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—21 2 08
Most of my modding time has been taken up with the reservoir project, and I flat forgot the mouse.
First, I dropped the plan of making a copper fangrill. It was a total pain in the *ss to solder and shape. It started to remind me of a souvenir from Mexico.
-I’m planning a plexi guard. I can’t get started on it until the rotary table I ordered shows up. I’m planning a multi-layered thing like the chimney/codpiece.
-Remember the Cristmas tree ornament casting experiment? It finally cured.
-I ended up with something that looks like it should be chasing Steve McQueen. The contents of the bulb shrunk into a purple…BLOB! It has a hollow spot and is full of bubbles, but is as hard as stone.
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—21 12 07
I got the air bled out of the lines. It’s MUCH quieter! No more whirrr-WHOOOSH! The design turned out to be useful for bleeding the air out. The air would get trapped in the fillport. I could use a syringe to top the tank off through the pressure release line, then pop the spring loaded top on the fillport to burp it.
—22 12 07
-Done for the holidays…
-Of course, that doesn’t mean I not done tinkering with it. I could be messing around with the insides for years. I thought I’d try something to get rid of the ribbons. This jig is a long scraper blade in a mitre box. I twisted some vinyl hose through it to make spiral wire wrap.
-Much better. Just moving the wiring behind the pipes made a big difference. I may play around with braiding the buggers to see how it looks. Read more
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—17 12 07
-This is actually not an uncommon sight in my kitchen. The wierdest thing I ever boiled was a carburetor from a ‘63 Falcon. I know now that vinegar steam is one of the few things that can make me shed a tear. -It burns!! It was worse than that bottle of 25% ammonia I ‘found’. (probably because I couldn’t run away and wash my eyes out.)
After all that stink I don’t think it washed out much gunk. I ended up with a pot of green liquid.
-Leak testing the Cheapskate way. My gallon of Mr. Bubble has helped me find many gas leaks. The pressure test was brief. The pen used as an end cap in the picture is probably orbiting over your home as you read this.
-This is not some wierd holiday ornament. I’m just letting the clear coat dry. I had trouble getting the Minwax polyurethane off the line I had to splice. I soaked it overnight in paint thinner, worked on it with an acetone-soaked rag, and hit it with PVC cleaner/solvent. The PVC cleaner worked best, but it was still a pain. As I was sitting there with the chemical mask and gloves on, I realized I was under my buffing wheel, so I tried that. Next time I’m machine polishing this sh*t!! It worked great!
-ANYway… the punchline is after all that I had to clean the blackened polish wax of the pipe, so I rubbed it down with isoprophyl alcohol and a rag. The varnish just fell off when the rubbing alcohol hit it.
-Some parts for a speaker mount I cut.
-Two pipes in… I think I used only a foot of the tygon that DangerDen sent me total.
-The pump had to come loose to get this connection on. Everything else was easy.
-Another one of those problems with the new board. The AGP video card is in a higher slot, and is nearly touching the pipe. The floppy cable is stuffed between them to prevent any mishaps.
-Big gobs of clear epoxy were used to secure the speaker in the mounting bracket, and fix the fit problem with the fillport threads. Any one know if epoxy resin and computer coolant get along?
-I taped my riser screws in place so they would be ready for the clumsy motherboard refit. The cold cathode tubes are out… There’s no room for them anymore.
-All in, and my cablemass is still a freaky mess.
-The first sign I didn’t think my loop out right. The air is impossible to bleed out. The tilt in the reservoir feeds worked like a toilet U-bend. The placement of the T-line and fillport is drawing air into the loop too.
Back after intermission. [ music…]
A HUGE part of this update was brought to you by DangerDen!
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—10 12 07
Busy… But I managed to do some modding anyway.
-I have a spot on one of the pipes that is touching the side panel. The blue spot on the pipe here is keeping me from closing the case. I need to file it down. I was in the garage today and found two 8′ lengths of 1/2″ copper pipe. I wish I had found it $30 worth of pipe ago… But now I’m in business for doing another system like this.
-So much for organized cables… I put together a LED cluster. It was much easier thanks to the new can of flux I’ve been using on the pipes. My old flux was probably older than I am, and didn’t work well. The old motherboard still comes in handy for testing my wiring.
