Riff Tamson (here we go again !)

ALXAndy · 5 May 2017 at 15:02

Afternoon all. Last night when I returned home from holiday the last fitting I needed had arrived. I immediately fitted it and love how the loop arcs in and out. However, all was not as it seemed

I promised my wife I would leave it alone yesterday and unpack etc. So I did all of that and then we watched some TV. I came out into the living room to watch Master Chef and when it was ending my wife came in to tell me she had a bad headache and was going to bed early. Yay, I can fill the loop !!!

Firstly one big mistake I made was that I did not connect the fill port to the intake of the pump. I connected it to the outlet like a complete . This meant that filling it was painfully slow, and for each 30ml of coolant or so I would have to run the pump and tip the rig back and forth to get it where I wanted it.

Then, after about filling it half way disaster struck. I looked down and there was a puddle of coolant around the flow meter

I panicked and immediately tipped the rig to stop the flow of coolant to the flow meter, totally forgetting I had a funnel and intake hose full of coolant. It went absolutely everywhere, and I wrecked two tea towels cleaning it up.

I inspected the flow meter, it was fine. I then looked at the O ring on the last of the fittings I had bought and it was hard and shrunken. Replaced the O rings on both, BOOM no more leaks. However, all told it took me nearly two hours to fill the rig as the flow was backward from the fill port. A complete nightmare.

So that's where I am at. Please excuse the nasty wiring everywhere, I am waiting on parts. Very happy with the loop, but the pump is very noisy so again, waiting on parts. Here is what I have ordered (some is here some not.)

That is to reduce the Acool pump to 7v.

Then, a little fun

1m EL wire with a 2XAA battery pack.

A3 5mm red trans acryl.

And 1.52m x 30cm of black brushed vinyl.

ALXAndy · 14 May 2017 at 14:08

Still waiting on bits from Hong Kong. I did map out the cover panel though.

It wasn't as simple as drawing around the existing one because it was all sorts of levels and thicknesses so it took a while. The two reservoirs are now finish fitted and the cover panel is on and well

I had to cut the bolts down and so on but only took a couple of hours. I now need to make a 5.25 bay cover.

I've also ordered a button I can solder to the EL wire to cycle on/off effects etc.

And some clamps for when I am routing wire guides.

ALXAndy · 15 May 2017 at 16:30

More work done. As the cover panel is the only area I can really sort of show off with I kinda want it to be pretty cool. Hence the EL wire etc. In order to route the EL wire I am going to machine channels into the 5mm acrylic that are exactly 2mm deep. This means that the EL wire will literally go into the acrylic. In order to plot out the route lines I needed a scaled replica in Photoshop. This took me a couple of hours but I got there in the end. So this -

Basically becomes this -

Now. The logo needs to start at a given point and the letters need to be 30mm max (in height, but they are laid on their side). So I add the logo.

That runs into hidden guides. This means that my plotting out of the channel area goes around the design

As you can see here I have already began planning out the reverse.

When I am done that will meet the work bench, clamps ETC.

It's slightly more of a challenge because my plotter can only cut A4. This is larger than that, so I have had to plan all along with A4 dimensions in mind so that I can cut the decal out of a large sheet but still leave enough to cover the piece. I am not decided yet on all brushed black -

Or Candy Metallic Red -

Or a combo of both.

I am 99% going to create a EL based cover for my sound card too. Something like Deblow did with Tron.

ALXAndy · 31 May 2017 at 13:35

Sorry about the gargantuan delays. I was mostly waiting for parts etc. OK so finally yesterday I went to the post office to pick up my router attachment for my Dremel. Wasn't expecting much but was very pleasantly surprised. OK so in this pic you can see some lovely candy red metallic vinyl that has the BP business cut out of it. Also the cut cover.

And in this pic you can see what I was waiting to do. Here I have routed out a 2.5mm wide and 2mm deep set of lines that surround the outside of the cut out logo.

If my calculations are correct then the routed lines should be around 5mm away from the cut outs so you shouldn't see the EL wire at all.

ALXAndy · 11 Jun 2017 at 16:10

It's not dead, honest

As you can see I have made some progress. Now I just need to paint the edges black and paint some of the back black also, so that you can't see tape etc under the letters or logo.