(In Win 901) Asteria II: Rearmoured

Smffy · 10 Sep 2016 at 10:05

Almost forgot about this until you posted in my other thread! You sure that vinyl isn't going to part ways? In my experience with it even the case ambient and hot air blowing might cause it to start coming away.

Good way to test would be pointing a hair drier at it from a decent distance and warming it up, if not I would get some decent matt paint. Board looks great without all the kiddy colours though!

LePhuronn · 10 Sep 2016 at 11:08

Smffy said:
Almost forgot about this until you posted in my other thread! You sure that vinyl isn't going to part ways? In my experience with it even the case ambient and hot air blowing might cause it to start coming away.

Good way to test would be pointing a hair drier at it from a decent distance and warming it up, if not I would get some decent matt paint. Board looks great without all the kiddy colours though!

I've not posted an update in weeks so I'm pretty sure everybody's forgotten about this

had a hold up on building the material bender I need so things stalled a bit, and then I smashed my wrist up.

I'm also not 100% sure the vinyl will stay when everything's built up, but so far it seems OK. The heatsinks don't get hot really and I've wafted the heatgun into a box with the bits in to simulate a hot environment and we're good at this point.

But yeah, paint will be the backup plan.

Cenedd · 10 Sep 2016 at 11:28

Not forgotten about this project. Checked in the other day to see if your wrist had recovered yet. How's that going?

LePhuronn · 10 Sep 2016 at 12:05

Wrist is improving, cheers Cenedd. It's slower than I'd like because I'm not properly resting it (insanity at work so it's hard to take actual time off right now), but I'm getting there.

Bender material should be arriving in the week (MDF and door hinges FTW), but the weather is a bit grim so I can't do much chopping if my wrist is up to it, away the weekend so hopefully I can make up the bender next week and, at the very least, get the acrylic I/O shroud and GPU sorted.

And then the aluminium work begins...

Smffy · 10 Sep 2016 at 13:05

LePhuronn said:
I'm also not 100% sure the vinyl will stay when everything's built up, but so far it seems OK. The heatsinks don't get hot really and I've wafted the heatgun into a box with the bits in to simulate a hot environment and we're good at this point.

But yeah, paint will be the backup plan.

Cool, the bits that might become an obvious problem is over the lettering. Even if you don't have it trying to peel off what can happen is a sort of one bubble forming which will look a bit off.

We shall see, good thing with vinyl is that its easy to remove and refit.

LePhuronn · 12 Sep 2016 at 16:19

Smffy said:
Cool, the bits that might become an obvious problem is over the lettering. Even if you don't have it trying to peel off what can happen is a sort of one bubble forming which will look a bit off.

Kinda had that problem already with the daughterboard heatsink - the Republic of Games text is a bubble because it was a bit too fine to retain shape when cooling. I can kinda live with it because it's small and you won't see it, but if the ROG eye or other logo puffs up it's look rubbish.

So far so good though, but we'll see when I put the board through a pre-build water test

Cenedd · 18 Sep 2016 at 11:00

How's it going? Do we need to send you some hand-relief? (That's the correct term, right?

)
Soft tissue injuries can be a pain. Did my ankle in once and it would have been fixed much quicker if the bone had broken instead. You'll have to drink your 'pain relief' with the other hand.

LePhuronn · 18 Sep 2016 at 21:30

I'm sure hand relief is the correct term to somebody

I'm giving the wrist another week before I think about fixing/replacing the bike and getting back on it, which also means I'm reticent to start sawing my MDF - it's only a couple of cuts in 18mm thick material, but I'm not investing in power tools for a one-off job, so it's all about a hand saw, and my grip's a bit weak.

I'm annoyed because this sheet bender is the big hold-up - need it primarily for the aluminium work, but there's some acrylic I want to do too. Without the bender everything is held up, and without a wrist I can't build the damn bender.

I may see if I can sort out the GPU though - don't need 2 hands to play with chemicals

Cenedd · 19 Sep 2016 at 08:21

No, just to mop them up if you're klutzy enough to spill them.....or pump them all over your monitor screen *cough*

LePhuronn · 19 Sep 2016 at 12:37

faceman123 · 19 Sep 2016 at 14:05

looking nice

LePhuronn · 24 Sep 2016 at 15:10

I'm doing something, honest!

Wrist is healed, but now lacking strength. Strapped up I can just about cut some MDF. OK, it's not a computer, but it is an integral part to the project.

"One-off job" he said. "No need to buy a circular saw" he said. Yet when your pre-cut MDF isn't squared up properly like you thought it was, a dodgy wrist isn't helpful when you're trying to get some right angles!

