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uh oh...now I'm a little worried...I'm expecting to use somewhere around 5 feet of it, although I'm kinda wishing I'd requested 10 feet. oh well, live and learn. I always have the green stuff if I run out of the clear.Quote:
Originally Posted by x88x
WOO HOO!! stuff from Danger Den just arrived:
I love voiding warranties 5 minutes after I get the item...
And the slim fans I ordered from PerformancePCs:
They're REALLY thin, 1.2cm instead of 2.5cm:
That's it for now...I'm realizing it's going to take all weekend to get this set up...
I posted this over in the PC cases/cooling part of the forum, but then thought it might have a better chance of being seen and answered here:
Does it completely defeat the purpose of 24-hour leak testing to drain the setup after the test so I can detach the waterblocks to make them easier to install on the motherboard/video card? Or is leak testing primarily to make sure the fittings and tubing all..well...fit, and don't leak?
I'm just thinking that it'll be awkward to try and put everything together if it's all connected by various hoses which restrict relative motion.
I consider myself a newbie at this; I once had another watercooling setup, but that was around 6 or 7 years ago, and I don't recall much from it.
I answered it in the other location
Made some progress yesterday, although it doesn't really feel like it. I decided to use the fans pictured above to clamp the aluminum radiator mount to the bottom of the radiator. Works pretty well, and suddenly I don't have to worry about screwholes lining up. I also cut another chunk out of the inside of the top so it'd fit around the radiator. The following photos were taken when I put the top over the radiator and started experimenting with reservoir placement...and so began my troubles.
The mounts that they came with would work for just one, but not mounting both side by side like I wanted. I first tried using 1" or 1.5" pine stakes and a 2" hole saw (the res diameter is 2"). problem was that the hole saw is bigger than the stakes, so the teeth kept catching on the side of the stake and stopping the saw. when it didn't stop the saw, then the wood just split. And luckily it was on the very first cut, before the teeth got dirty, that the saw jumped off the stake and nicked a finger. which then hurt like hell the rest of the day. Earlier in the day I somehow managed to slice another finger as I attempted to spin one of the fan blades to make sure it spun without hitting anything...still not sure exactly what happened there, but the fan thankfully was fine (spoken like a true modder, eh?)
2 bandaids later, I got the bright idea to modify the acrylic mounts the reservoirs came with. I took the top portions of each, stuck them around the outside of each reservoir, and ran 5" screws to connect and tighten them together. I was then going to use 2 hinges, whose holes were miraculously spaced exactly correctly, to mount it to the radiator. Only problem...the mounts were about 1.5 centimeters too tall. And I can't lower the rad any more or it'll hit the video card waterblock. So by this point I was getting rather irritated, and my girlfriend suggested I drill holes through the acrylic lower down, and cut off the parts that stuck up too high. Would have worked if I'd had a drill press. As it was, I shattered 2 of the pieces and got a drill bit stuck in a 3rd - the acrylic melted around it and I didn't pull it out in time.
I finally decided then to work with what I knew best - fiberboard, wood dowel, and a couple hinges. I know it's not the prettiest thing, but it works :) You'll see the bottom part of the new mount in the last picture. It's hard to see, but I used a hinge and existing screws on each end of the reservoirs to screw them to each other, so they won't move relative to each other, and the mount will then keep them on top of the rad. Now all I need to do is mount the pump (visible on the right side of 4th photo; the one on the left side is also a real pump that I'll see if I can make a copy of and use it for looks...and save the real pump for a future project), add the tubes, put the waterblocks on, fill it and leak test it.
Looks good, I like it. The custom res mounts fit in better with the rest of the case anyways, imo. ;)
yeah, I think I agree with you. I keep reminding myself it'll look better once I paint it and take care of all the rough edges and such, but that's still a ways off. Tonight I hope to get the loop running - not much more to do to make that happen!Quote:
Originally Posted by x88x
HUGE thank you to Danger Den and Outoftheboxmods.com for making this (and the last several) post possible!
