Project: Hush! - updated 26/12/23

Bit of progress - lots of small diamond filing of the resin manifolds (bit boring, no pics), and some sanding and polishing of the g1/4 bsp copper ports.

The case is upside down here - this is the drain port with an incompletely polished 1/4" right angle barbed connector with the 1m of 1/4" ID norprene drain pipe with a largely unsanded little 1/4" ball valve on the end. The norprene will be trimmed to around 35cm or so and the ball valve tucked away when finished.

Videos:

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Photos:

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Baby update. Going to do some needless modding to mount the laptop optical drive, so got what seems the best laptop slot-loading optical drive - a fast BD burner, the panasonic UJ265, since the mounting will be drive-specific so figured best to get a BD burner. Nice to see the drive has the standard push-to-make surface mounted switch seen on the bottom left at the front there (the dark circle with the orange rim with 4 solder points at the corners of a surrounding square - should be able to cold solder to these okay with thermally conductive adhesive solder paint to attach up a remote laptop drive button on the front of the case with a bulgin anti-vandal type button to operate the drive.
:happy:


Panasonic UJ265:

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Laptop drive lid taken off. 4 baby 1.6mm countersunk bolts holding the lid on. Below, 1.25mm drill bits x 2, countersunk 1.25mm centre drill bit, baby 1-6mm diameter tap-wrench with M1.6mm tap in place. Plan is to cut the top to show the drive innards, with a sheet of clear cast plexi, attached with longer m1.6 countersunk bolts I have to account for the plexi thickness.

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Lasers and clear plexi and lots of polished copper... What could go wrong?
 
A man that knows his centre drill from his spot drill :D
Looks like China have copied the old Eclipse tap wrenches.
If it's a burner, the laser is going to be fairly powerful. It should be covered by the disc you're reading/writing and I believe it's a visible light laser. Is it worth checking that the laser doesn't come on to detect a disc when it powers up or is closed? You'd probably get away with an opaque piece covering the laser track. Some stick-on copper foil perhaps? Maybe I'm over-thinking it - I tend to! Interesting idea though :D
 
Cenedd said:
A man that knows his centre drill from his spot drill :D
Looks like China have copied the old Eclipse tap wrenches.
If it's a burner, the laser is going to be fairly powerful. It should be covered by the disc you're reading/writing and I believe it's a visible light laser. Is it worth checking that the laser doesn't come on to detect a disc when it powers up or is closed? You'd probably get away with an opaque piece covering the laser track. Some stick-on copper foil perhaps? Maybe I'm over-thinking it - I tend to! Interesting idea though :D
Click to expand...

I had the same thought - no idea how I could check if the laser's on only when a disc is in - would make sense for that to be the case that is only active with a disc in (which should then limit the reflected laser to the sensor module when a disc is in, so not be a worry).

Also no idea if the embossed circle in the lid does anything mechanical to help the disc get held by the plastic spindle bit, or just embossed down to give rigidity - might need to sacrifice an old dvd laptop drive and remove that bit to check if it still works okay afterwards!

With the laptop drive I had before this one arrived, I figured might be easier to wire up the drive switch where the flexible pcb connects to the drive pcb deep in the drive. There's just no way... The connectors are so tiny and on a plastic covered pcb - "best leave that well alone".
 
Ok, the first thing I'm going to say is don't take what I say on this on faith as I know a little and how to Google. You should definitely do your own research and make sure you are happy that what you're doing is safe.
As far as I can tell, the laser for CD is infrared (invisible), DVD is red (visible) and Blueray is violet/blue (visible). The read lasers for most of these are Class 1 so should be safe. The laser for Blueray may be different but the source of that info is not expert. I can tell you that my DVD writer/BD reader is marked Class 1.....even though a DVD write laser is certainly powerful enough to cause damage....by definition really! A source I found states these are usually Class 3b. One of the things that was mentioned in a post is that when these lasers are harvested to make pointers, baloon poppers etc (which is the field of a lot of this info) they are a straight, collimated beam (all light going in a beam in one direction). When they are in a drive, the optics are very different and are designed to focus the beam to a very tight spot, a short distance away; on the data layer of the disc. As such, beyond that range, the beam will diverge again and become less damaging with distance. I suspect that is why my drive is Class 1 when it contains a Class 3b laser.

