The Orb

[|NQ|Squelsh]

Here comes a quick update on the front panel and the foot.

This is the panel, quickly taped together:

Yesterday I found a good way to move the flap with a verry old servo-motor:

Two vids of the opening and closing. The stops in the motion are my fault because I switched the motor only in small intervalls.
From outside:

From the inside:


My USB-Cabeling arrived yesterday and I bought some 3mm red LEDs for the feet.

Here is the stuff built in:
Outline of the USB-Connector on one of the foot parts:

I carved out this outline so that half of the connector fits in, then repeated the process on the other wooden part.

Now I can put the parts together again and the USB-Connector is inbetween.

I also continued with my illuminated logo on the outside of the foot:
Here is the cabeling of two LEDs inside

And the effect with plexiglas on the outside:

And, to give you an impression of the whole thing:

This is the lower body. One final foot and the prototype foot together with the lower hemisphere

Today I try to add some sensor-switches to the front panel and perhaps continue with the inside of the upper sphere. See you soon!

[|NQ|Squelsh]

Thank you Psychowit!

Sorry for the long time without updates. I had lots of businesswork to do and I spent far too much time searching illuminated switches for the front panel... I still can't believe that such lousy switches cost 8 Euros (and I dont speak of those stainless steel wonders) So finally I bought four normal push-button-like switches and LED reflectors (which were still much to expensive ) at a local store:

On the right you can see a micro-switch that will be used for the motorization of the panel.

But now to the work I managed to:
- Foot:
I could not watch the ugly pressboard anymore so I painted the foot with primer.

- Logo:
Also the logo wasnt satifying. It's made of plexiglas and is illuminated by red LED. But when the light is off, the milky white plexi doesn't fit into Orbs red and black colour scheme. So I spray-painted one side of the logo in red.

Unfortunatly I mixed up the sides and painted the front of one of the pieces... But that doesn't matter because I can use the piece on the mirrored left foot
Now the logo is red, with and without light:

- Switchpanel:
So, here is my panel. Nothing special. Four switches with four LEDs.

I still need the approximation switch that will trigger the opening and closing... Any ideas what to buy?

- Backpanel + inner casing:
I don't have photos yet but I started work on the backside and the inner parts of the upper hemisphere.

- Preview:
And finally two more pics of the whole thing. I added one hose to the visor and I think I will have to add some enforcement to make it more eye-catching. Perhaps I also add some kind of mounting so the hinge doesn't has to carry all the weight.

Well, thats all. I hope I can work some more on the weekend.

[|NQ|Squelsh]

Hey TBCS,
it's time for an update
I made a lot of progress on many parts in the past two days. So here are some pics (unfortunately only mobilephone-pics).

- Switchpanel:
First a pic of the switches and LEDs in place

And the panel mounted in the sphere:

Then with a top layer to add some stiffness:

Filed bondo:

Final result with four more LEDs in the shortened top-layer to illuminate the buttons:

I think the result is quite ok I will shoot better pics with a cam the next days.


- Feet:
I needed some pieces of a sphere so I cut Orbs "desktop" foot in form. Thats what came out:

While dremeling the shape I got this funny stuff:

I also started with filler on the regular foot:

The pics of the upper shpere will come in some minutes in another post...

[|NQ|Squelsh]

Now to the upper hemisphere:
I had the problem that the visor lost its circular form while glueing the layers. Because of the oval visor the upper hemisphere did not fit to the perfect round lower hemisphere.
In this pic you see the ugly gap between the two hemispheres:

I thought about that problem a long time and the only solution that came to my mind was this:

With the hemisphere cut in half I could now fit it to a better form by adding a new gap on the top :

But this new gap can be closed in a more elegant way with a piece of th plexiglas sphere that will be illuminated later:

Here are some detail pics of the pices that close the gap. I will explain my plans for that later.

And my verry special way to glue the pieces toghether:

Believe me, it's not easy to glue round pieces
I hope this connection is stable enough. I will find that out tomorrow when the glue is hard.

See you soon!

[|NQ|Squelsh]

Hey p0Pe, I totally agree. I really have to get me some green color to flood the visor.
Here is a little X-Mas Update:

I made new clamps for the switchpanel.

This is the cabeling of the switchpanel. Little fiddly to solder...

This is a mounting bracket for a 6pin connector. You can see it in place in the next pic.

