Lean and Green - modular dual PC scratch build

[Waynio]

What he said.

Thanks msmrx57

Played sleeping dogs to death time to mod on.

Drilled & heat pressed brass thread inserts into the rear IO pieces with the soldering iron, the inserts are 4.3mm diameter by 5mm long, I drilled 4mm holes & placed a marker on the drill bit so I knew where to stop so it wouldn't go all the way through the 7mm thickness, took it to about 1mm short of drilling straight through so they are nice & neat.

Time to move forward with this switch.
I find clamping pieces to what I'm fixing to to be most accurate way when you didn't cover that part of the design with intentions of just bunging it all together when the time is right but make sure it's square before going forward.
Bottom, the blue tape is a quick rough guide for the 10mm panels so I just drill in the middle, did 1 on both ends.

Top fixing, same as bottom.

Tapping.

Woo hoo, the marble & switch case is loose fit for now & I needed to sand nearly 3mm off the bottom of the 10mm piece which supports the switch in the correct place, took a while to get this done right.

Here I drilled & tapped & countersunk the rear 2mm piece into the 10mm support, the gap you see is the resistance the switch has got from the spring & rod inside, the support piece needs fixing to the bottom panel but I was far too tired to carry on.

Doesn't look like much done but I had no plans for doing the fixing together so had to be ultra careful to not botch any of the work gone into it so far, more soon.

[Fuganater]

Nice to see it being put together.

[Waynio]

Nice to see it being put together.

It sure is thought I'd never get to it lol.

If the pictures aren't showing in this update it's something to do with photobucket having problems which surfaced on the 2nd & they are still having problems.

Guess an update is waaaaay overdue, tiny update due to a fat chunk of idling but an update, been having to rediscover improvising & patience with not following a script now so the stabilisers are off lol.

Had to countersink the steel washers for the HTPC side layer panels so they don't take up extra unwanted thickness like they were due to the wave detail panels being 1mm thick & ideally you need 2mm for a good countersink with m3 screws, had to place them in the vice by using a small file to guide 8 of them in place 1 at a time.

Fixed the 10mm HTPC sides to the base so is a little more together, the layer panels slide into place from the rear for easy maintenance, just remove the back panel & front fan which slots in place & slide the detail panels out which leaves room for hands to reach in & tweak things.

Here is the awesomely assembled spindicator done by reikmaharg2 for me, I'm pretty sure the project would be lacking that extra touch of awesome if this didn't happen so thanks mate appreciated, I also learnt the fist basic skill modders need when stepping up to electronics, soldering for keeping the wires numbered I prodded sharpie marker dots on them lol, either that or a lot of fun having to run them in sequence to find the right order after soldering which would make for messy wire work.

I wasn't 100% sure where the negative stems of the LED's should go on the assembly & just had a vague idea even though he explained to me lol, so used an AC Ryan molex pass through adapter with a wire crimped & soldered in place which I will run to the negative 12 to 1 wire for 0v, kier acknowledged that as being fine for the negative legs, so that's the main assembly waiting to be joined to the LED's.

So, made a start on the spindicator LED wire work & here showing the LED's plugged into place after I countersunk the exterior side so they don't bulge out at all & to make sure everything aligns correct, it does, or did after 2 of the holes needed drilling due to a super faint misalignment but got it done with minimal fuss.

My soldering used to be awesomely terrible, I found this surprisingly easy to do, an OK soldering iron with heat control & flux paste & helping hands really changed that pretty much instantly like magic, flux paste is magic for soldering.

And plugged back in place but I don't like what I did for the LED negative stem wire work on the LED end, soldering is fine but heck of a wire mess taking up valuable space for the 12 to 1 wire with the way I did that so I'll remove them & do those again while it's mounted in place to make it neater, I need heat shrink for it though before I fully solder everything together but I ordered some yesterday from phenoptix & it's been sent out so hopefully I'll get the switch & light complete this week with a video showing it in action but don't hold me to that.

Been doing lots of thinking about many things, 1 of the things is I might have come up with a very nice idea for colouring this thing that I can do myself & isn't hazardous & really cheap, will be good wearing but I need to run some tests first to make sure the theory works, if it does I think I have a very sweet idea to share or a total flop, it'll be 1 or the other.

[BS Mods]

Great work as usual! I've been slacking on commenting on your awesomeness and I apologize.

[Stonerboy779]

cannot wait to see a video of the button

[Waynio]

Great work as usual! I've been slacking on commenting on your awesomeness and I apologize.

It has been a ton of just cutting so it's understandable, hopefully won't be far off before it's altogether now, cheers.

cannot wait to see a video of the button

Me too mate.