So I got nearly done with the loop last night. Turns out there was a bit more construction left to do than I thought. Here's what I accomplished:
drilled screwholes in the aluminum radiator support bars for mounting the bars and mounting the pump
painted support bars black
finished reservoir mount and painted it black
mounted reservoirs and pump to radiator
discovered that using a large drill bit on a hole drilled in metal is a great way to deburr the hole
mounted the pump on the wrong side :facepalm: and had to fix it this morning, which is why in the last couple pics the pump is on the other side compared to the first several. Anyone want to take a stab at why it's better for it to be on the other side? :) you might be able to figure it out from previous photos, but I'm not sure the answer is real obvious unless you see it in person.... hint - it doesn't have anything *directly* to do with the PSU that it was right over...but indirectly. (cue maniacal laughter here ;) )
And finally, the results of my labors! Tonight I'll connect the hoses, put the waterblocks on the GPU and CPU (the pics below still show the standard heatsinks I have on 'em), fill and then start leak testing this thing. I'm rather happy with how the radiator/reservoirs look though, it's unique and kinda cool :P
side note - the Danger Den logo fan grille won't really be visible until the central removeable roof piece is pulled off. But then it's quite obvious, kind of a nice semi-hidden bit of branding. I'd wanted it to be visible through the main air vent in the roof, but as you can see above the reservoirs completely cover both those mounting spots.
I'm gonna guess the new pump placement made it easier to come down to hit the various blocks?
Looking at it set up now, I had a thought. For a fill point, you could just turn it on end with the end that that pump is on at the bottom, and use the plugged holes at the 'top' of the reservoirs.
Looks great! ..though, I would replace the hinge holding the two res' together with somethings else if I were you... :whistler:
It looks awesome m8, looks like a new type of snow walker :) sometimes with themed cases the insides look a bit of a nightmare to work with but this is looking great artoo +rep for brilliant insides & outside :).
Nice guess! That was a thought that occurred to me around 1am this morning, before I realized I had to move the pump for a different reason. Still, hose locating will be easier with this pump placement, definitely. what's funny is I knew the reason it had to be on that side a long time ago, then forgot and thought, gee it'd be nice to have it on the side that faces out so you can open the panel and see it...and that thought carried me through til early this morning when I remembered why it had to be on the other side. :) Here's a further hint - take a look at the 5th and 6th photos on page 14...and remember the top part of the case has to go straight up and down when I put it on the base.Quote:
Originally Posted by x88x
As for the hinge...yeah. It was one I pulled out of somewhere else in the case when making room for the rad and res's. I need to get over to the hardware store and find something else. The hinge was all I had in a pinch. And for filling, the res mount is loosely held on with a couple screws, so I can pretty easily pull it loose, stand it up and use those 2 top fill holes on them. :)
Thanks man! I agree, the rad, res's, and mount do rather resemble some kind of freaky insect thing. their placement will make swapping out cards something of a pain, but on the other hand it only blocks the major stuff, which if I were to change it would entail draining the WC loop and going to lots of trouble anyway. So really, it's not that bad. I'll keep telling myself that, maybe I'll start to believe it LOL.Quote:
Originally Posted by Waynio
Ah, ok, that makes it a lot more convenient, especially with a case that big. Oooh, you should put the whole res mount on hinges so you can just undo two screws, then tilt both up on a hinged arm. :twisted: On the plus side, it would mean you won't have to hold them in place while you fill the loop (a process that at least for me always takes a lot longer than I expect it to).Quote:
Originally Posted by artoodeeto
Now THAT's a good idea :) Something like that had crossed my mind before, but something in the way you phrased it made a visual sorta click in my head. I'll be headed over to the hardware store after work, I know exactly how I'm going to do that. I just hope that once the tubes are on there, they won't get in the way of the hinging mechanism.Quote:
Originally Posted by x88x
Thanks to X88X's suggestion, this is what I did last night:
the basic idea...
A further mock-up:
My new piece of flatbar doesn’t stand a chance! Interesting side note – I discovered that the titanium coated drill bits really DO make a difference when drilling metal. Who knew? Man…wish I had a workbench. The towel is to minimize noise transfer to the apartment below.