-It turns out the UV LEDs from futulec DO work. For some reason they didn’t like my test rig. The 80 other LEDs I bought worked in it. I wired up 4 white LEDs for the hardrive cage and 2 UVs on a LONG wire. I’m undecided on where they will go, but one will have to spotlight the waterblock. The white LEDs are the cheapest 5mm ultrabright LEDs I could get from BestHongKong, and they are still bright as hell. The expensive ones must be like the bat-signal! In this pic you can see 2 of them BURNING through the HD rack.
-HEY! I accidentally got a clean shot of the CD and floppy drives. The epoxy spots on the CD face can only be seen with a camera. I like the black drives, so I think I’m going to cancel the attempt to cast clear/blue bezels for them.
-New board…ASRock -somethingorother… It has had a few capacitors replaced and looks like it’s been used as a doorstop, but it works. More amazingly: The motherboard is the only thing I cooked. My memory, video, and CPU are OK!
-I made a paper doo-dad to help me with the position of the last hardlines. I’m not going to work around the engine block pump this time.
Soon I will get to use all the wonderfull stuff from Danger Den, -if I don’t get driven crazy first.
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—28 11 07
Yep. That board is DEAD. I didn’t have the NB seated. -too much silicone blobbed around the foam.
-P4 socket boards are cheap, but hard to find anymore. It would be awesome to find another one of the same boards, but not looking likely. -Of course, getting a board that doesn’t have a toaster oven for a northbridge would simplify things…
—30 11 07
I bet no one has ever flooded their backyard in the name of computer modding. -Until now, that is.
-This is a rough fit of the pipe that runs from the radiator to the reservoir. It’s a crazy, kinky plumbing nightmare. I had to rough up the insides of the fits to get everything to hold it’s shape.
-This is everything mostly soldered. The little part goes from the CPU block to the NB block. It’s useless now, but may get chopped up to use elsewhere.
-There was so much to solder on this crazy part that I couldn’t get one bit. It was upside-down when I was doing this and the flux burned off. This is the result of a soapy water leak test on that fitting. I needed to do a splice to correct something too.
-And now some blurry shots of the faceplate and buttons getting glued on. I used a tiny bit of clear epoxy, braced the parts in place with cardboard, and left the house for the day. (This stuff stinks, so I waited for a day I wouldn’t be home to do it.)
-Done, and blurry.
-blurry shot of the CD tray out. Here you can see I was quick-booting with Geexbox instead of checking my temps. Yep! I got sloppy, and paid for it. I was so pumped about how it looked that I forgot to test everything first.
-The two lines that needed corrective splicing. The heat darkened the lacquer on the long one.
-Now, here’s a problem. The flux from soldering forms a black gunk inside the pipe. A standard snakebrush didn’t work, so I tried the ball end of a bass guitar string. It worked better, but only went in about 3 corners deep. I need a way to get the rest of the grime out of the line.
-Right now it’s in the yard, hooked to the hose and a high pressure nozzle. It’s now a very expensive but inefficient garden sprinkler.
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—19 11 07
Now that the outside’s all done, I need to post some shots of it, right?
-whaaah (the blog format does not like 600 pixel width…)
-oowhaaah
-oowahwah
-And the obligatory batman angle…
-The Danger Den pump’s all mounted up, thanks to several sheets of hobby foam and that bit of sharpened pipe. I need to flatten and polish the screws still.
-More deadly games with the press. I was cutting the part on the reservoir line that was giving me clearance troubles. You will notice I stopped the cut before the top part became a missile. I’m situated so that if it had shot off, it would have hit a big sliding glass window. I’ve seen one shatter before, it’s not fun.
-I had planned to tap the treads out, and then trim back both sides. I realized it would be better to just solder a sleeve on the brass fitting and toss the other part out. I had to file the threads off the sleeved end to coax the solder into the groove.
-No pics of the soldering. Instead you get a shot of the pipes after getting varnished. I used Minwax polyurethane. It was hard to tell where I had or had not painted with this stuff. It’s not just because I’m old and blind, is it?
-I pulled the hose clamps out of the dye today. I think they are at maximum saturation, because one of them has been in a day longer and they are all the same shade.
-Mixed results under the blacklight…It’s more white glow than red.
-On one of those wacky experiment tangents: I want to try making an acrylic cast sphere using shavings, acetone, and a glass Christmas tree ornament. Here I am removing the paint.