You should be able to see the beams of the laser since most (except CD read but that's low enough power anyway) are visible colours. You can't see the beam unless you look into it or it scatters. DON'T look into the beam and don't put something reflective in its path but if you spray something in the beam, it'll scatter the light (like smoke in a disco) so you can see its presence. That's probably the best way to see if the drive fires a laser when there's no disc present. It sounds like a lot do in order to see if there's a disc there or not - but it'll be a read laser so lower power.

Personally I think I'd play it safe and shield the plexi where the laser head moves. You can get "adhesive copper foil" in rolls (search your favourite suppliers) in various lengths and widths. Only thinking copper foil since it'll go with the copper of the rads.
 
Cenedd said:
Ok, the first thing I'm going to say is don't take what I say on this on faith as I know a little and how to Google. You should definitely do your own research and make sure you are happy that what you're doing is safe.
As far as I can tell, the laser for CD is infrared (invisible), DVD is red (visible) and Blueray is violet/blue (visible). The read lasers for most of these are Class 1 so should be safe. The laser for Blueray may be different but the source of that info is not expert. I can tell you that my DVD writer/BD reader is marked Class 1.....even though a DVD write laser is certainly powerful enough to cause damage....by definition really! A source I found states these are usually Class 3b. One of the things that was mentioned in a post is that when these lasers are harvested to make pointers, baloon poppers etc (which is the field of a lot of this info) they are a straight, collimated beam (all light going in a beam in one direction). When they are in a drive, the optics are very different and are designed to focus the beam to a very tight spot, a short distance away; on the data layer of the disc. As such, beyond that range, the beam will diverge again and become less damaging with distance. I suspect that is why my drive is Class 1 when it contains a Class 3b laser.

You should be able to see the beams of the laser since most (except CD read but that's low enough power anyway) are visible colours. You can't see the beam unless you look into it or it scatters. DON'T look into the beam and don't put something reflective in its path but if you spray something in the beam, it'll scatter the light (like smoke in a disco) so you can see its presence. That's probably the best way to see if the drive fires a laser when there's no disc present. It sounds like a lot do in order to see if there's a disc there or not - but it'll be a read laser so lower power.

Personally I think I'd play it safe and shield the plexi where the laser head moves. You can get "adhesive copper foil" in rolls (search your favourite suppliers) in various lengths and widths. Only thinking copper foil since it'll go with the copper of the rads.
Click to expand...
Perhaps not surprisingly, I have a massive 30cm x 5m roll of 0.15mm thick copper
 
I figured you'd have something like that!
Do you by chance have a mill or a router? If so, you could recess the area to be foiled so it's flush and there isn't a lip to get peeled back.
 
Small update - made a sanding jig for the resin manifold boxes - they're sanded down, but even with sanding with large plate metal with sandpaper glued to it, it's difficult to get everything exactly square, what with copper ports in the way etc, so I made a thick steel jig that would clamp around to give a perfectly flat guide that I can sand down to to give flat and square resin plenums. Should help the walnut veneer to adhere better and stop delamination hopefully!

Bits used - some 3mm thick steel 21mm(iirc) x 500mm equal angle section x 2, centre drill with 3.2mm centre drill, some equal aluminium blocks lying around to mount the steel angle section, clamps to clamp the 2 bits of steel angle together (the steel angle will clamp at both sides of the resin to give a flat plane to sand down to) , m4 tap.

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Clamped in place (very fiddly to clamp it all in place!), drilled and tapped;

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One side of the jig/sanding guide-guard then needed cutting down to accommodate where all the copper pipes go through. This killed a large dremel diamond cutting disc and about a dozen grinding discs. Should hold up to a bit of inadvertent sanding when used as a sanding guide I guess!