You’ve heard of donut holes? Well, this is the same idea, just aluminum.
Using a large drill bit to debur the hole works quite well! The metal bar is too thin to countersink, so I only drilled enough to debur.
These little guys will replace the hinges holding the 2 res’s together. Unfortunately I couldn’t get small enough flat braces, so I had to get the corner brace version. I started hacksawing one apart last night, but it was too noisy so I’ll tackle it when I get home tonight.
Priming the new bars.
And after a coat of black paint:
The finished hinging system:
What’s that you say? Doesn’t look much different than before? Well, how about THIS little trick:
Now, once I get the tubes on there it won’t lift up quite that far, so I’m going to, at least for the moment, use one of the 20 some-odd 5” long screws I bought and prop this assembly up like a car hood for filling.
Just one final step. I bought some thin foam rubber to put between the pump and metal bars to minimize vibrational noise. I needed about 8 square inches, if that. I bought a square foot of the stuff. So I used a little of the extra. Had to scrape some of my pretty paint job off the bottom of the bars…
And then superglued the foam rubber onto the bottoms of each bar, to keep them from scratching up the radiator:
That’s it for now…tonight’s task list is cut down the corner braces so I can replace the ugly hinges on the res’s, install the waterblocks, install the tubing, fill it all, and leak test…
BTW – the reason I had to move the pump - I have that internal "engine room" whose floor I cut a hole in to show the PSU when the side cutaway flap is open. But with the pump over the PSU, I would have had to cut away the entire lower floor, most of a wall, and the upper floor so I could lower the top of the model down onto the base. On the other side I only have to cut out part of an upper floor to make room for the pump, since there is no lower section. I didn't do a lower room there because the boxed PSU *used* to be on that side, and now that the outside of the model is done the last thing I'm going to do is cut another hole in it, even though I do have space for a matching engine room now.
This is what I originally saw when I looked at the watercooling rack...
...though I do see how it could look like a modified AT-AT too. Love the creativity and it's great to see Star Wars lovingly rendered in a mod!Quote:
Keep up the great work!
Hahahaha, nice. :D
Great work on the hinge; glad I could provide inspiration. :D
Last night was once again busy. Let’s get started, shall we?
First up – replacing those pesky hinges holding the res’s together. Remember that corner brace? Here it is, cut down to size, painted black, and screwed onto the reservoir. Almost can’t tell it’s there:
Next up – there’s 3 fans. But I only have one plug on my Zalman fan speed controller. I don’t want to snip the fans’ actual wires, so I’m going to solder 3 connectors together and then to a single plug:
The patient:
Let’s get those heatsinks off!
Most of the thermal paste stuck to the heatsink, but I still had to scrape some off.
Mistakenly thought I had to pull everything apart (didn’t realize the backplate under the CPU had screw threads embedded in it):
Added the mounting rods. That little vertical fan came with the motherboard and is specifically intended for use when a waterblock is on the CPU. I used duplicates of that fan on the outside of the case…and now I’m real glad I didn’t alter the original!
Never has a library card been more useful! Well, an LA County one at least (the fiction selection at the local library is abysmal)…let’s start scraping off the old thermal paste and smoothing out the new!
And adding the CPU waterblock:
My GTX285 after cleaning off dust, thermal grease, etc:
Copper + shiny = :D
Scrape scrape scrape…
Nice and smooth! Mostly…
The installed waterblocks:
Now it’s time to move on to the tubing! 3/8”ID clear tygon tubing. I started with 6 feet. I think I had maybe 20 inches left over by the time I was done, about what I expected.
Oh man…I KNEW this fit was gonna be close, but wowee that’s pushing it! Amazingly the fan above the GPU block DOES spin freely. A millimeter lower and it wouldn’t…
What I came up with to prop up the res’s as high as they can go (I will have to pull them off the hinge arm to finish filling them up though, so the hinge idea mostly worked). It’s a 1.25” screw, nut, corner brace, and another 1.25” screw.
