[Intermediate] "Up and Away" - Page 3

Now that the mold is ready, we have to choose the kind of matting that will be used. According to the use that the final piece will be subjected, is the choice of matting to use. Here are the 3 types I use up to now. From left ot right:



7 1/2 oz. Fiberglass cloth-Used in boats and heavy duty stuff.

Fiberglass "veil"-Woven light weight cloth for light use (maybe .25-.50 oz.?).

1 1/2 oz. Fiberglass mat-The one for general use.

I roughly calculated a square of matting to use and put it inside the mold. Of course it bunched up because of the spherical shape of the mold.



I pulled the square out and made 8 wedge like slits so that the edges would overlap. Placing this inside the mold, I trim off all the excess with a scissor.



Next goes the catalyzed resin (2% mek catalyst to a given amount of resin) which is poured in by parts, smeared with brush and then "poked" into the mat with sharp jabs of the brush. This forces the resin into the matting and as it soaks in, the clear spots disappear (air) and takes a uniform tone.



To further ensure that the resin is soaked into the matting and evenly spread, I bought a barrel roller which is passed over the previously soaked matting until one is sure that all is pressed down. This also prevents fiberglass "hair licks" which stand up over the surface and once dry are sometimes sharp enough to cut your skin. Now the inside will be way smoother and I will avoid a lot of tiresome sanding.



About an hour later, when the fiberglass is beginning to stiffen but no completely. I carve off all the excess with a sharp knife along the edge. This will help not having to use a Dremel with a cutting disk to trim off edges which produces the "itching powder" that fiberglass is famous for.



Now to let the piece cure overnight so that it will as strong as possible to demold it. Before hitting the sack, I prepared my plastic demolding wedges from an old plastic spatula getting five 1" strips from it. These will be used to separate the piece from the mold without damaging it too much as opposed to using metal wedges like screwdrivers, spatulas, chisels, etc.



In the States, these plastic wedges are sold as kits really cheap, but over here you have to invent them from whatever you have on hand because no one carries them in stock. Oh well, the less you have ready-made, the more ingenious you become, hehe.

Man Hours Used: 3
$ Invested: $66mn for the roller and $96mn for a PVC bushing = $12.96 usd.
-----------------
Acc. M.H.: 48
Acc. $ Used: $256.28 usd

Cheers and Saludos

Unmolding:

In spite of separating the piece from the mold and injecting water to the PVA, the piece would not come out. I had to get rougher so I stood the mold on its side and through the hole in the middle of the mold, I tapped on the piece (fully cured of course) with a dowel and a pliers.



After a couple of hundred taps, I managed to yank the piece out with the pliers, yay!



Checking the mold, there were a half dozen gauges made by the thicker plastic wedges, sigh...



Cleaning up the fiberglass piece, time for a strength test. I placed a 20 l. bottle of water on top of it (around 50lbs.)



Back to the mold, I applied putty again to fill the gauges and then a couple of coats of varnish. Now to figure out how to design the bottom.



The piece goes to finishing, first a couple of sanded hands of putty, and finally primer to start cutting in the details that it will have.





While I made the calculations for the bottom half, I began to modify the bushing that will have on one end an 80mm fan and on the other, a 140mm led fan. Damn this thing is thick! I first cut with the Dremel the part that was not necessary and finished it with a hack saw. A large kitchen knife was called to duty to finish separating the job.











Back to the mold now. I calculated I needed a 29.5cm floor, so I pulled out a scrap of poster board, here tracing it.



So much for the moment.

Man Hours Used: 16
$ Invested: a gallon of Paint thinner $$60mn and a couple of cans of paint $46.60mn=$8.52usd
-----------
Acc. M.H.: 64
Acc. $ Used: $264.80 usd


Cheers and Saludos

Second half of the case.

Finished the floor and placed it inside the mold, this was then leveled, the center cut out and mounted on top of 2 cans of tuna (the desired height from the bottom), sealed with hot melt and the seam finished off with clay/plastilene/plasticene.









Prepared the surfaces with 3 hands of wax, and about 5 coats of PVA. Then rinse, wash and wring with the fiberglass and resin.This time I used the heavy woven fiberglass cloth. Here the part out of the mold.



