Sandcrawler project

My favourite part of this is the incredibly detailed engine area, but the rest looks like it fits like a glove, the exterior is looking very awesome now :) :up:.

I'd like to go to italy some time in my life, should be a good trip have a gooden m8 :).
1,00 miles is a crazily long drive though, america is so huge, must be a tad strange having to get a plane or an extremely long drive to another state yet it's in the same country/language, well it'd be strange to me anyway lol, uk is so compact & easy to get to anywhere in a decent time :).

I regrettably passed up on the chance of an expenses paid trip for me & my air cube & other uk modders to campus party europe in spain madrid, was very surprised by the invite & not ready for it, not been out of the uk in 17 years & not even been out of manchester in quite a while, I'm just not a very outgoing person, part of the reason I started making my own cases so chickened out of going along :(, I already know I'll regret it when I hear of how good it was.
Going to be getting on a college course soon though so that'll get me used to socialising again, got a touch of agoraphobia at the moment :redface:.

So I worked on it a little this weekend (spent the weekend mostly being lazy). First had to put it "up on blocks" as it were, since the outside is done and I can't flip it upside down anymore. First order of business for water cooling prep was to pull out the cooling fans from the top portion of the model. I pulled the roof panels off so I could get to all the screws holding the fans in place. I tell you guys, the most valuable lesson I've learned with this is NEVER think "Oh I'm never gonna pull THAT out again." I've had to eat my words on that one so many times on this build, it's kinda stopped being funny. The fans were a pain in the butt to pull out.

this shot's looking up from the floor into the interior. If you look at the two cooling fans in the middle of the photo, and from the center of the bottom one, look right, you'll see the back end of a large red LED that illuminates the rear engine room. I'm 99% sure I'm gonna have to move that light (gosh @!#$@#@$@#$) to make room for the radiator mount.

Looking down from the top, after fan removal. Incidentally, those gray pipes are coming out, and will be replaced with a couple of Danger Den reservoirs. the reservoirs will serve a similar visual function as the pipes, and are slightly narrower diameter, but otherwise about the same size. But, they'll also serve a vital computer function, and I like that I'm able to integrate these, the pump, probably parts of the radiator, and the power supply into the details of the model as well as being working computer parts. :D

there was a fan here too, blowing on the video card. won't need it once the WC loop is set up:

The radiator mount (with the Blackice 360 rad from Outoftheboxmods.com ). nothing is screwed down yet, I have some calculating I need to do to figure out exactly where it'll fit before I screw it down. The good news is it looks like I bent the aluminum bars at nearly exactly the lengths I needed to - they're just a tiny bit too tall, but I think I can bend the bottom tabs slightly more to shorten them, really just a 16th of an inch or so.

I'd been going to make the mount shape more of a trapezoid, but when it came time to bend the bars (by hand, using a vise to hold one end....I tried pliers but didn't have enough leverage), I realized why make the shape more complicated than it needs to be? :)

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Originally Posted by artoodeeto

the most valuable lesson I've learned with this is NEVER think "Oh I'm never gonna pull THAT out again." I've had to eat my words on that one so many times on this build, it's kinda stopped being funny.

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Heheh, I know the feeling. That was basically the story of my life any time I tried to do any work on mightyMite. If there's one thing I learned from that, it's to never expect something to always be a certain way....because odds are you're gonna want/need to change something eventually.

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Originally Posted by x88x

Heheh, I know the feeling. That was basically the story of my life any time I tried to do any work on mightyMite. If there's one thing I learned from that, it's to never expect something to always be a certain way....because odds are you're gonna want/need to change something eventually.

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Exactly. I still need to cut out some stuff from inside the top of the case to make enough space for the radiator to fit, in addition to moving that LED out of the way. That's why I didn't make a ton of progress this weekend - it's gonna be a PITB rearranging things AGAIN in there, and I just didn't feel like tackling it. Conversely, I REALLY want it done. 'twil be interesting to see how long it takes that feeling to win out over the procrastination feeling. I'm guessing maybe tonight for more progress...

:) Excellent, like the radiator mount, simple fix but definately looking good :up:.

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Originally Posted by Waynio

:) Excellent, like the radiator mount, simple fix but definately looking good :up:.