Now for the FUN part:
When I contacted Danger Den about the sponsorship, I told them I’d like a second pump but as it was just for looks, it didn’t need to be functional. When I got the pump, it looked brand new, and was a newer version of the other one I’d gotten from Outoftheboxmods, so I decided to use it. I put the acrylic top on last week, tightened it, and then today started filling the system with coolant. Apparently either I tightened the top too much or Danger Den really did send me a nonfunctioning pump. When I turned on the power….nothing. :eek: I grabbed the other pump, tried to plug it in, and discovered that it had the wrong gender plug attached…I was getting irritated now, not to mention late for work. So I popped that plug off (luckily it wasn’t soldered), and stuck the black and yellow wires into the available molex connector. Voila! A working pump! But…as I’d partially filled the loop, I had to drain it to switch pumps. So, switched the plugs on the ends of the res’s with extra compression fittings, grabbed the extra bit of clear tubing, snipped off a short piece of the green tubing that I didn’t use, ran the clear tubing to the coolant bottle and shoved the nozzle of my air compressor hose into the green tube. After a minute or two I’d drained it enough to switch pumps:
Now for the second embarrassing part…so these acrylic tops for the pumps have a top opening as well. The one from Outoftheboxmods had been used as a T-line before, so it had 3 compression fittings on it. The one from Danger Den had 2 fittings a plug. I was distracted enough that I didn’t unscrew the plug from the nonfunctional DD pump and so the functioning pump had a hole in the top. When I tilted the res’s back up to resume filling….burble burble SPLASH. Good thing I moved the pump so it wasn’t over the PSU!! The mess was easily mopped up, thankfully didn’t get on the carpet. I screwed the plug into the top, tilted the res’s, and refilled.
It’s mostly full now, full enough to leave it running for leak testing purposes. I’ll finish filling it tonight, hopefully most of the miniscule air bubbles will be in the two res’s by then and not trapped in the tubing.
The stains on the paper towel are from the top plugs on one of the res’s not being quite tight enough. The system itself isn’t leaking at all now.
Sometime tomorrow I’ll plug the power back into the mainboard, and I’ll have a functioning water cooled sandcrawler. :P
Don't feel too bad, we all do stupid stuff our first time. ;) It's a good thing that coolant missed your carpet though; that stuff leaves nasty stains.
After about 30 hours of leak testing (mainly because I just left it running and didn’t have time before this evening to get back to it) the water cooled sandcrawler is fully functional!
I’m using speedfan to view temps.The GTX285 GPU seems stable at around 50C, which is a good deal cooler than the 70-ish C it used to run at. The CPU…grrr. Seems to be right around 40C, haven’t tried any games yet but the highest it spiked so far is 47C when launching photoshop (subsequent launches of it spiked to 43C). I’m thinking it’s warmer because I have it on the same loop as the GPU, which gets pretty hot. I’m not completely sure what’s what though – I’m assuming Core is the CPU; GPU is the only one definitively labeled.
What made it harder than just pulling the paperclip off the PSU m/b plug and hooking all the power plugs back up was that the pump, as you might recall, had the wrong gender plug on it. So I had pulled that plug off and jammed the exposed wires into the only molex connector in the computer, the one I’d been using to power the lights. I didn’t have a pass-through molex connector, and I was going to use an extension plug set and wire the pump into the middle of those wires, but I didn’t really want it drawing current from the same connection used for the lights…they’re dim enough as it is.
Just to complicate things, as you can see in the next couple photos, it’s a hellish wiring mess back there:
I ended up using what I think was a PCI-E video card power plug-to-molex adapter, which wasn’t wired quite right but I figured out what was what and soldered the pump’s wires to an extra molex plug accordingly. I then had to lift the radiator assembly up and scoot it over so I could lift the back end of the motherboard up and stick the new power plug for the pump into the modular set of power plugs for the PSU…I’d meant to mount it slightly behind the mobo but it ended up underneath instead. Not really a problem til now, but it wasn’t too hard.