Cenedd · 24 Sep 2016 at 17:31

If only there was an exercise renowned for strengthening your wrist!

Assuming the steel rule is square, that edge is shockingly un-square. Like they say: if you want something done properly...!

These days you can get circular saws for pretty much one use money. Better blade is an upgrade.

Mind the dust off MDF it's rumoured to be the next asbestos. I think it's banned in (parts of?) the US and they wouldn't cut it last time I was looking to buy some.

LePhuronn · 24 Sep 2016 at 17:43

Just noticed that pic's a bit misleading!

It's not actually square to the workbench and the camera angle makes it look worse. The steel rule is a guide for me to shave a bit off the right edge so it's square with the top edge. But even so I drew up square edges on the 4 sheets I have and some were out by a good chunk, the worst one be 3mm difference (width of material 300mm, I'll leave you to work out the angle

)

As long as I have a straight edge on 2 pieces to mate together, and at least a square adjacent edge to make accurate measurements for the hinges and bolts then I'm all good.

And yeah, MDF dust is literally a killer. Had the trusty face mask on, although sawing with a gammy wrist AND steamed glasses is more hassle than it's worth.

The sheets and blocks are all chopped up and accurate enough, resting the wrist now and marking out my guide holes for screwing. Hopefully I'll finish this up tomorrow.

Oh, and the laser cutting has been paid for and is underway

LePhuronn · 17 Oct 2016 at 20:04

TEASER SHOTS!!

Look what I just collected from the awesome guys at Congleton Engineering...

Lots of cleaning to do, I need to true up the sheet bender because it's a bit off and do some test runs with some scrap alu, but the core stuff has finally arrived.

Quite excited now to get going properly

Cenedd · 17 Oct 2016 at 22:14

<dodgy Australian accent> Can you tell what it is yet?! </das>
Sorry, I'll get mi coat!
Looks like they done a nice job though. Looking forward to seeing it after tab A goes into slot B.

LePhuronn · 17 Oct 2016 at 23:21

That's not all of it, and I have a spare set of everything because these guys are so amazingly priced I didn't hit their minimum charge!

LePhuronn · 23 Oct 2016 at 22:15

Hi all, I have a little update for you.

It took a while to get the sheet bender repeatedly accurate and get the bend radius of my aluminium work down to where it should be, but now it's good to go!

So I've folded some plastic instead

I/O shroud shape, cut by hand in 1.5mm PETG sheet

Took a while to get that I will admit. Looks like my wrist is still a bit wonky to get accurate cuts with a coping saw, so I went for neverending score, cut and snap with a sharp knife. Got there in the end though.

After a bit of cleanup, I did a quick frosting job on a portion of what will be the top face for an experiment I'll mention shortly

It's not perfect, but will only have tiny amount of it showing so should be fine. Circular motions with 100 grit paper for a few minutes on both sides of the piece, then another couple of minutes with 400 grit to smooth it up. Didn't bother to wet sand this as it's only small.

Then got the heat gun out and folded it all up. The front face was put into my sheet bender for a nice, tight edge, and the curved ends were done over the handle of an exacto knife for a 5mm radius, or thereabouts.

Took a few attempts to get it all correct and relatively straight, but I got so excited at finishing it I didn't take a picture of the untreated item and went straight into a quick test wrap.

Brushed black aluminium effect. I wanted to replicate the hairline brushing on EVGA's shrouds, but wasn't sure if it'd be too much against the matte black I've used on the motherboard...

Now THAT is a Black Edition motherboard. Excuse the wonky placement and the dodgy Alphacool M3 copper screws!

It's not perfect but the wrap covers a multitude of sins, plus it'll be painted to cover any exposed PETG when the wrap is done properly.

Hopefully my little enhancement will pan out: backlit logo

Thanks for looking!

Cenedd · 24 Oct 2016 at 09:33

Now that's what I call Folding @Home!
Nice. Impressive but of home-manufacure!

LePhuronn · 24 Oct 2016 at 11:20

Cheers dude, I'm quite happy with it so far. At least I've confirmed the brushed black works. Now for fiddly hand cutting of lettering in vinyl because I don't have a plotter.

As an aside, working with PETG for this sheet has been a godsend given how many mistakes and slips I made - was so easy to smash some heat over and just sandwich things between 2 boards to straighten things back up and try again.

But that experience also means I'm not using PETG for the tubing and staying with acrylic since I don't like the idea of tubing that flexible when fitted up.