Thats the cabeling with connector:

And the micro-switches that sense if the switchpanel reached its endpositions:

And finally the finished panel, ready to connect to the electronics:

I soldered a circuit that stops the panel in the endposition until you invert the motor voltage.

Thats it for today. I hope I can work more on the Orb during the next days.
Thanks for reading. Comments are allways welcome
I wish all the modders here at TBCS a Merry Christmas!

Squelsh

[|NQ|Squelsh]

Hey sabooya, you get your update This is my work from yesterday.

I could not find any good mesh for a good price, so I killed an old beatbox (:

The mesh is big enough for my needs. But that has to wait some days.

I still try to assemble the parts that are needed for a good picture to send to some sponsors. So I started a new version of the feet:

Produced lots of saw mill waste:

And a nice rounded edge that only needs little polishing:

I can't do one kind of work for a longer time, so I hopped back to the switchpanel and finished the microswitches and the cabeling:

From that I went on to the HDD activity light. That's a piece of plexiglas with a red and blue LED that alternate when HDD is active. Same thing will be done for DVD activity on the other side of the baseplate.

Next toppic, the DVD-bay-cover:
Taped it against sawdust, then drilled mounting holes:

The cover is made of 3 layers of wood that are shaped so they fit the baseplate. With a saw I caved the wood to make space for two LEDs:

Those LEDs will illuminate an 1mm gap around the DVD-bay-cover when the bay is closed.

Last thing was the upper sphere. The glued pieces:

I don't have much spherical plastic left, so I had to work with lots of small parts:

Testfit:

And why did I all this stuff Because I wanted to illuminate it

That light-string will be replaced by a red one and be covered by plexiglas.
I think I can go on with that work tomorrow.

Hope you all had a nice X-Mas. See you soon,
Squelsh

[|NQ|Squelsh]

Yippie! Thanx Helix, thats the first +REP since weeks

Yesterday I borrowed a GeForce 8800 GTS 512 from a friend to see, if the card fits into the Orb. Because when I drew the plans I calculated with the size of an ATI Radeon card which is MUCH smaller. I really feared that this monster would not fit inside the sphere.
Result: NO chance to put that card inside with the original heatsink
But relief: With the watercooling block I only have to put the motherboard about 3 mm to the backside so that the visor closes correctly!

With the card in my hands I played CRYSIS much to long and did not much modding yesterday. Great game I only finished the feet illumination (sorry, no pics yet)
and the cover for the backside. You must imagine it painted. With this dirty white it looks poor.

[|NQ|Squelsh]

I need your comments on this update:
I went on with some parts for the inside of the Orb. For that I bended some plastic parts with the oven:

On my first try the clamps made ugly marks:

But the next two tries went all right and are ready for a cutting. The logo is from the NetQuarter.org club. We organize LAN Parties in Germany.

Thats the unfolded mesh from the beatbox I disassembled:

And here I need your comments: Those are tests of three different meshes I can use. What do you think, which one looks better? (I would paint the metal one in black if I use it).

1. Beatbox mesh:

2. Finest mesh:

3. Coarse mesh:

Which one should I use? The one from the beatbox looks cool but it may be too coarse for that small cutouts...

[|NQ|Squelsh]

Thanx p0Pe This shows me once again that the stuff that is not planed from the beginning is often the best! The glowwire was not in the original plan...

Thanx Matt. I think, you subscribed at the right time. These days the Orb already looks like a sphere and is not only bits and pieces

So, here is a short update:
Today I gave the final shape to the inner casing so it fits into the upper sphere. For that I had to change my point of view every minute to watch fitting from the front and then mark the material to cut from the back of the Orb. That really annoyed me! Then I remembered some rotating plates from my moms kitchen. Normaly we use them to serve cheese. But now I found their true purpose


After some filing I could glue the parts together. But before I made a test with three different types of glue:

I went for my plexiglas glue.

In this comparison pic you can see that the new plastic parts are a little bigger than the wooden parts. Thats because of the new upper sphere design with the glowwire enlargement.

I only had time for one more thing today: I added another layer of bondo onto the one Orb-Foot. So tomorrow it's time for sanding and painting the foot and the inner casing parts

See ya,
Squelsh

[|NQ|Squelsh]

"Good news, everyone!" (Hubert J. Farnsworth)
No, in deed, good news!

I did a little photo session last night
And I don't want to hide the results from you! So here are the Top10 I got:

You have to imagine this with a lot more RED water and a RED and BLACK Fatal1ty MoBo inside! And of course the sphere needs a paint job :p

Hope you like it!