Amazingly, I used less than 1 bottle of coolant. I figured with two 2” diam x 7” long reservoirs, a triple 120mm fan radiator, two waterblocks and nearly 5 feet of tubing, that would take slightly more than a liter. But nope. Slightly less.
My dual Danger Den RAD-Reservoirs. I highly recommend these – they’re really nice looking res’s, big, and extremely sturdily built. There’s a few air bubbles kicking around in there, but I can live with them. It’s either that or top them off to the point that coolant is spilling out. I had to use an eyedropper to top off the 2 res’s while holding them vertically with the other hand.
The view under the rad, looking at the back of the video card.
These hoses’ location has me a little nervous about putting the top of the model back on. I think I’ll try and zip-tie the furthest one out to something to rein it in a bit – it looks to me like where it is now, it’ll block the top from going all the way down onto the base.
Not a lot of clearance under there, but just enough. Those low profile fans go a max of 1600 rpm, and I have them on a speed control knob. Not sure what the low speed is.
I’m also thinking about sticking a UV cathode in there somewhere – the coolant is the black/blue Feser, which should look neat if I can figure out a spot to mount the cathode…
Looks great. You might want to also secure those PCIe power leads to something, just to make sure they don't flex into the path of the fan.
I'm not sure if it's normal, but I had the same thing happen with my CPU temps; GPU temps dropped 30-40C, but CPU temps went up ~5-10C. I was worried at first, but as you're seeing, the temp delta is nothing compared to air cooling. Yeah, it might idle at 50C, but if the max it ever hits is 57C, I can live with it. :D
Good idea on the PCI-E cables - I'll figure something out. I just tried running Far Cry 2 with all the detail settings up all the way (although FSAA was only at 2X rather than 8X), and my Core temp didn't really change, while the GPU temp topped out at ~58C. Not bad at all, considering for both that's still a bit cooler than their air-cooled idle temps. :DQuote:
Originally Posted by x88x
Got the top back on last night! It took some doing, but now all that’s left is to build the model part of the interior. I’ve got a few cool things planned, so stay tuned :)
I had to solder in 2 new smaller red LEDs in place of a large broken one. I somehow managed to kill it in my attempts to solder it in, spacing in there was really tight and awkward. The new lights work great, and I kept the old one hanging down into the lower room as I figured it would look interesting. I also screwed in the original top of one of the pumps to the upper floor in the same spot as the new lights, it’s the beginnings of “machinery” up there and at least sort of matches the pump on the other side.
I had to cut out the upper floor in the back right of this photo, to make room for the pump.
View from the floor into the interior. I had it on TV trays so I could lay on the floor and work on the underside.
This is blurry, but it’s the upper front roof. I took this to show the couple of lights there.
This week I received 3 more slim fans in the mail. I got them installed, and at least with the top off the case they seem to have lowered the idle temp about 10C for the CPU and about 15-20C for the GPU. I have another location to add a fan to pull air into the case; with the top on the CPU seems to idle around 40C even with the new fans (before it was 45-48C), but with the top off its idle is more like 30-35C. The GPU is down to 45C from 60C, so that's a big improvement. Sadly that nifty hinge mechanism I came up with to lift the reservoirs had to go for there to be enough vertical space for the new fans.
Back to the temps – with the top on the CPU got up to 50C on idle after 2 or 3 hours, but I strongly began suspecting that much of the hot air from the radiator wasn’t making it out the top of the case. Instead, I think it was being deflected back down, where it was getting sucked back into the fans via cutouts I’d done to either side of the radiator long before I even thought about getting a radiator. To try and solve this issue, and a highly irritating loud rattle from the res’s sitting on one of the new fans and pushing its grille into the blades, I did the following:
I have a whole pad of Bristol board and some extra 1/8” foam rubber sheet, so I sliced them up and glued them to the underside of the radiator mounting arms:
As you can see in the last couple photos, the foam rubber effectively stops up the holes on each side of the rad, mostly preventing (I hope) hot air from getting back down under the fans, but because I attached it to the rad mounting arms, there’s no weight at all from the top resting on the foam parts. I’m in the process of leaving it running for awhile to see what the temps do.