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Thanks - yeah, definitely a simple solution. It has to be, since I have the limitation of trying to work something into the space available rather than designing the case around the stuff that needs to be inside. To that end, I ordered 3 of these, the 1600rpm version:
http://www.performance-pcs.com/catal...5f3db1f2f1dc6f
I realized that the standard 2.5cm thick fans that outoftheboxmods.com sent me weren't going to work, they made the radiator too thick for one of the roof pieces to fit properly (it has a portion that's indented), I wouldn't be able to easily grab the internal carrying handle, and the reservoirs may not have fit very well. So these new fans are only 1.2cm thick, which should make things a lot easier. Once the WC loop is together, obviously the CPU fan won't be in there anymore, and I plan on retaining the speed controller I already have installed. It'll run the 3 rad fans, and while a 1600rpm fan isn't that loud, I'll be able to make the things silent when I want. of course, the system as a whole won't be totally silent, there's the 2 Asus fans on the outside of the case and the PSU fan, all of which make a little noise. But it should be quieter than it is now.
Now I'm off to start figuring out what I need to cut out of the top's interior to make room for this beast...more pics later today I hope.

so over on pdxlan, Boddaker just informed me that my crawler computer case is no longer the only one in the world. I rather liked it's uniqueness, but apparently a guy over in Hungary just built one of his own:
http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=182872
looks pretty good - there's definitely some aspects that if I did mine again, I'd imitate what he did.
so now I'll just have to console myself with the fact that mines the only WATERCOOLED sandcrawler in the world LOL...

Just pulled these parts out yesterday. The gray pipes will be replaced with dual Danger Den reservoirs (should be receiving those soon).

After I pulled out the fans. Note the wires crossing over the middle. I didn’t absolutely have to rearrange them so they don’t cross, but I decided to just to make sure they don’t interfere functionally or visually with the radiator or fans.

Test positioning the radiator. For those of you who got to see this in person at the Exploratorium, this sort shows you how big this rad is (or if you know how big the rad is, then how large the crawler is). I decided to position its front flush with the front of the open chamber, and the rear part thus juts a little further into the back.

After I cut out the last bits that had held the fans in place.

Test fitting the top onto the base, with the metal bars in place. The weight of the top now rests on the metal bars, they’re just a hair too tall, so I bent their legs out slightly to shorten them vertically. It probably won’t make much difference, but I’m not going to lose sleep over it. Note the notch in the vertical piece behind the rear metal bar. That was a big pain to cut out with a hand-held x-acto knife with a saw-type blade.

Because the rear rad screw holes don’t and can’t line up with the rear metal bracket, I may bolt a couple of extenders to the bracket that will then run to the screw holes on the rad. No weight will rest on these extenders, but they’ll secure the rad to the bracket. For the front end, it looks like I may be able to scoot the front metal bracket a little further forward, and if necessary scoot the radiator back slightly, to get the screw holes to line up directly with the bracket.

The LED that I had to move. It may look like it’s positioned strangely from this angle, but in fact it’s in the ceiling corner of the lower part of the rear engine room.

Wire re-soldering detail. These were among the wires that I moved so they wouldn’t run over the middle of the case.

Overall shot of the re-done interior. If you look at the back right section, opposite from that re-located LED, I need to still cut out some of the floor to make room for the pump and hoses that I’m going to mount to the base. I’ll mount it on some kind of stand so it looks like it’s part of the upper section machinery, and hopefully I’ll be able to have a dummy pump on the other side for symmetry purposes. This will be roughly level with the radiator, and the reservoirs will mount to the rad I’m hoping in a way so they’re located similarly to where those gray pipes used to be.

ok guys, just got an email confirmation that my parts are on the way from Danger Den...so here's what I'm going to be installing from them this weekend:

2 Rad Reservoirs with (simple) custom mounts I designed and they made for me (their normal mounts were likely too big), plus the custom one pictured earlier in this thread
GTX285 waterblock
6 feet of clear tygon tubing (given how close some of these components will be, I think that's more than enough)
danger den logo 120mm fan grille to go on one of the fans on the radiator, to be visible when you look through the vent opening in the top
extra pump - only for looks, but I figure it'll be good to have a backup if the main one dies
some thermal grease and a whole bunch of fittings, both for the new items and to replace some of the green plastic ones I have so they all match

I'm also going to receive the 3 120mm low profile fans in the next day or two from PerformancePCs, so I should be all set to go on water cooling setup this weekend. Needless to say, I'm excited :). Pics as soon as I get this stuff!

Woo hoo! Clear the calendar. We'll be looking for pics.

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Originally Posted by artoodeeto

6 feet of clear tygon tubing (given how close some of these components will be, I think that's more than enough)

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You'd think so, wouldn't you. ;) I honestly wouldn't be surprised if you at least come close to running out...WC loops use a deceptively large amount of tubing.