Rust-King :D lol, great to see it coming along, keep it up BoB :up:.
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Rust-King :D lol, great to see it coming along, keep it up BoB :up:.
Dude, that looks amazing. Fantastic work as always mate. It is fitting together very well.
Dude, impressive gear search fu. How did you ever find that clock? It's perfect! I still can't get over how real the rust effect looks. Even close up it looks like rusted steel. Awesome, awesome work!
Thanks very much. I stumbled across that clock during some gear research. They have others also, which I plan to put to use. :whistler:
And yes the iron effect is almost perfect. I'm not entirely satisfied with the appearance of the green and blue highlights, they're too bright in places, but overall very happy. I think it's cool that I can apply that finish to anything. That ring around the gearset is plexi. The "rivets" on it are thumbtacks. :D That's real rust on those, I used Metal Effects rust activator and a MAPP gas torch to do them.
One word describes this mod. EPIC
I saw this while browsing Ponoko and immediately thought of you.
EDIT: He actually has some pretty cheap gear train sets... $12
looks great man.. loving it!
Update time! I'd really like to watercool this machine. With a good water-cooling setup the pump is inaudible, and as such I've always liked flow indicators. As usual, I prefer the mechanical variety, as opposed to digital or LED. The ones with a window and an impeller.
So, this machine will have a flow sight indicator on it, but I want to be able to see it from outside the machine, and since it won't have a window that put me in a quandary. These indicators are simple, water flow spins an impeller and you look at the impeller through a window. I had to figure out how to transfer that motion outside the case. I want to see motion, I don't want to see water.
I started with this:
Simple aluminum flow indicator I got from Thermaltake, $13 delivered to my door. I even came with three sizes of compression fittings.
The impeller rides on the little plastic spoke inside the plexi windows. To tranfer motion from the impeller to the outside of the indicator housing I decided to use magnets:
Cheap powerful neodymium magnets I got off of Ebay for a couple of dollars. These things are fun all by themselves.
I don't have the parts to watercool this case, so this is just a proof-of-concept model to make sure I can make it work before any serious building happens. I had to affix some of these magnets to the impeller, and in the final assembly that will be done with epoxy. For this test I used tape. :)
And here is the test assembly together with 1/2" fittings and the newly-modified impeller:
Without any actual water-cooling components, my test setup is crude but effective. I used a $7 fountain pump from Harbor Freight and some cheap tubing from Lowe's.
This will be going on the front panel of the case, through two sheets of 1/8" plexi and one sheet of 1/2" plywood. I built a test setup to match that and assembled a magnetic coupler to drive a shaft to turn a gear on the outside of the front of the case:
Got the indicator assembly clamped up and slid the test setup up to it to check the clearances. see the end of the shaft where it touches the plexi? Tiny point on the shaft, this thing is going to have to be damn near frictionless to work. In case any of you are wondering you can't buy mag-lev bearings this small.
So to the test. I am sorry to say that this took WAY longer than I thought it would. I had to go through a dozen configurations or more to find the one that worked. From three magnets on each impeller fin to two to three on just one fin, different combinations on the coupler gear, etc etc etc. But I got it!
Ha! Lots to do with this yet, obviously, but it works.
Awesome blue! Bet you were grinning when you finally got it to work.
Ingenious idea!
Nicely done. Now I see why you were asking about magnets in WC loops ;P