Here are the two halves. They don't match up now, requiring some more measurements and cuts with the Dremel which will take a while.



While the resin cured, I found and printed out the stars that go on the top half. There are a bunch on the web so there is no problem finding one that will fit your own tastes, hehe.



I bought a plastic drain assembly at Home Depot which fit nicely to my bushing for the fans. I sanded down an edge of the drain and cut some excess off the bushing. I still need to open the end of the drain but will do so when I find the piece of 3" tubing which fits over the end of the drain and exits the end of the balloon.





Man Hours Used: 8
$ Invested: $63mn for the drain and $21.50 for the levels=$6.80usd
-------------------
Acc. M.H.: 72
Acc $ Used: $271.60uds

Cheers and Saludos

Now that I have the two basic halves of the "case", time to "fix" them. All fiberglass pieces made from a mold have to be finished so these past days have been dedicated to that.

First to level out the mating edges. I did this with 3 sheets of 100 grit sandpaper tacked to a flat surface such a a plywood square I used. I then spun the piece and saw that every 100 turns, I would sand off 1mm., so.... spin, spin and spin--for both halves.





One day was dedicated to "leveling" and I know, it was a long time but the thing with these pieces is that they are spherical so there is no easy way out.

Mobo Base)

Time to tend to the mobo base and the video card holder. I grabbed my old computer part and cut the mobo tray down to size.





Ok, it fits. Screwing the mini-itx motherboard to the tray and the video card, things are looking fine.



Now I need a base to hold the mobo upside down and to serve as a floor for the psu and hdd that go on top. I took a piece of 3mm styrene, traced, cut and bent it to shape. I then added bracing to firm it up.



And here it is:



Here is how it looks like with the psu, a 600 w. Atx Cooler Master. It is way too much for this system so I think I will use a 400 w. Silen-x micro-atx psu instead. Anyways, it is good to know that a full sized psu will fit this project, just in case, hehe.



I will later on, screw the assembly in when I am done with the outer casings.

Fixing the outer "shells")

I found out that although I leveled the floor of the bottom half, the table had slipped to one side with the weight of the mold and I ended up not having an even bottom half with one of the sides being higher than the other by around 1/2". I could fudge it but in the end would be visible to I had to either fix the piece or make a new one. The last demolding screwed up the mold a lot and repairing it would have been a good chunk of time so I chose to repair the piece, sigh...

I used a metal rim to even out the sides and then filled it in again with new fiberglass. This really took me a long time but got it done after experimenting a couple of days.



I fixed up the surface with a local Bondo and sanded it down once dry.





Well, now it looks way better!

(to be continued)
Edited by Papang - 6/9/10 at 1:19pm

Damn, I am sure I had a pic of the halves fixed, but you can see it a little later on.

Now to work on the "cone" or where the balloon puckers up at the bottom. I decided on using a system I had used before on another project: ribs and expandable foam to serve as a base for laying the fiberglass. The foam serves as a base so that the cone looks rounder, if not with just the ribs, the fiberglass will be tricky to lay and will look flat.

First to fix the inside base to the bottom of what would be the case.



I fiberglassed it in so that it would not move. I didn't add any more fasteners as when I fiberglass the cone in, it will not budge.

Now the rest.


An extension from 3" pvc tubing. I just needed 20 cms and they sold me a whole meter, well more left-overs, sigh..!



In the last pic, I cut out a cardboard template which took me a long time because of all the little turns and sides of the inside tube and adapters. I then traced and cut the ribs from 3mm styrene.



This took a while because each rib was made individually to take into account all the little errors made with the tube and adapter. Some are a little longer and or wider than the other so that is why they are numbered and keyed.

Time for book keeping before I forget.

Man Hours Used: 38 hours
$ Invested: 1 liter of resin & catalizer $67 + 3 sheets of 100 grit sandpaper $22 + 50 X50cm piece of styrene $50 + small tube of PVC glue $22 + 1m. of 3" pvc tubing $20 + 1 can of red spray paint $33 + 250ml of plaster filler (methylan) $44=258mn or $20.65usd
-----------------------
Acc. M.H.: 110
Acc. $ Used: $292.25

Cheers and Saludos
Edited by Papang - 6/9/10 at 1:21pm

Late last night, I figured that I should push as far ahead as possible and placed and fixed the ribs to the bottom of the case. These were epoxied in where the keys are and the rest was held in place with hot melt.