*EDIT* - idle seems stable at 40C for the CPU and 48C for the GPU. Not ideal, so I may stick one more fan in there to pull air in which should help somewhat. Water cooling system with 10 fans :facepalm: seems excessive but unfortunately necessary...
Now I had to solve the problem of the res’s weight resting on one of the fan grilles. After several abortive attempts this is what I came up with:
And with the top back on:
Finally, proof that I really did run out of vertical space:
The res’s are pushing up that bit of roof…not sure how I’m going to solve that little issue yet but I’ll think of something. It’ll probably involve sanding down the wood support block pictured earlier, so its angled slightly or just shorter. I could also possibly pull off a small piece of fiberboard glued on the underside of that part of the roof…we’ll see.
man, this thing is a behemoth. lol I wish my monitor at work wasn't so dark so I could make out all the details in these new images. stupid old CRT monitors. lol
so I realized I forgot to hang one additional fan (I just KNEW i'd find a use for at least one of the ones from outoftheboxmods if I tried hard enough LOL) - this one is hanging from a couple extra brackets I had under the front of the radiator, and is intended to force air from outside the case directly under the radiator. We'll see if it actually makes a difference, it could just be that because of where everything is in the case, and what I have room for, 40C idle is the best CPU temp I'll get....but hey. At least the GPU is running 15C cooler than before (46C now instead of between 50 and 60).
oooh....blue glow.... :) well...I don't *really* want it glowing blue in there, but I'll probably make some sort of opening for the fan to make it look like some piece of machinery that droids would fear (melt down chamber perhaps)
I played Far Cry 2 for a couple hours yesterday as sort of a stress test - CPU got to 50C and the GPU ran at 60C. They pretty much didn't budge from those temps the entire time I was playing, and it was a pretty warm day. So I guess my temps are a tad high, but I've done everything I can do and they *are* lower than they were at first by about 10C on average.
In the next few days, I'll be adding one more goodie to the computer area for added coolness (this kind 8) not temperature), adding a couple 100 ohm resistors to my external fans to slow them way down (decided that's easier and gets them slower than trying to run a line up from a 3.3V connection), and then it's on to the design of the interior! I'll need advice from y'all on parts, more on that when I get some things measured and can post concept drawings...
ok guys...final step (I think/hope) as far as adding or changing stuff to the computer portion of this build - I added resistors on the two external cosmetic fans to slow them down (took the voltage from 12V down to about 4V...they still make a little noise but WAY quieter than before; they don't look any different so no pics of them), and I added....UV LEDs! 4 of them. I had high hopes, but unfortunately they're a little more directional than I'd hoped. I suppose I can always get a UV cold cathode if I really want to. But not at the moment...
soldering is SUCH fun, especially when you have all that wonderful smoke blowing back in your face. Eh well...it'll just make me more interesting to be around in the future :D
2 of the LED's went into the pumps acrylic top, so those were easy. It took me awhile to figure out a way to mount the other 2 where I wanted them, and angled how I wanted them. I used a couple of metal brackets that had previously held a fan in place. they work quite well holding the LEDs. I did glue the LEDs a bit, but it’s not holding very well. I think now that the wires are soldered in those will actually hold the LEDs in place.
There’s a fair bit more purplish glow than what shows up in the photos, so all in all I’m happy with it for now. The pump especially looks cool, I just wish I could have put it on the side that faces my desk instead of the far side, where I can’t really see it. Oh well. Someday I’ll have the space to have it pulled out from the wall so people can walk all the way around it.
Looks good. I see what you mean about the LEDs being too directional though...
