Sandcrawler project

[SXRguyinMA]

well if its only 2 wires then its easy. mine had 4, two went to the board and 2 to a rather large capcitor

[artoodeeto]

ooh, I see. yeah, I just had one wire going from the switch to the board, and another going from the plug to the board. pretty simple. back in the old AT case days, probably 1997 or 1998, I moved my stuff to a new case, didn't see the sticker on the side of the PSU telling me how to hook it up to the power switch on the case (no m/b pass-through back then), and I hooked it up wrong. Killed the circuit breaker in the apartment...twice...before I figured it out LOL. Also nearly fused the connectors together. Amazingly enough, when I unhooked it and then did it right, everything was fine!

[artoodeeto]

Don't have any pics yet, but I haven't been totally idle this week. I just this morning figured out the best way to mount the PSU's PCB board, fan and daughterboard. If you look in some of the prior pics, there's a large opening door on the right rear, and a boxy 2-level room inside. I'm going to either cut a hole in its lower floor or remove the floor entirely, and the PSU PCB will go on the base under there. It'll stick up slightly above the original level of the floor, hence the need to cut a hole or remove it depending on how much area the PCB covers. But this way it'll be visible as a machinery-laden floor of the engine room. I'll then figure out other large pieces of "machinery" and such to add to the room itself. I'm going to mount the main power switch from the back of the original PSU down there too, so I can easily reach it without removing the top of the case. I mounted the original 140mm fan on the part of the original case of the PSU that it was attached to before; this consists of 2 sides of the original case. The fan is mounted vertically, with the adjacent side at the bottom bolted to the base of the computer. Doesn't really take up any more room than the fan by itself, and the fan should approximately line up with a hole I previously cut in the wall of that engine room. The power plug will go wherever it fits best. I'll need to clip the 28 cables on the modular cable connectors and then solder in extensions. I will mount it under the raised motherboard so the PCI-E power cables can be hidden under the board. They'll come out from under the front of the board and go to the video card. The old location of the PSU was too far away to do that; those cables and the aux power cable for the CPU had to run across the top of the board. By moving the modular connectors under the MB, I'm hoping to clean it up a little more.

[artoodeeto]

power supply is done pending plug-in to make sure it still works right. I was all set to do it last night, but ran out of energy I'll probably hook the computer up to it tonight, turn it on, and make sure the PSU doesn't get too hot. I seriously doubt it will, but my case, as someone pointed out, is a bit of a fire waiting to happen. So without further ado, the pics (and yes, the wires look a bit messy. Nearly all of them will be under the motherboard when I put it back on, but I will probably at least make an attempt to straighten them up).

First off, the rear engine room whose floor I will be cutting a hole into so you can see the PSU that is now under it. you can see the 140mm fan through the existing hole...and I need to paint that sticker black:

And shots of the PSU (thermaltake toughpower 650W, had it for several years now):

I mounted the main power switch in a spot that should be relatively hidden yet still accessible I hope, through the hole in the floor. The idea is that I can flip the switch without having to pull off the top of the case. I'm not too worried if it isn't reachable, I won't be any worse off than before. And I mounted the modular plug board in a spot where the PCI-E cables can now run under the MB and still reach the video card, instead of running over the top of the MB like before. I'll mount the SSD HD under the motherboard toward the front of the case; previously it was where the PSU now sits.

[artoodeeto]

bunch of rare, mostly on-set photos from Star Wars...I had to post this one, I laughed pretty hard at the caption:
http://www.totalfilm.com/features/30...oto-23#content

EDIT -- it works! not that I had any serious doubts, but I've never taken apart a PSU before, so there's always that nagging "what if it explodes when I plug it back in" thought in the back of my mind...LOL Anyway, I'm typing from my own computer for the first time in what seems like a month and a half.

the motherboard is kind of sitting right on top of the modular power cords. Dangit...they were too tall by a millimeter or too oh well. I probably ought to make the motherboard riser a little taller. but not tonight.

The front end. A hint of the wiring hell that lies beneath the motherboard...

