylic: And applied some hot glue: And presto: It still needs polishing and such, but when judging the finish, remember that this the backside of the motherboard tray which will be seen only when I install motherboard, and even then only very briefly.. Finally I applied some hot glue to the front side, too: I now let it dry overnight and then sand it level. Discuss this post in the discussion thread.
nice project log, iv been watching it closley, giving me ideas , now i just need the money lol, but yeah great mod cant wait to see the finished product "out with the old, in with the nuclius"
Upper shroud mold, part 1 Today I finally took the time to draw some blueprints with computer. Do you want it fast, or shall I do with computer, y'know . First I traced borders of the TT fan I have started cutting and scanned it: Then using it as a model I drew blueprint for the upmost part of the upper shroud mold: The previous vector drawing program I used heavily was Corel Draw 3.0 for Win 3.11, so there was quite a lot learning to get used to the modern ones.. Anyway, more drawings and less actual modding to come this week. I hope to get the mold finished by Sunday and get some of my friends then to help in the actual bending - it will be a tedious task indeed. Discuss this post in the discussion thread.
I noticed something familiar in this picture: Hmm... could it be? Wonder how that got there... Lol. Great work on the project. Keep up the updates!
New goodies Have had problems sleeping this week so not much advancement in anything that needs brains. Anyway, the Swissflow SF800 that Nexxo kindly organized us arrived this week and I ran into some useful stuff in hardware store I haven’t visited before: For those who do not know, SF800 is brilliant piece of hightech - it’s infrared-based flow meter, thus producing very accurate measurement without need for calibration and with minimal flow resistance. The other goods are some bigger heatshrink tubing for my larger cable tubing and colored ammo for my gluegun. Latter one was something I didn’t knew existed but it will certainly come handy when gluing leds to red plastic or black MB nut covers. Discuss this post in the discussion thread .
