Project - Air Cube v2

[msmrx57]

this should take a while to do & be hard to polish later .

Why couldn't you polish it first, mask it with tape and then cut it out? Just a thought, because I can just picture the polishing wheel catching one of those fine areas .

[DonT-FeaR]

looking good mate!

and yea agrree with msmrx

[Waynio]

Good suggestion msmrx but I don't have the polishing supplies yet, so I'll do around the grills by hand when it comes to polishing it, be a lot more effort and time but I don't really mind.

Had to take a break while the drill charges back up.

The diamond coated dremel disc is no where near as good as I was expecting it to be, It must be meant for other materials, it would take me a week to do the grills with that bit, just does not cut 1.5mm aluminium good and the disc overheats so I doubt I will use it again, I switched over to a reinforced disc and they just sink into the alu real easy.

I'll be using a combination of the smallest drill bit I have as there is no disc small enough for cirtain areas, the reinforced discs for initial cut where I can and the easy break discs to catch the fine detail.

[Waynio]

I used the reinforced chunky discs entirely for doing this, Just needs filing & sanding smooth now, took hours to do.

[blueonblack]

Oh wow. I don't doubt that at all. +rep for the perseverence!

[Mark_Hardware]

That's interesting about the wheels... I wonder if it's because they are a cheap brand or something. I like how thin theyy are though, I may have a use for them anyway

[Waynio]

Mark the diamond disc were dremel branded and cost me £15 with delivery, I could have ordered another big bag of reinforced discs from america for the price of it, I'm sure the diamond discs are good for something, just not 1.5mm alu or thicker, they do cut but takes much longer and they get very hot.
1.5mm has been like re learning using my dremel almost compared to 1mm but is definately stronger.
I'm definately going to buy a good face mask respirator for any future projects as I got alu dust all over me while doing the fan holes, I'm seeing a good respirator just as important as goggles now cheap ones are no good as they steam up the goggles.

[DonT-FeaR]

that looks great man!

[Waynio]

LOL, it took 2 hours to get 1 of them to this point and still needs a little more work, my creative zen mp3 ran out of juice so micro update while it charges back up, can't do this without my music , forgot to charge it up last night.
I seem to have taken a smidge too much off the top piece to the left, I was trimming a bit here and there with the dremel so I could get the needle files in and seems I have messed up a little.

This pic is from the back side.

[Waynio]

My clinch nuts came so now I can have permanent nuts in place so it won't be so fiddly.

I just gave up after hours of filing with the needle files, was driving me mad, still more to do on them, I don't mind filing but needle files on detailed parts like this is incredibly tedious, it takes forever to do.
To be honest the only way I think these grills will look good is if I fill any imperfections and paint it, I did want to polish but they would look pretty poor as they are, if only I dremeled from the other side, the other side is much better, this piece of the case is turning into frankencase II.

And here is a shot from the other side.

Orbital sander would be too big so I looked around the house for a tool I could modify and found a panel sucker for pulling out dents in panels it is of perfect size for the holes after I trimmed the edge off, I'm thinking of attaching a round piece of sand paper to it and rotate it clockwise and anti clockwise until it gets down by about 0.8mm so it would get rid of surface imperfections, because if I am to polish the whole case they would need to be as close to perfect as can be or they will stand out pretty clearly.

It will still need more filing before I can do this to get it spot on, kinda wishing I did plain old lines instead would have been cleaner, 120mm grills are much harder to do than the big ones I have previously done, so I will have a go at doing this and maybe it will look even better unintentionally with the grills being sat into the panel , but if it turns out poor, I can just have plain holes and I think that is how this is going to go.

Just before I posted this I had an idea to put the diamond disc to use, maybe I could trim the imperfect bits off, kind of slimming it down some, seems like these grills are going to take a while before they look nice.