Was thinking of mixing good inks or clothes dye with metal lacquer, the same stuff I brushed all over stealthlow, it has kept it all in very nice condition so felt like revisiting the idea to make it work.

Update on the ink idea, I added empty mixing bottles, syringes, main ink colours to make any colour & metal lacquer & looked at the price of just short of £40 & backed away from it thinking that's a bit of an expensive experiment really, I'd love to try it but not that much, that £40 could go towards a nice anodising job.

I do think the ink mixed with metal lacquer could work though but just don't know how well it would work without doing a couple of tests so the idea is there if anyone wants to give it a try but do it on scrap if you do just to be safe.

I also think maybe the metal lacquer might be usable as a clear primer for candy paint but not sure without testing, it does make a nice protective layer that is negligible on thickness yet offering good protection.

[Waynio]

Design update before the real update tomorrow.

Been designing most of the week, the stand & HTPC is going to get heavily worked on during through the night into Sunday evening, I'll be aiming to have a nice update posted late on Sunday evening.

Gaming rig has been tweaked a good bit too internally, frame work massively improved & both 120 fans are now intakes without the ducts for more space & will allow for a normal none flush fit window if I decide to have side windows still but that's not likely when these panels can act like nice big vents, top window will be removable also but will be flush fit & so will the front windows still.

The Zalman cooler. &
The
Base of the heatsink has a terrible wonky see saw effect but this gives me high hopes for awesome temps after I'm done with it going off the reviews I've seen on it fresh out of the box.
At least 1 of the heatpipes needs carefully filing down, I couldn't believe it that a fault like that passed QC for a premium air cooler but anyway I'll file any bad bits down & lap the hell out of it until it's real nice & super flat hopefully not going so far I sand into the heatpipe & wreck the thing, I should very likely request an exchange but I'm willing to make it work & finish Zalmans job for them.

The
I took the plastic piece off the cooler & got busy making an accurate model of it, this will really test my filing skills to the limit, the fan control knobs was a warm up compared to this thing.

The zalman future car stunt show a split second before a crossing barrel roll went...

Awfully miscalculated, polygons mangled together about to drop on top of the 2 below.

Luckily the 2 doing the brave deed of letting them jump over them have an instant turbo boost to get away from the clump of mangled metal above but both flipped over from the crazy instant speed which couldn't be handled.

Process of it developing while taking all the measurements with my trusty digital callipers.

So I have a choice of 2 flavours, think I'll go with the rounded bits because the heavily angular one might be a bit too difficult if not impossible with files lol, both will be but yeah, the rounded one should be a fraction easier, the upper side I'm not really concerned about, it's the underside which might prove to be really difficult with scoop files (don't know what the proper name for them are).


I'll make it from a chunk of 10mm plate alu but first up is the stand & HTPC, I will update Sunday evening with how it all went but either way this is going to really progress now.

I have also had enough of photobucket nagging me each month to upgrade to pro so I bought a 2 year sub so I'd better make good use of it.

[Waynio]

Zalman stunt car show, what was I thinking lol.

Not the update I was hoping to post.

I'll come clean, I've not been getting much done at all feeling too demotivated (think I just needed a little time out, this project is kicking my rear all over the place lol) so absolutely nowhere near the point of what I was hoping to get done for my 4000th post on bit-tech but that was making me avoid posting far too much & there is much to comment on in other logs & new ones, also need to make the "workshop" more of a workshop that isn't prone to turning into a big game of twister & where's wally insane edition where you need a microscope when trying to find misplaced bits.


Again with that flipping spindicator?, fraid so & we’re not there yet lol.

When I went to do the new wire work on the spindicator after getting some get up & go to continue with white LED's (3rd time doing the soldering BTW) I thought that copper ring idea was possibly a far fetched silly idea that would be near impossible to do & in fact a great doable idea suggested by Keir for connecting all the negative LED legs for the spindicator so went ahead measured & designed/printed it & got busy making it out of 1mm copper sheet.

Snipping LED legs.

Soldering wires of same length to the positive legs.

This bit was difficult & took the longest lining up all 12 legs through the 1mm holes of the copper ring, was a little frustrating.

But managed it & then soldered it in place along with a wire to go to the negative wire, the heat shrink wasn't good enough for making a snug fit so had to think of something else so I ordered some liquid electrical tape which I'll brush on any exposed joints (hopefully have that tomorrow).

The colour discs for changing the spindicator colours, made these from coloured transparent vinyl's (bought a bunch of a4 sheets) & 1mm acrylic sheet & will easily be as good as certain coloured LED's with the diffusion from the opal frosted acrylic (I hope ) & are relatively easy to change the colours but not easy enough to change without some effort so plenty of testing will be done to find my favourite colour once it's whirling.

