Bärsärkar-gång

[Fuganater]

[blueonblack]

It's ALIVE!!!!!

And looking absolutely awesome, I must say.

I for one love the brass/bronze contrast.

[AmEv]

I forgot COMPLETELY about this EPICNESS!


How COULD I?!?!?!????!?!!?

[x88x]

Hbwaah? What happened? How long was I out? ...holy crap, it's actually an update!

Awesome work dude, it's looking great!

Nice photobooth too.

[Mach]

It's ALIVE!!!!!

And looking absolutely awesome, I must say.

I for one love the brass/bronze contrast.

Thanks Blue, yeah I'm digging it too. Still wondering what finish to put on the case though.

I forgot COMPLETELY about this EPICNESS!


How COULD I?!?!?!????!?!!?

Its ok, really AmEv. Don't beat yourself up over it.

Hbwaah? What happened? How long was I out? ...holy crap, it's actually an update!

Awesome work dude, it's looking great!

Nice photobooth too.

Tough crowd . Thanks x88x! the booth was a fun build. Everyone seemed to have a great time with it so it made it double fun watching the craziness.

Oh yeah, I'll just leave this here.

[billygoat333]

Looking great sir Mach!

[TheMainMan]

Glad to see an update, looking awesome as always!

[Mach]

Looking great sir Mach!

Thanks billygoat! for the compliment and the honorific

Glad to see an update, looking awesome as always!

Thanks MainMan! Me too, I'm very glad to be back with an update.

[OvRiDe]

Wow .. That looks AWESOME but I am not biased or anything

I can't wait to see this one completed!

[Mach]

Few operations in decorative metal work are more important than hard or silver-soldering. The process of brazing is quite similar; it is used for larger articles and the solder is an alloy of copper and zinc, called spelter.

Silver solder is made up of silver and brass in varying proportions according to the melting point desired. It can be obtained in wire or sheet form, the latter being most popular. The flux used for hard-soldering consists of powdered borax ground with enough water to make a creamy paste.

-Decorative Metal Work, Popular Science Monthly 1936

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Thanks OvRiDe, yes me too.

I'm still alive and I have a little, but significant, progress to report. Remember the NB block? The one that leaked like a sieve after the silver and propane burner experiment. :wallbash:

After those experiments failed, I went back to the drawing board. I read up on the making of mokume gane. If anyone is interested, the papers by James Binnion are an interesting read. What they told me was, it is possible to get repeatable results with metal fusing but the tools, like a hydraulic press and inconel molds were probably outside of my price range. Anyone want to buy a used kiln?

After a call to the local metal smith left me with no solution, I took a different tack.

One that is likely obvious to most in the HVAC field. I found this gentleman's website which helped quite a bit. He's local to Houston and sells a training video online. One order later, I had a plan as well as an idea where I was going wrong.

Yes, the ad is cheesy but the video is actually solid.

I had been using a high silver content solder, the same stuff that is used by jewelers. It didn't flow as well as I would have liked. From the video, I was recommended this. Its a silver brazing alloy that is used for HVAC systems for joining dissimilar metals. Its 45% silver, 27% copper, 25% zinc, and 3% tin. On to the modding.

The parts sanded and cleaned.

The top was brazed first so I could still tap the threads. Not sure if this was necessary as the Bitspower threads are very short. I bolted the two corners together to hold the plates in place.

Fluxing the inside of the block and heating it to a dull red with a propane/oxygen torch, the solder flowed quite well. You can see where the silver flowed between the plates on the outside edge.

The holes in the block look pretty good with full flow on the silver. Here, they still need to be tapped. I was worried about annealing the brass (and copper) but it was a non-issue.

I tapped them with my mini drill press (the Cheaps pattened method) by putting the 1/4" tap in the chuck, unlocking the head of the press so it was resting on the block, and turning the chuck by hand. It worked much better than hand tapping. The threads are straight and it was fast.

The chamber will be fairly restrictive as you can see from the clearance. I'm winging it so we'll see how it works. Conventional wisdom says the performance would increase with pins or other turbulence building obstructions. The NB doesn't need a whole lot of cooling so it'll be a straight shot through the block.

The 1/8" copper was cut over-sized to be trimmed after.

The first time around, bolting the block together worked well so I drilled 2 more holes.

And bolted each corner down. The holes were lined with brass tubing to keep the solder out of the screw holes. I should put whiteout to act as a solder resist but forgot it. Two of the screws had to be drilled out after.

The final product after brazing. I fluxed the outside of the block this time and for good measure hit the threads again. It still needs a final polish but I wanted to make sure it held before I did that. As you can see there is some discoloration between the layers. Some pickle should clear that up.

The extra holes were filled with the button head hex screws that I'm using throughout the mod. They're decorative and were sanded flush on the bottom.

How's it work? Well it holds pressure. Using my ghetto pressure tester ( a bicycle pump and a pan of water), the only air bubble (singular) that I saw was at the seal of the Bitspower plug. It was only one and it didn't move so the block gets a pass. Especially since,

I don't plan to run the loop at 40 psi.

For the hold down screws, I silver soldered 3mm threaded rod to a button headed screw.

When its mounted, the screw heads will look the same.

I dropped it next to the CPU block to check it out. With more polishing and the sand blasted design in place, I can tick the box on the NB block and move on to the water block for the video card. But before doing that, the CPU block screws are bugging me.

I've also wanted to experiment with 3d printing over at Shapeways.com

Its a very cool way to make parts in metal or plastic. You draw them in Sketchup, export and upload the model and 14 days later.

Your part shows up. Here's the part printed in bronze which can be soldered.

I was very impressed by the detail.

The part is about 3/4" high. Unfortunately, it was a little too big.

Here's prototype #2 in plastic impregnated with aluminum powder.

Side by side comparison with prototype #1. I need to tweak the design again to take the 3mm threaded insert.

So that's all that I have for now. I've got mixed feeling about my progress. Not exactly how I wanted to put the blocks together but I'll take the results.

Next up is the GPU block. It'll be a little more challenging. I'll post some flame thrower pics next time around. More soon…

Thanks for staying tuned in and many thanks to my sponsors!

Bitspower

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