sweet... love this project and its good to see it isn't falling by the wayside like mine has been. haha
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sweet... love this project and its good to see it isn't falling by the wayside like mine has been. haha
lookin good! :D
Thanks guys! Nice to know folks are still enthusiastic about this :) I tend to switch between excitement and irritation.
So... Why is it that I feel compelled to keep changing stuff? I’ve long ago switched my thinking on this from progress to evolution…
I’ve known for awhile I would have to add slightly raised floors in the upper sections to cover up the LEDs illuminating the lower parts. In doing this, I began looking at the walls in the upper section, and thinking how dull they were just being all flat and stuff (kinda like a good Texas roadkill). So I decided to…modify…them a bit. First off, the floor photos, before and after. As with a lot of the detail parts in this build, I’m using Bristol vellum in lieu of styrene, since I have the vellum and don’t have the $$ for styrene. And the vellum’s REALLY easy to work with, being, you know, paper and all. :D Incidentally, those floors were ridiculously difficult to measure accurately enough to make these pieces. I’m a little surprised I managed it. And even more surprised that I almost don’t have to glue them in, they fit so well.
Ok, now for the walls. You’ll notice in the photos above they’re very square and vertical. I debated for awhile whether or not to cut them out and add some depth, and while it’s rather a pain in the rear, I’m already glad I did it.
I have about 1 inch of space that they can be pushed in, before they (might) hit a couple of the tubes in the water cooling system. Everywhere else, I had about an inch and a half of space, but I decided to be uniform and push them in by an inch all the way ‘round. The easiest shape would be a squared-off C shape, in cross section it’d look like this bracket: [ . But I didn’t want to be that simple. Instead, the “ceiling” of the recessed portion is perpendicular to the wall, but the “floor” angles up pretty steeply. Also, the original wall angles in toward the front. At the very front on the inside, the recessed section needed to be nearly flush with the original wall since it angles in far enough that it’s almost touching the radiator.
As you can imagine, it’s taken awhile and a couple abortive attempts to get the measurements figured out. One reason I’m REAL glad I’m using thick paper is, as it turns out, the walls have to have a slight twist to them to fit correctly. To get this twist, since the paper wants to be straight, I’ve had to glue the new wall section in one portion at a time, and hold that portion until the glue sets enough. Time-consuming PITA…
To maintain visibility of the Danger Den Rad Res’s, I made windows in the new wall. I used clear styrene, the last of a sheet I’ve had for something like 15 YEARS. It’s nice to finally use it for something LOL. In fact I have no memory of why I originally bought it. I put the windows high up, in the vertical portion of the recessed area, so that only the reservoirs would be visible and the radiator, UV LED, and wiring for the LED are all hidden. I didn’t make windows forward of that interior support brace because when everything’s put together, there isn’t much to see in there. There’s no real way I could re-do the wires running the ceiling LEDs in the upper section, so those wires are going to remain fully visible. I’ll just have to be creative about making them look like part of the crawler interior. :D
These next few photos show the wall progressing from test fit to almost fully glued in.
That’s it for now. I’ll be tackling the wall on the other side next, and I’m really hoping it goes a bit quicker than this first one did. More soon….
thats some awesome bending skills (and cutting so the bends work!) good job!
Made some more progress, and more importantly made a list of the remaining major tasks so I don’t have to re-create that list in my head every time I sit down to work on this. First off, the progress.
My “helper.” She LOVES “tool time” when I’ve got bits of stuff strewn everywhere that she can swat to her little heart’s content. In particular she really likes attacking that clear plastic ruler in the pic.
Those of you who showed computers at the Exploratorium this past February will no doubt recognize the sticker in this photo. I have 2 of the stickers; the other one is on the underside of the front-most roof panel. :D It will be hidden once the roof panel is back on, but obviously is fully visible with the panel removed. However, I really took this photo to show that I re-ran the wires so they wouldn’t be visible. On one side there was enough slack that I only had to drill a hole in the cross-brace and run a ziptie through it to secure the wires where I wanted them. On the other side, I had to snip the wires, drill a couple holes in the cross-brace and run the wires through the holes, then re-solder.
My main progress has been to cover up the remaining gaps and rough edges from my wall re-design.
I also worked on the motor that will run the conveyor belts in the upper section. Specifically, it needed the shafts extended to reach out on either side, and I had to figure out a way to attach the Lego shafts to the metal rod shaft on the motor. Hopefully what I did will work. After a rather arduous time removing the original plastic wheels from each end of the shaft (turns out they had a little clip inside them that clipped into a groove in the shaft), I used a candle (pineapple cilantro scent, smells great) to heat up the ends of the shaft. I stuck the Lego shafts halfway into the plastic gear wheels, then put the metal rod in the other half, and the heat allowed it to melt its way in for a hopefully perfect fit. I used some superglue to keep it from easily falling off, although it won’t support any weight very well. That shouldn’t be a problem because it won’t really have to support any weight; the only resistance will be in the turning motion.
Now I need to get a resistor to knock the 12V power line down to 3V (I have no idea what voltage the motor is, I ordered it from Electronic Goldmine awhile back, and the motor doesn’t say what it is, and I don’t recall their website said either. I figure 3V should be safe), install the motor, mount the conveyors, and the major parts of the upper section will be nearly done.
you can swap the connetors in the molex (swap the red and yellow on te motor side) and get 5v. try that first to be sure that motor will spin at 5v, then you should be able to drop it to 3v pretty easily form there if it'll spin at that low of a voltage
Actually what I was worried about was giving it too high a voltage and killing it. I do have a Zalman fan speed controller I thought about using, but I don't know its voltage range (or do those adjust current? I'm not sure). I'd rather use a resistor, though. Maybe what I'll do is run it on the controller and gradually increase the speed, see if it even spins at the lowest setting, which I would guess is around 3V.
IIRC the zalman controller ranges from ~5 to ~11VDC :up:
that DEFINITELY really counts :P Thanks! +rep :up:
Or pull off an unused SATA power connection. The orange wires are 3.3V, so you wouldn't need to really do much at all electrically.Quote:
Originally Posted by SXRguyinMA
Great work on the walls. I agree, they look much better. :up:
