Modular.

When you hear the first "crunch" and you see the GPU is pulling the slot off the board, you panic a little bit. When you hear the second "crunch" as you try to reseat the card in the slot, you stop breathing a little bit.

The absolute kicker is this board is my server and is to be used in a second project which involves a GPU in a super small case, so trashing the PCIe slot is a real issue. Electrically everything still works for 8x connections, but all the sense and ground pins up to 15 lanes are still intact, so the board tries to engage all 16 lanes and fails. So given I have the perfect length riser cable for what I need with no room for alternatives, the options are either to physically cut the riser down to a 8x connector or to remove the excess pins on the board to make it mechanically an 8x slot.

The board earmarked for the 3rd project is also very twitchy, so the replacement board I got for the server project might now go on the 3rd build.

Not been fun!
 
Update 33 "No Surprises".

Nothing goes unnoticed. Like how when I drilled and countered into the GPU to mount it to the back plate I hit the LED channel. I knew that was going to happen. It was just a casualty of war.

As such I knew I was always going to make a piece to go over it any way. As the bottom has now become the top.

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And a handshake of carbon monoxide.

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It took a while. I now have one decorative piece left to make, but it needs changing up a bit so that it doesn't take 3 hours. It's a bit fine, so needs the text fattening up a bit so that it can be done faster.

I also need to cut many more support braces (triangles) out of white.

And yes, those green marks will be gone. I have set aside a few days for finishing work.


Ross - dude this thing creaks and pops like you wouldn't believe. It's bloody terrifying !
 
Update 35 - "My Iron Lung".

So there was no more putting it off. Weather is bright but it is incredibly damp out there, but I was tired of thinking about it. So I started work on the PSU.

First job was to sand it all very well to give it a key. Now the etch should help, but yeah if it falls off when I am assembling it I won't have to blame myself I can just gleefully blame the paint.

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I waited for it to off gas for as long as I dared and then brought it in. It is now baking in front of the radiator.

Now I almost shot primer over the halo. However, again my conscience was there to nag me. "Don't leave the open wire channel as you don't have wires coming out, and don't leave the Phanteks logos on the ends either."

Sigh.

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You can see who won.
 
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Update 35.5 "A total waste of time".

OK so TIL that JB quick will still very likely take 24 hours to harden as it can. When I say hard I mean rock hard. Whilst most people will be familiar with it for bodging things that you shouldn't bodge I have found it to make by far the best method of filling metal.

As mentioned when the sun is out I am beating my body to death doing bike restorations. And, many of them arrive to me like this.

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See it? bottom left. That's bondo, and you may as well put bubblegum in there. So I tend to do it properly.

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Because after 24 hours it turns to rock. Sanding it is almost a waste of time, you must bust out the files. Oh and in case you were wondering after about two weeks it ends up like this.

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So this is why I use JB. Now usually you leave it for about 12 hours, then you can do this.

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Or rather, carve at it with a blade. Because once it turns into almost metal filing it is bloody hard work. I do have a pin hole, but then no one ever got away with one coat of filler any way unless they tend to like divots.

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So once it has cured fully I will go at it again. I also carved down the edges too.

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And here are a lot of wires.

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Update 36 - "Yawn".

So the weather is total poo. Like, not even 30 mins to dash outside and put some yellow base coat down ffs.

So earlier I filed out the frame.

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But can't put primer on. I then cut a dust frame out of "3mm" and learned that when they say 3mm it is more like 3.5-4mm. So, to save me another hour of filing next time I am goinig to vernier the bloody thing.

I then found out it is too big, as the side needs to butt up against it. FFS. So I need to machine one side down by about 4mm.

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Update 38 - Tool talk.

The cordless Dremel arrived today. Thanks Gareth !

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I have ordered the bed upgrade which doubles the axis in height from 18cm to "40" but will cut better at 36c or under.

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Machine needs a good clean also, so that will happen on Friday when it arrives before I fit it. I also got a much larger spoilboard.

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Which will make it a much more capable and serious machine.

My screwdriver set is dying too. One of the handles on the small one has cracked and the large one has an issue with the bit holder. So, I got a more expensive set.

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LePhuronn said:
Yep, it's yellow alright...
Click to expand...

Not done yet. Flake and FX to come. That is just the base.

So, I got some more done. So for update 40 here goes....

