The Orb

[|NQ|Squelsh]

Hi freaks,

after completing two Casecons (Reactor and CUBE) and making the 10th place on the German Case Modding Cometition I thought it would be nice to get away from the cubic cases seen everywhere. As I am a fan of straight geometrics, what would be nicer than a sphere?
TBCS is simply the coolest place in the web, when you want to see mods that go far beyond some LEDs and windows in a standard case. So I hope to find some helping "hands" in here with good suggestions and experience.
Hope you like my Orb

The basic idea is to construct some kind of Pacman or motorcycle-helmet that can open a visor driven by a motor. And to make it really challenging, I wanted the cooling-liquid inside this visor

I will start with some renderings from the plans I did:

I am not quite sure, if I will build the feet this way, because the Orb has to fit on my desk and with those feet it will be huge.
The diameter of the spehre is about 40cm, giving me enough space to hide all hardware, waterpump inside. Only the radiator will be outside of it.

As you can see, I planned two versions (in fact some more), once a realistic one and one I could build with unlimited cash

So, what do you think? Top or flop? Worth to spend time and money on it or rather a stupid Idea to build a spheric PC? I love to hear your comments!


---------------- EDIT -----------------
This is how far I am at the moment:

---------------- /EDIT -----------------

[dgrmkrp]

The basic idea is to construct some kind of Pacman or motorcycle-helmet that can open a visor driven by a motor. And to make it really challenging, I wanted the cooling-liquid inside this visor

You mean like having a submerged mobo or having a reservoir the shape of the visor?

I like the idea, and if you have the time and money to do it.. go for it

[jdbnsn]

Wow, very original design I agree that the feet are going to be a bit large but all in all it looks great.

[Eclecticos]

Kewl! Can't wait to see the build on this thing.
When you get around to building the Unlimited cash model you could put your orb on a LynxMotion Hexapod. Just a thought.

[|NQ|Squelsh]

Well, I have to admit that I have been working for about two month now on this project and that I put a lot of time and quite some money in this project. So I'm going to write a log about the work that is already done, show you some big set-backs I encountered and how I solved them.
And hopefully in some month I have a finished Orb and a nice worklog

First of all, here is a little sketch and some drawings I did:

The visor is made of two quarter-spheres, one a little smaler than the other. Glued together with about 5mm of space for the water. This will definitely be the hardest part to create...

[elbarto241]

those are some really nice renderings, i like the idea of a sphere instead of the regular box looking PC. GL!

[|NQ|Squelsh]

One critical problem I had:
Where can one buy spheres with 40cm in diameter?
It took me about 3 month of hard search till I found a manufacturer of garden-lamps who sold a plastic lamp with exactly 40cm in diameter! So I ordered one. When it arrived I needed some tries till I figured out a way to mark an equatorial-line... The sphere had one open "side" which I needed to cut out. I finally drilled a small hole and attached a string in it with the lengh of 1/4th of the perimeter. With this I could draw the equator:

Here you see the mounting of the garden lamp.

My first try to mark an equatorial line.

The Orb sitting on my last casecon CUBE2.

All the red lines are only for orientation. The lines I cut out were marked with a thin cutter. You can see my tool for marking is made of a cable...

... fixed with a pinboard-pin.

Drawing the lines. I corrected them with a bending ruler.

The result:

Unfortunately the sphere is made in a way that the material has not the same thickness all over ): At some spots it's only 2mm thick and somewhere else it's 5mm.

Drilling many 0.5mm holes to get this special form where the hinge for the visor will be built in.

The case is made of three parts: One half spehre at the bottom, one quarter sphere for the top rear and one quarter made of plexiglas for the visor. Here you see the bottom.

This is the upper quarter with the circle that hides the hinge of the visor. It's not final in this shot. Has to be filed off.

As I mentioned above, the material-strengh differed a lot which led to a crack in the upper quarter, I had to fix with some plastic left from the mounting.

So far, so good.

[|NQ|Squelsh]

Hey Eclecticos,
thanks for the hint with the Lynxmotion. I am studiing robotics and those are some nice toys (:

@elbarto: Thanx - I rendered a little movie. Will try to put it in here tomorrow.

Btw: Sorry, if my english isn't the best. Hope you can figure out, what I want to say

[doesi87]

This is simply great man. Subscripted and will definitely be watched.

[rendermandan]

This looks pretty cool. Hope you can pull it off, Good luck!