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Finished! Held with 2 m4 bolts, both sides tapped in m4 and level.

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Didn't look that fiddly to clamp...but then I spotted that you have both parts clamped back to back so the holes line up such that the top surfaces are flat and parallel to each other. Have you come across Kant Twist clamps? Very useful for that sort of thing.

I'll try to avoid making presumptions about your budget of the amount of space you have available - obviously a really large, heavy, expensive milling machine running on 3 phase power is the 'best' way of doing it...but being more realistic :D A portaband is a really good way of cutting that relief out of the angle. I bought the Milwaukee Deep Cut when I was faced with having to hacksaw through a 4" aluminium round bar! There are smaller ones though and even 12 or 18V battery operated versions now. Really useful but a bit of an outlay. Without that, I'd chain-drill it. Drill holes as close together as you can in a line to take out as much of the material as possible or at least to make close to a slot as possible along the line you eant to cut. Then you just have to use the Dremel to link the holes rather than cut all the way through - a hacksaw would probably work as well too if your holes are fairly close.
 
Cenedd said:
Didn't look that fiddly to clamp...but then I spotted that you have both parts clamped back to back so the holes line up such that the top surfaces are flat and parallel to each other. Have you come across Kant Twist clamps? Very useful for that sort of thing.

I'll try to avoid making presumptions about your budget of the amount of space you have available - obviously a really large, heavy, expensive milling machine running on 3 phase power is the 'best' way of doing it...but being more realistic :D A portaband is a really good way of cutting that relief out of the angle. I bought the Milwaukee Deep Cut when I was faced with having to hacksaw through a 4" aluminium round bar! There are smaller ones though and even 12 or 18V battery operated versions now. Really useful but a bit of an outlay. Without that, I'd chain-drill it. Drill holes as close together as you can in a line to take out as much of the material as possible or at least to make close to a slot as possible along the line you eant to cut. Then you just have to use the Dremel to link the holes rather than cut all the way through - a hacksaw would probably work as well too if your holes are fairly close.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the suggestion, though it's all done and dusted now (bad dremel grinding disc pun very much intended).
 
Did some sanding on the resin boxes/manifolds using the steel guide I made, using rotary sanding discs on a drill.

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Quick mockup of the veneer, held down with sockets and spanner etc:

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3rd coat of tung oil to walnut veneer test pieces - left it on quite wet this time - finally was drying after a week, had only some patches still wet. Got inpatient, put in the sun to help the final bit of drying. Came back 2 hours later and the final wet bits of tung oil had turned into these weird gummy rubbery bits on the surface. Will need to sand down this gunk and apply more. It looks light here, but this photo is taken outside on a sunny day - indoors the tone is darker. Colour looks good though, but still no depth to the finish yet when dry.

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And finally, received some trinkets and baubles in the mail... Shiny!

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Thanks for reading.
 
Sadly it seems even the newest 700w passive PSUs are not enough to deal with GPU power spikes, so ordered a corsair AX1600i PSU - 95-96% efficient between 1000-500w power draw and fan stays off below 650w power consumption, with an adjustable fan profile via micro-USB hook up and software.

Just need to decide whether to have it mounted internally (like this previous update - this is viewed from the back of the case, psu would sit with fan facing down over the lower radiator fins at the back - the alternative would be to mount the PSU outside on the back panel here above the psu hole at the bottom there (and that PSU hole covered with a veneered panel with PSU cable pass-through holes...)

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It would block radiator airflow if it can run completely fanless, would aid cooling a little if the fan comes on at high loads), or attached to the back of the case (adding ~80mm to the back, which is needed to allow air to get to the case anyhow). Veering towards back-mounting atm - will give a very clean look inside the case with just a few cables from the PSU routed inside...

Also ordered an EK D5 PWM...
 
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