The tile cutter is no good. The blade is far too thick and the bed isn't big enough. I will give that to my brother. Instead I went and got out my old 20mm diamond coated blade. I then used Gareth's Dremel until it literally stopped dead. The battery goes like instantly. So I put that blade in my cacky one and finished the cut.

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I need to machine more white supports. Will do that tomorrow. What I didn't say was that basically every front and rear join is getting a cover panel. But these will serve two functions. One, to get rid of any crap edges and saw marks but also to act as a channel for the top to drop into.

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Those are 20mm high by 297 wide. So the whole width of the case. 15mm will be joined to the front (top and bottom edges) with 5mm overhang (none on the fixed bottom obs 'cause it's already there). They read from My Iron Lung, top to bottom (one verse).

I ordered an A4 for this about 6 days back. Was less than £5.
 
Update 41 - "Yesterday sucked".

It was just going to be one of those days again. No matter what I did it was going to go crap.

So I cut the front, filed the edge and then attached it to the bottom and back. And as soon as the glue took the headaches began. You could not even move it an inch before joints started to break. Mostly the ones on the motherboard tray. I would glue them up, wait for it to set again after scraping all of the old glue off, then "pop" it would go again. At this point I realised I had no other option that to F around drilling and tapping tons to get the top on. And that went crap too. The bit was getting hot, and filling the holes with molten acrylic. So the ones I did get to tap are now too big for some reason. However, they do act as pins for the moment.

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I stopped there on the back.

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I also had *another* issue where not one of my 50 odd screwdriver fittings seem to fit those gold bolts I bought from China ffs. So not one of them is remotely tight or home.

However, it did allow me to pick the F-ing thing up without anything else snapping off, so there is that.

I then sulked after calling it all sorts of loud names, then came up with an idea. See, I did not order plastic weld because it was with the postal service. Which meant a month wait. I thought Superglue would work, lesson learned it doesn't and it is not strong enough. So, I have ordered some plastic weld now and the parts in the post before, namely these...

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Will be welded across the bottom at both ends. And screwed down with M3. For the top? I will weld them to the ends of the top, so when the top goes down they hold it there and then I will use M3 again to fasten the top on. So I can actually get a good cut and tap, and a good bite on the bolts. Because M2 is sweaty nut sack.

Once again, the day after (which is today) went killer. The bed upgrade and new spoil board arrived.

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And all went well. The A4 yellow 5mm I ordered about two days back arrived, so it seems things are finally going back to normal now they all had Christmas off, and so did the transparent yellow for the window after nearly three F-ing weeks.

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Now let's go back to the PSU for a bit. The paint came out a lot better than I thought. Like I said, yesterday I was in a really foul mood. I now have *another* bloody cold and that means I can't see my uncle which I now consider to be extremely precious visits. As I don't know if I will get another one.

I ordered a A5 of 3M vinyl. Not that fake ass crap that every one sells for about 99p for an A4, but the REAL stuff. Because it is absolutely light years ahead of all of that rubbish that won't even stick.

I got out my old friend.

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The first modding tool I ever bought. And cut.

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As you can see I also found a use for that spoil board I bought only three weeks ago. "Let's not wreck any more dinner trays again".

So all was well that ends well.
 
"Just for chits and giggles".

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So today my wee Oreck stopped picking anything up. And that's a problem, as I love to work clean. Like, spotless clean.

Problem is I only have one bag left, and they are pretty expensive. About two quid a bag. And given all I had sucked into it was acrylic snow I decided to empty it out inside a rubbish bag.

I wonder how long you could walk down the street carrying that before you got arrested lol.
 
Heat will be your enemy when you're drilling small holes in acrylic. You have to use high rpm for a small drill but doing so melts the acrylic. There may be a combination of speeds (rpm - lower) and feeds (downforce in this case - higher) that gets you a nice hole without melting or you may snap the bit.
There are two things you could try - either now or for future use.
For small holes like this you could try either an Archimedes drill or a pin vise and drill it by hand. It would let you use much slower rpm and literally cut the hole rather than more sort or abrade it.
The other option would be to drill undersize and then ream it (slower rpm and not removing much material) to size getting rid of the melted bits in the process. You may even be able to do similarly with drills by piloting it and then drill to final size if you can get a smaller drill in first. Less material being removed should result in less heat and you can let it cool (or wet it even) between.
 
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