I've found that a case fan with a scotchbrite pad zip-tied onto the exhaust side works wonders for that. I have an 80mm fan secured to a block of wood that I use; just hook it up to a 12V (or whatever) power source, and it pulls the smoke right away, and catches it in the scotchbrite pad.Quote:
Originally Posted by artoodeeto
To reduce the directionality of leds lightly sand them to diffuse the light. It works kind of like etching plexi. I've done it to some fan leds before to get the light more spred out on the blades. Other than that looking awesome. :up:
That, sir, is an outstanding idea! I even have a bunch of extra fans lying around.Quote:
Originally Posted by x88x
Another good idea! I remember seeing something to that effect once, but I'd entirely forgotten about it. Although what I remember reading recommended cutting the end of the LED so its end is flat instead of rounded; what you're suggesting sounds like I'm just lightly sanding the whole thing with fine grit?Quote:
Originally Posted by msmrx57
Man...hard for me to believe that the outside of the model and the computer itself are basically done now. It's been in a constant state of change for 3 years (almost to the day, I started April 30, 2007). And of the first two I built, I had the original for 2 years before starting the 2nd, and I kept the 2nd for about 8 months before starting this one. :) This one's gonna last though...and soon, it'll be on to the inside of the model.
I want to run a few conveyor belts in there, and am thinking of three 10rpm DC motors (one per belt) so they move nice and slow. But...I need the wheels their shafts will attach to and actually run the belts to be small, like under 1cm diameter. Anyone know of a good source for that kind of stuff? and a good wheel/belt combination? I have yet to get over to the local hobby store, so they might have something. I also want to do a hanging conveyor with trays dangling down...I *think* I know how I'm going to do that but any suggestions are welcome and appreciated!
Maybe tonight or this weekend, I'll take some pics of this thing from the same angles as I did my previous cases, and post some comparison shots for y'all :)
For the wheels for the conveyor belts, I would look at flanged pulleys or gears like so:
http://www.brewertensioner.com/fbfpcastiron.html
Obviously these are all too big, but that's the general idea. I know I've seen tiny plastic flanged gears, but I can't seem to find any online. Worst case (or best, depending), maybe find someone with a lathe that might be willing to make you some?
Model tank track wheels?Quote:
Originally Posted by artoodeeto
small lego gears and chains?
16t gear is the smallest that will take the chain, 2 gears on RH side
and these links for a conveyor? (on left)
thanks guys! I'll look at this in more detail on Sunday (going to be out of town the next couple days). If anyone else has any ideas in the meantime, feel free to toss out suggestions! My modus operandi on this has been spend all kinds of time and $$ figuring out all the ways that my ideas WON'T work LOL :D I'd like to break that streak...
Here's the promised comparison shots. I didn't have similar photos of all 3 in every instance; but for each set I put the original one first, then the 2nd, then the 3rd.
All shots of the 3rd crawler were taken today, April 26 2010. All photos of the second crawler were taken August 3, 2006. All photos of the original crawler were taken February 3, 2002.
I looked through my photos of the two older ones, and tried to duplicate the angles when I took the photos of the 3rd one. The photos of the 1st are a bit grainy (didn't have a good camera back then), the 2nd is the one totally lacking detail, and by this point in the log you'll know which one is the 3rd :). Enjoy!
Nice. It's cool seeing a direct comparison like that; I think the most striking improvement is in in the rear engine section. :D
yeah, that's definitely the most-changed area in appearance. Other, more subtle, things to look at are the angles of the sides (they're very slanted on the earlier ones, and straighter on the new one), number of EXTERIOR visible lights (9 in the first one, 12 in the second, and 35 in the 3rd, 20 of which are in the cockpit; the 3rd has 150 lights overall), total lack of interior cockpit detail on the first two, total lack of logical panel placement on the sides/top of the first two, super messy computer in the first two, etc etc. Incidentally, in that last pic, the droid suction tube was re-used from the 2nd model... :)
^ What x88x said :), Great stuff artoo :up:.
that actually might be the way to go....cheap and it's lego! I like the way the track looks too, I'll have to check out what sizes are available.Quote:
Originally Posted by SXRguyinMA
thanks guys! and just wait til I do the model building on the inside...it's gonna get to a whole new level of awesome :DQuote:
Originally Posted by Waynio
:banana: I look forward to that :D :up:.
