The Orb

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Only one more post:
Dankeschön FrooP (:

BTW: I made it to the frontpage of http://www.chinadiyer.com/ with my verry old Reactor CaseCon *YIPPIE*

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Thank you guys!

As I wrote yesterday, the only thing left to show are the final pics of the visor or what's left from the visor


- Disaster:
When I glued the stuff together, I noticed, that there was a tension in the plexiglas. Thats nothing special, even the manual from the plexi-glue writes about it. They also write, that one should temper the material for some hours and that this should release the tension.

So I put the visor in the oven, switched it on at 60 deg celsius (for bending plexi I used 90 deg) and went to my computer to see, what Google said on the time it needed.

Normally the oven (it's a little older) needs some time to heat up. But when I came back only FIVE minutes later, I saw the desaster :

All three layers are destroyed. Even my logo melted.

The visor must have been to big for the oven and so the top of it was to close to the heating. When I saw that two month of work just melted away I really needed a cigarette...

- Status:
So, thats the current status. That happened about one week ago. Since then I did not touch any tools. I am really struggling with myself if I start again or just pack the hardware I already have in a standard ATX case...
I think you can understand now, why I needed some encouraging words after my last post.

Hope you liked it so far (excluding this post),

Squelsh

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Hey everyone!

Thank you for your support. As I fear FrooP and Doesi coming to my place and slapping me ( ), I ordered a new plexiglass sphere today.
Seriously, you all animate me to go on with the Orb.

Unfortunately I have a diploma exam on Robotics in September and I sould really put more time in it. So, from now on this worklog comes in much smaller pieces till september. But I worked out some nice ideas for the automatic opening and closing of the visor and some other gimmics.

So, I hope you stay tuned. See you,
Squelsh

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All right! Back on track: Today my new plexi-sphere arrived. With a 7cm scratch on it. But I thougth thats not worth all the paperwork and shipping-time to get a new one. I have to polish the scratch out later.

An other thing I had been waiting on is finally ready. It's this little controller:
Mäusekino. Thats German and stands for "Cinema for mice" It's a display controller with some I/O functionality I plan to use for the motorisation.

That's it for today. Pictures will follow tomorrow. See you.

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Update time!
- Visor, the third (:

It's amazing, how big the speedup is, if you do something the third time. Within 6 hours I got almost all parts for the visor done! I saved the time that I needed for bending the plexi-spacers because this time I try something else. Also I could reuse the template for the smaller ones of the quarters.
Here are the pics from today:

The hemisphere as it arrived. I tried to capture the scratch, but the cam didn't focus right.

This time I was clever enough to cover it with tape:

That hurts: Sawing through former work... I cut stripes from the side of the visor that did not melt down. Those stripes will act as the spacers between the spheres. So I don't need to bend more plexibars. I can tell you, that it's not easy to make a straight cut through a spherical object
As with all plexi-work I used lots of oil so that it didn't get too hot.

Those are two of four stripes I made from the old visor:

At my last try I fitted all parts perfectly together and then glued them. This time I try something else: Glueing the parts together and then put them on the sanding machine and fit them all in one working step. I hope this leads to a better result with less work.

Some pics are missing here With my old template I marked and cut out the smaller one of the quarters. But as the template had been sized smaller I needed a new one for the bigger quarter:

With the jigsaw I made out a circle first and then cut it in halve. The pices attached to the old template gave me the right diameter for marking and cutting the bigger quarter.

Template with attached halves:

Temeplate inside the sphere:

All the plexi cutting was done in two hours of handwork with a normal manual saw *sweat*

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- The new hinges:
Last time I cut the circles for the hinges from 8mm thick plexi-sheets. I thought it would not be a problem to glue a flat piece of 5cm diameter to a sperical object with 40cm diameter as the gap between them was less than 1mm. As I recognized while disassembling this 1mm made a difference

So with some pieces of plexisphere left, the solution was obvious: Make the hinges from the leftovers:

I need 6 layers for one hinge so the old visor looks like swiss chese now.
But with a hole-saw the circles came out nice:

More handwork was needed for the innermost circles that may not have a hole in the middle. But with some filing nothing is impossible

The stacks are made up like this (from inside to outside):

1. Layer: Cirlce without hole as a cap.
2. Layer: Cirlce in packman style with one quarter left for the inner sphere
3. Layer: Cirlce with water duct
4. Layer: Cirlce with water duct
5. Layer: Cirlce in packman style with one quarter left for the outer sphere
6. Layer: Cirlce with hole for water connection

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- Glueing:

In the first glueing session I put together the two inner hinge cirlces so I can carve out the water duct in a next step.
Also I fixed the innermost caps.

This time everything has to work out! Wish me luck

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Thank you xRyokenx.
@ dgrmkrp: I still have not figured out, where to buy you "viscous cement" from page 3 But you were right at my plans on the swivel mechnism: I found some pivoting fittings in a watercooling webshop. I bought two different versions of them. But I have the same problem with both versions: The pivoting joints need to much force to turn. I know, this is a central problem with this casecon, and I don't have the perfect solution till now, but if all plans fail, I can go with two flexible tubes outside the case that can bend those needed 15 degrees. I rendered a still from the movie with blue tubes:

If I can find a working pivoting fitting, I omit the external tubes and put the hinges inside the case.

Another goodie I did not mention till now is my Logitech Quickcam Sphere Cou can see it in the renderings on the first page. I have to paint it in Orb colours but simply the geometry makes it the perfect addon to the case. The cam is sold with a 20cm long extension and can turn it's eye 180 degrees in two axes.

Today I glued the next parts and worked on the new circles for the hinges, pics will follow tomorrow. See you soon.

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Thanx guys!
@Crazy Buddhist: It took me three month to find those spheres. The information you want is not cheap...
Just kiddin. You can get the acryllic hemispheres at Deko Woerner in Germany. Don't know, if they ship this stuff in the world.
The gardenlamp came from the designer-lamp dealer Skapetze. They sell this stuff at eBay.
@elbarto: Thanx for you know what 3D-Modeling for fun since 1990, so this one was an easy one.

Here comes the update, I wanted to do two days ago but the world was against me...

-Hinges again:
I decided not to hide the water supply inside the case. So the hinges don't have to rotate as the tubes can compensate the movement.
The hinges itself will work pretty simple: I'm going to cut a big hole in the outer hemisphere in wich a plexi-cylinder can rotate. The visor is a little smaller than the rest of the sphere so it can rotate inside.
Today I started with the cylinders that will be glued right and left to the visor and contain the ellbow fittings. Because I don't have an cylider, I needed more circles:

Two of them will be glued together so they needed to be the same diameter. Unfortunately the cicles I cut out with the hole-saw aren't perfect. So I put a screw though and rotated them in the drilling machine. So I could form them with a file:

The ellbows fittings will be screwed into the circles and then be covered by the rings:

This will become clear through the next updates in some days

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-Baseplate:
Today I got some nice material:

It's stuff called "Tischlerplatte" in Germany. It's a verry hard wooden plate, made of 20 layeres of different wood.

The piece is 45*30cm and this will be my new circle for the baseplate. As I wrote some posts ago, I messed up the last one. Also the pressboard I used before wasn't the best material to mount the spehre on, because it shivers when you turn screws in.