Also added 2 extra plain discs to make the switch need a tiny push instead of a fairly long push to function but might switch that for 1 because I think 2mm extra will be the perfect addition instead of 3mm, as it is it only requires a very faint push.

How it looks from behind when installed, looks a bit messy at the moment but it won't once I get it connected to the spindicator & use liquid electrical tape to keep solder joints from shorting out & get the lengths to perfect length & neatly routed fixed in place.

Space, did I mention how little there will be between the switch & PSU, look at the huge gap, spindicator was only just possible to be part of the marble switch.

I'll likely make a PSU back plate that mounts to the psu & back panel to give a pinch of space, good thing I don't need to use the modular cables for the HTPC, the gap you see on the switch house is due to having 1 too many 1mm discs in the pipe so it's forcing it over a touch like said the marble only needs a faint push to function, this will change.



Decided to have a go at getting the Zalman CNPS12X Ultimate Performance Triple Fan CPU Cooler base flat because it was a very long way away from flat & had a really bad see saw effect because of 1 of the heat pipes in the middle being at a higher level than the others which created a 1mm see saw, my advice to anyone buying 1 of these coolers, put it on a surface you know is flat & check it out to see if it has a nasty see saw effect & then get something like a metal ruler to check the base out carefully visually, if it isn't flat get it exchanged rather than try to flatten it, I'll show why.

I have never had to file a heat sink base before, had to lap them before now but never had to file, that's as bad a sign as you can get of quality control gone AWOL.

So, once I got it flat from filing I wanted to go a little further by now lapping it, I should have settled for a not flat base but a flatter than what it was base, this fat chunk of 10mm thick aluminium with smooth edges has been serving me nicely for sanding things perfectly flat.

I kept checking for sweet flatness & it has a slight concave base also as a nice bonus on top of the wonky base & because of how much I had to file down it must have left virtually no pipe left to sand so a tiny hole formed on the worst heat pipe & a little liquid had come out, I knew it was knackered at this point so continued to see how bad it would get if I made the base completely flat just to see how badly made the base is on this.

Not good at all as it happens, I noticed another wet spot, joy.

Oh yeah, this is what happens when you make the base of this cooler perfectly flat, a little tiny hole wiped with tissue made it cave in very easily, awesome, not, so see this warning & if you buy 1 of these coolers & it isn't nice & flat possibly with 1 or more heat pipes bulging higher than the rest, get it exchanged & don't try to fix it yourself, it will cut you £60 to £70 short & leave you highly disappointed, could have pre ordered hitman absolution & assassins creed 3 with that & had change to buy I am alive, gutted.

I did also check it out for how you remove the fans if you want to mod them which most modders would want to I expect, the plastic strip mounts the fans are on have some kind of arrow plugs 1 at the top & 1 at the bottom that go into the fins so there might be notches cut out of the fins so they clip in place, free them & you free the fans allowing you to mod them.

Zalman you let me down with your garbage quality control on your flagship air cooler & I'm £65 out of pocket leaving me quite gutted indeed, that could have bought more aluminium or a bunch of good games, doubt I'll buy Zalman again, it did cross my mind to buy another because it does look awesome for an air cooler but could have had the same damn issue so thought I'd have to be very stupid to buy another because even if it was flat it would have been garbage surface finish on the base in need of a good lapping.

I have totally jumped ship & ordered a nicely engineered Noctua NH-D14 which I'll mod to be a monster of a triple custom 140mm Akasa viper fans which kick a hefty 110 CFM & are PWM fans that might well match OK water cooling, that's how I lose the plot, whatever failed me I make something far more awesome, I don't know why, I just do, maybe I need to get the gutted feeling away from me fast & this seems to work.


The workshop sort out can wait until the project is complete, this update wouldn't have been posted today if the Zalman cooler didn't show serious flaw & would have had the HTPC & stand altogether probably in a week or so, so see you in a week, at least I got what was going to be a special 4000th post done & I can comment on logs again, was just aiming to make it an excellent update, the full HTPC & stand & spindicator whirling away & sweet custom all aluminium fan, oh well, next update.

A bunch of the power section shots since I made the marble flush to the inset panel, I wonder if people will get sick of seeing this particular piece lol but if they do there is the anodising contrast thing to come & it will all need a very good sanding session before that, still looks a bit rough but I do like it, how bout you.

More as soon as I have more to show.

[Fuganater]

Awesome work on the power button! I like the way you hooked all the negative leads together.

[msmrx57]

That switch is awesome!! Can hardly wait to see it all lit up. Too bad about the cooler and the setback from it.