PaPang Posted July 15, 2009 Author Share Posted July 15, 2009 Now for the bottom sphere. I had always thought about giving the bottom part the same treatment as the top, so I start cutting my ribs from epvc: Ready to start gluing to the bottom sphere with epoxy: Now for the mock up with hardware in the hold: Hmm..looks a little chunky for my taste but to keep it compact, it will have to stay as it it. And what about the "landing gear"? Well I pulled up my provisionals to get an idea and I get this. which I had to visualize doing this: My, my, it does look lanky leg-wise. Well, I still have time to do something, let´s see what! Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PaPang Posted July 17, 2009 Author Share Posted July 17, 2009 I was not sure if it is proper for a forum such as Cooler Masters, but I posted this in my forum and its title was "Grown Men Sometimes Cry with Their Mods". During contest worklogs everything is posted as if it came out as planned without a hitch of any kind. Since modding is only a hobby to me, I´m not afraid to say that the last two days were one screw-up, after another. Firstly, I had planned to place a fiberglass ring to hold the ribs for the bottom sphere together so, I waxed my surface, brushed on a liquid demolding agent, cut my fiberglass webbing and applied my resin: Disaster no. 1. The exothermic reaction caused the heavy polyethylene sheets underneath to warp because of the collateral heat produced by the chemical reaction of the catalyzed resin. This also caused the fiberglass piece to warp when I needed it to be perfectly flat. Out goes a bunch of time and wasted material. What I needed was a perfectly flat, resistant surface such as plywood, metal sheeting or glass as a base. Since my wife is out of town, I pulled back the tablecloth to expose my dinning room table glass top (1.6 m. diameter x 19mm thick) which I understand cost a small fortune to replace. My wife would have screamed "bloody murder" if she had caught me doing fiberglass on the glass top, but as they say in Mexico, "eyes that don´t see, heart that does not feel". So again wash, rinse and dry: Got it again, perfectly flat with the assembly firmly attached to it! I pried it off the glass & except for a few knife scratch marks on the glass, I picked up the mess and put the table cloth back on. I let the resin cure for a couple of hours, so foaming time again. I sprayed the foam on, as usual but the can ran out still lacking two openings to fill. Damn I said, another can just for 2 openings! Since it was late again, I went to sleep cussing about the foam. The next day, disaster no. 2. The foam did not only not rise what it should,plus two alien mutants grew out on each side of the foam! What I surmised was that the foam formed its hard outer shell too fast which did not let it rise to its full extent. It forced itself through whatever opening it could and continued expanding on its own free will. Since the weather was cooperating, the culprit could only be the foam (I do not recommend this godforsaken brand). Since we are in the "Want Not, Waste Not" times/era, I did not go for the other can of foam which I would have used maybe 1/4 of it and the rest would have hardened if not used within 30-45 days after opening. This was also the last part to foam. So what did I do? I grabbed a tube of Mexican Liquid Nails and started pasting in shavings to fill the gaps. I know this will take me a long time, but economy will have been served and hopefully, not make me miss the deadline. So you see, this is a part of a real worklog and yes, grown men do cry. Man-Hours Invested: 10 hours $ Invested: $50.50 mp ------------------ Accumulated Man Hours: 147 hours Accumulated Expense: $1,323.50 mp= $101.80 usd Fitfully Yours and thanks for dropping by, Me Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PaPang Posted July 21, 2009 Author Share Posted July 21, 2009 What is it like to be a Texas A&M "Aggie"? Well besides having a very good academic level, I would say what would shade/colour our personalities about this university is that it teaches you "true grit" (not the movie). You have to have it otherwise you would suffer endless, painful trauma from always getting trounced in sports. Powerhouse Univ. of Texas is our worst enemy (sports-wise) and other universities are copying it, pushing us and our pride to new lower levels. So "true grit" is the only thing that enabled us to attend our school's sports events even though we had that sinking feeling that our butts were going to get kicked. Inspite of getting our teeth kicked in a lot, we just came back looking for more or if lucky, a break and a win. With that in mind, I continued on with the lower end, I shaved the foam, applied my plaster filler to fill voids, primed it to find more defects, cut my fiberglass, and applied resin: Hey-hey. so far, so good! Now to even out the finish: Hmmm..I