-Here I broke the bulb… Fragile b*stards! The stupid thing has been rolling around in my garage for two weeks, but it breaks now?
That’s on hold until I find another bulb.
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—6 11 07
-Wheeeee!
Danger Den Is sponsoring this build!
Thank you Danger Den, and thank you Dan, for putting up with my incredibly inept E-mails!
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—1 11 07
I’m amazing!
Not for anything cool. I’m amazing because I can F something up right as it’s finished!
I dropped NB block #2…
-It hit the corner of the copper baseplate only, but the sheer mass of this thing caused an internal crack near one of the screws. It looks like it will be OK -for now. (The green is antifreeze, btw.)
Anyway… I’ve done a lot of little stuff, with no pics of any of it.
-I dug out the front coverplate and ‘Lefty’ so I could fit the switch in place, (FINALLY!) This is a shot of the switch seated in a glob of hot glue. The cloudy bit under the assembly is an LED ‘lens’.
-I re-assembled the frame. I flipped the rivets to match the countersink, but needed to smush them a bit more to fix the clearance.
-Smush…d
-I glued this foam woogly bit on the bottom of the block to help keep the seat even. It started out as a square, but this foam is too thick. The idea with the wavey shape was to keep a wide footprint while weakening the foam. (I’m not sure that makes ANY sense.)
-My close fit seems even worse now that the wires are in.
-With the full plumbing in place, it’s plastered up against the wiring. I probably shorted something out doing this too.
-On the positive side- The outside came out well. I used a new 9/32″ mill bit to sink clinch nuts for the stovepipe. I have also trimmed up the front of the stovepipe and polished it. Inside I’ve re-fit all the parts for the new thread inserts.
-A top-down shot.
-And NO, I’m not making a 3rd block!
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—25 10 07
This is a biggun. I thought I’d go into more detail because I dusted over a lot of milling sessions.
-A handy trick for when you need to cut circles. I needed some pads for my casefeet, so I sharpened the edge of a pipe to cookie-cut them. I like to sharpen things.
-I found an acordion bottle in the garage, but it’s to big to use. (This is a siphon pump similar to what US Plastics sells.)
-I tore the frame apart so I could finish countersinks and add some clinch nuts. It needed re-sanding and polish after that.
-The bits I bought from Enco came. I had evil plans for the 1″ 90degree countersink bit, but it’s a 5/8 shaft. (They need to add that little fact to the specs…) The idea was I could use it to make 45 degree corner joints, but I only have a 1/2″ chuck.
-I got started on a new northbridge block right away. You might remember that my tile saw left me with a pretty crooked raw block. I needed to first make one side that was 90 degrees to the top and bottom. After that I marked off what I needed to cut off using the new edge as a guide.
-Cutting the side bevels. I lined up the mark to be cut on a block resting on the vise. By using the same technique to line up each cut, I only had to set the drill depth once.
-The second side is even easier. I just rested the block on the bottom of the vice for alignment.
-Basic shape cut. I screwed up and cut too thin a strip near the end. That’s where the chipping came from.
-I hit a snag when I went to use the 1/2″ bit. The double end was too big to fit in the chuck, so I had to grind the bit in half. That took forever, and I think I may have needed some hearing protection.
-The first stage of the channel for the spring clamp.
-To bore the holes, I hand turned the bit. I started to do it with the motor, but it chattered like crazy.
-You may be able to see where I was running the drill here. One hole is smooth, one is chipped.
-More channel cutting. I started with the 1/2″ , then went to 1/4″, then finished with a 1/8″ ball end. The curve in the bottom of the channel will help keep the block from squirming around like the first one did.
-This shot shows why I stepped the channel. Nice fit?
-I got sidtracked and forgot to take pictures. This is the bottom finished. The shallow channels are mostly for looks. I plan on using 1/4″ copper for the baseplate, and I will dig a big hole in the middle of it. I found out earlier the spring was much weaker than I originally thought. I have 1/2″ of spring play at least.
-Expecting the worst, I milled out decorative cuts. -Nothing exploded this time, (although the drill press motor was getting friggin hot at this point. It doesn’t seem to like running all day.)
-Old block, new block…
-So that’s it for today, I gotta sand the sheee it out of this thing.