It looks like I'll be getting a water cooling setup too, more on that later (ie, when it actually arrives). My next task is to figure out exactly how to add in a large radiator, a reservoir, and a pump...since I didn't design my case for any of that. Still, it'll be a fun challenge and should result in a quieter machine.

Oh yeah, and I ordered and received a bag of powdered walnut shells

It's a 10 pound sack, way more than I need. But only $13 Helloooo sand. This is the same stuff they used in the Special Edition sandcrawler re-shoot....built a whole little environment on top of the ILM building for it to drive around on. For my purposes, this will be the covering of the base I will build at some point.

[Waynio]

congrats on getting the switch to work.
I've had a psu blow up on me before, scared the life out of me, massive unexpected flash & loud bang and a boost of smoke, was kinda sleepy before & the most awake I have ever been after, the psu had a voltage switch on the back and I must have accidentally switched it, as soon as I switched it on BANG!!! for a second I thought I was going to die lol, scary, so have since not dared to mess with my psu's, hope the effect doesn't stay with me forever as I'd like to mod a psu or at least the external wires some time.
The powdered walnut will give a good effect to it, unplanned water cooling should be a bit of a challenge, but as you said it's all part of the fun of modding .

[artoodeeto]

congrats on getting the switch to work.
I've had a psu blow up on me before, scared the life out of me, massive unexpected flash & loud bang and a boost of smoke, was kinda sleepy before & the most awake I have ever been after, the psu had a voltage switch on the back and I must have accidentally switched it, as soon as I switched it on BANG!!! for a second I thought I was going to die lol, scary, so have since not dared to mess with my psu's, hope the effect doesn't stay with me forever as I'd like to mod a psu or at least the external wires some time.
The powdered walnut will give a good effect to it, unplanned water cooling should be a bit of a challenge, but as you said it's all part of the fun of modding .

dang man. I'm REAL glad I didn't know that before I modded my PSU, I might not have dared LOL.
Those walnut shells will also come in handy to create a sandy dust on the crawler's horizontal surfaces. I'm hoping that it'll be the final touch that perfects it...we'll see. Hopefully more pics tonight, I want to try and get the paint job finished.

[artoodeeto]

paint job's getting there. this paint effect is actually pretty subtle, the pics didn't come out all that well (night, flash washed everything out, no flash + yellow lights = weird colors), but they'll give you the idea. The initial rusting color was a mix of orange and rust, but mostly orange. It contrasted too much with the brown, so I added rust color around the edges of most of the orangey spots, then swiped with a paper towel to remove most of the rust paint to make the effect more subtle. The glossiness of the orange spots will be gone soon, I'm going to hit the whole thing with a final clear flat coat. Looks a lot better in person than in the photos:

no flash:

more pics coming this weekend, I'll make sure to take some in daylight, and standing back so you can see the effect from a few feet away, which is where it looks best.

[artoodeeto]

I thought I'd post some pics from the beginning of the build up til my first post here, then a skip ahead to what it looks like right now (as in 5 minutes ago).

These start back in April of 2007...
this is what I started with. the line drawing of the front is out of the star wars guide to vehicles book (I think). the photo is out of the "sculpting a galaxy" book, and it was this photo that got me started on version 3 of the build. You'll notice one of the fronts is wider. The film model is the narrow one. The model had to be a certain width, about 17", to fit the computer parts, and I didn't have space to make it proportionally longer and taller. So basically, except for the cockpit and rear engine pieces, mine is one scale width-wise and a slightly smaller scale height- and lengthwise. It works though. Unless you had the film model right next to it, nobody will notice.

I built a posterboard mockup first - I learned on the first 2 models that despite all rational attempts to suss out the proper measurements, there were certain ones that just didn't come out right. doing this in posterboard first allowed me to fix those problems before moving to MDF. Also meant I had ready-made template pieces. And, 2 years later, I used these posterboard pieces as the "skin" glued onto the outside of the MDF pieces.

starting to make the parts. I used 1/8" MDF for everything but the base; that's 1/4" MDF. I used a utility knife and thin aluminum ruler as a straightedge. Made for some VERY tired arms and fingers. someday I'll have the space and $$ for a proper table saw.