could've sworn it was smooth after sanding and patching several times, but primed, evenly colored surfaces don't lie. I am supposing that the glued pieces were contracting and expanding faster than the in-place foam of the first attempt, especially against hard surfaces. Another thing learned. A buddy of mine JYMMY4, from, in our forum in Mexico, had seen the "lanky leg" situation of my project, so he suggested this: So I immediately made my mock up to see what it would look like: Well, I'll be.. not that bad! Now to see if it would hold up the weight of the rest. I decided to go for a 3 leg landing gear instead of 4 legs as I see that the setup is strong enough for it-- good I saved some on materials! Yesiree! I'm on a roll again! Now do you remember the section I left open? It occurred to me that no red-blooded, true-blue modder would leave his modded case without atleast a small window to its innards, so... Tada, a window. If you crouch down a little, from the front you can see the heat sink+fan, video card and part of the mobo, all lit up for the occasion (I hadn't thought about that at the beginning but what the heck, more lights!). So there you have it, the mainframe ready for a prissy, paint, leds and finally legs. Still about 40% left of the project to do time-wise, I figure. So much for now. I got a couple of ideas to do in acrylic/plexi/lexan to enhance the bling. Will let you know as soon as I land the ideas. Man Hours Used: 28 hours $ Invested: -0- ---------------------------- Accumulated Man Hours: Accumulated Expense: Thanks for looking & have a great day. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nicky_82uk Posted July 21, 2009 Share Posted July 21, 2009 5.4.3.2.1 lets get ready for take off lol looking good man best of luck Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PaPang Posted July 22, 2009 Author Share Posted July 22, 2009 Thanks bud, lucky I won't be going up against you, he-he, but I'm figuring that your going to give some people a run for their money! Cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nicky_82uk Posted July 22, 2009 Share Posted July 22, 2009 wow i like this alot my alien got a new pimp out ride lol Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PaPang Posted July 22, 2009 Author Share Posted July 22, 2009 Around three of them will fit, hehe! Hey man, is that permanent ink on your tatoo? If it is, you are a space nut like me, great to met you! Cheers Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
nicky_82uk Posted July 23, 2009 Share Posted July 23, 2009 yea i'm into all that stuff also nice to meet you man Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PaPang Posted July 24, 2009 Author Share Posted July 24, 2009 Well, as I promised, here at the components that are going into my mod. I am really sorry that my "sponsor" couldn't come through on the high grade components. I feel I must confess that Cancun, inspite of being renown all over the world, is going through a very low occupation rate for the summer, one of the vacation "peaks" (Xmas & Easter are the others). This is going to hurt us during the "low season" which is comprised of Sept to mid Dec. Most folks here save up during summer for this lean period. My "sponsor" had his reservations for this summer season and, unfortunately, puts him in a tough situation just to get to the next peak in December. Thus, I will have to use older components than I wanted for this project and I hope does not count against me. I want to extend a special thanks to my forum mate, Petoscal, for helping get a couple of components from a supplier in Mexico City and my wife and her credit card for the rest: Yup, there a six great CM parts to integrate, one extra just in case. later and Cheers, Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
PaPang Posted July 28, 2009 Author Share Posted July 28, 2009 Only had a small advance on my project this weekend & seeing the very intense competition happening here, I decided to upgrade my mod with more "bling". However I had to subcontract the cutting of some rather large pieces double laminated acrylic which I felt I could no do properly with my rather rudimentary set of tools on hand. I should have the parts by mid-week to add but since I had to send most of the mod to the shop for measurements, I advanced on the center part of the three parts. Since the 25cm fan is the sole intake fan, I had to add additional ways to exhaust the large amount of fresh air it was going to blow on the entire surface of the motherboard so I thought about using 90° elbow pvc connectors but thinking about scrimping on expenses, I figured I could get the same by using a straight piece with 45° cuts on both ends, so I took one of mock-up landing gear legs thusly: Since pvc tubing is softer than wood, I pulled out part of my carpentry tools to cut the connectors. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.