I made a cardboard mockup of the space the computer would occupy, so I could figure out how much interior space was leftover and could be used for the inside modelling of the crawler.

construction begun! this was the first part to go together.

the front section. hinges and superglue are how I acheived the odd angles. It's very slightly skewed, but luckily it's not really noticeable.

the empty shell. no window frames yet around the cockpit.

added the upper floor and the window frames (they're matchsticks...)

the upper sections of the 2nd and 3rd models, not long before I tossed the 2nd one. You can see why I wanted to rebuild it...

The original design of the fan chamber. Air was supposed to come up through the white pipes, into the gray ones and into the chamber. I tried zip-tying 80mm fans blades to the gray pipes to make them spin…didn’t work. Anyway, the idea behind the design was to have a solid roof. Unfortunately, airflow wasn’t all that great, so I ended up going with the now-current screen mesh covered holes in the roof.

originally, I was just rebuilding the upper section, so in this photo the lower part is leftover from the 2nd crawler. It wasn’t til June 2009 that I scrapped that portion and rebuilt it, mainly because the old treads were just a tad too large, and they just didn’t look right.

My first attempt at cockpit lights. These were leftover LEDs. I had no idea what I was doing (read, no concept of resistors) and I fried these poor little lights. One even exploded…

The results of my 2nd attempt at the lighting. Definitely better. Still not ideal, in October 2009 a different section blew out, and I rewired (see one of my initial posts) all of them with resistors, etc etc, and attempt #3 was much better.

the original wiring was crazy – I had each individual light in parallel, with a fan speed controller at the beginning of the whole circuit acting as a resistor. I now have strands of 6 lights + resistor in series.

looked cool at night though. The blue light was from a fan that’s since been painted over.

A shot of the cockpit before I glued on the ceiling. R2D2 is leftover from an X-wing model kit, and along with the metal motherboard tray, is the only thing that’s been on all 3 models. The chairs are paper. The control panel is a printout of a Cessna control console. I skimped on detail here because you really can’t see much from outside. R2 is glued into a paper collar, which has tabs that are glued to the floor. This ensures that he will never fall over, since I’d have to tear off the ceiling to fix him.

I tore my hair out for a long time trying to figure out a mechanism to keep the main loading door shut, but with the mechanism invisible at least from outside. It wasn’t til, in July 2009, I added interior walls and ceiling to the main bay, and covered the resulting gaps between inner and outer walls with posterboard, that I hit upon the idea of gluing magnets on the backside of the posterboard in the gap, and recessing flat pieces of metal in the door. Now the inside of the door is covered too, so the metal’s not visible either, and it works perfectly!

rebuilding the lower section took a couple months. I scrapped the original base and most of the treads. I kept the washers (masquerading as wheels) and the vinyl floor matting that I used originally for the tread. The vinyl is now an interior tread, and I hand-cut almost 600 individual treads out of styrene sheet. The worst of it was that I initially used a silicone-based superglue to glue the styrene to the vinyl…and discovered AFTER finishing all 570+ that the glue didn’t really bond the two. So I had to pop all of them off, scrape off the glue from the vinyl, and ended up using a 3M general trim automotive adhesive. Handy stuff, that. Also used it when I glued the posterboard pieces on the MDF.

These are the two bays with retractable ramps between the tank treads. On the first 2 models, these were nothing more than squares with holes in them. On this one, I still didn’t get it quite right (lack of decent reference material until long after I made them), but they’re a lot better.

The first posterboard panel to be glued on. I used a ruler and pencil to draw the panel lines, then my trusty metal ruler and an x-acto knife to slice up the panels. As I sliced, I put down a low-tack tape to hold the pieces together. I then sprayed adhesive on the back, slapped it onto the model, then pulled off the tape. Worked really well, although the panels with the opening cutaways were a major pain.

That last photo above was taken September 21, 2009. Here’s what the top portion looks like right now, March 6, 2010:

And the lower portion (it’s in my extra room next to my desk so I can use it; the top is in the living room since I’m working on it).

[x88x]

Great work on the paintjob and PSU! I love the look of the PSU spread out like that.