Next up was to fill in the voids with expandable foam which was the only way to fill in the wacky spaces without too much pain. Here it is after filling in and almost using up the can, maybe it took me around 5 min. and it looked like this:



After a half hour which according to the can indications is where the expansion stops:



Damn I thought, I'll need another one because it did not expand 3-4X as promised and there were a lot of empty spaces. Since it was around 1 A.M., I called it day and was thinking of going the next day to the hardware store for another can of foam.

Upon waking up, I found this:



Well, hot diggety! It expanded further during the night and with the little I had left in the can I filled the few holes that were left, good enough to finish this stage off, hehe.
Now I need to shave the excess off to a rough approximation of the shape I need.





I figure that around 1/3 goes to the trash can, but that is to be expected.

Now to give the final shape with the detail sander:





Being sort of anal, I will go over it again with a sand block by hand. Once done to satisfaction, I filled in the little holes with a plaster filler (Metylan used her but any brand is ok) and have to wait 1-5 hours for it to dry, the reason for me posting now.



Acc. Man Hours: 5
$ Invested: -0-
------------------
Acc. M. H.: 115
Acc $ Used: $292.25 usd

This was a really short post, hehe!

Cheers and Saludos
Edited by Papang - 5/27/10 at 10:03am

After mid-day, the weather changed and started to sprinkle which is bad news for recently shaved expanded foam. The humidity in the air makes it shrink and expand like crazy which resulted that a rather flat surface started to have a bunch of dips and hills that would not ordinarily happen. I must have filled and sanded the cone surface atleast 3 times but it would refuse to stay flat, sigh... So...I gave it one last pass (also ran out of filler) so this was it. I let it dry an hour then sprayed the surface with a primer to stop humidity exchange:



After a half an hour, enough for the primer to air dry, I immediately applied my fiberglass. One coat should be enough for this area as it has firm backing to help hold its shape. There, we have a finished bottom shell. Adding the top dome we have the desired "ice cream cone" or tear drop shape.


Time to let this firm up overnight.

Man Hours Used: 4
$ Invested: -0-
--------------
Acc. M.H.: 119
Acc. $ Used: $292.50usd

Cheers and Saludos
Edited by Papang - 5/18/10 at 2:43pm

I dedicated my last working day (temporarily leaving the country for a couple of weeks) to trying to fix the cone which now has a firm surface to fix, the new fiberglass shell. This of course had all kinds of undulations from the foam underneath but at least if I fix it, it will stay fixed!

First a couple of thick layers of a local type of Bondo to fill in all the the defects and give it it's basic shape.



I sanded it down and repeated the process 3 more times. I think this is enough, the rest will have to be fixed with automotive putty.







Once the bondo was sanded down, 3 coats of putty with its respective sanding downs. First 280, then 500 then 1000 grits.



These are the last photos for now with the "case shell" basically done and primed. I am around 50-60% finished to what I have planned to put into the project. The total hours should hit between 200 and 300 man-hours which is the amount of time needed to finish a mod good enough for OCN!





See you again shortly!

Man Hours Used: 7
$ Invested: $50mn for more putty=$4 usd
---------
Acc. M.H.: 126
Acc. $ Used: $296.50usd

Cheers and Saludos
Edited by Papang - 5/27/10 at 10:06am

A little off topic, but this is to show I was not joshing, I AM in the USA attending my son's graduation for his Masters in Science. Here is the pic of the 21st of May, the graduation date:



Yay, graduated and just hopping he finds a job!

Cheers and will be back shortly
Edited by Papang - 5/26/10 at 8:25am

Just because I'm not home doesn't mean I can't update my thread, hehe. My son turned over the stuff I bought on-line for the project so here it is:

Water Cooling)

I was having a hard time deciding what WCing sytem to install on my mod, basically due to it being sort of small and worst, round. No Swiftech full sized, triple loop systems here so I started looking more closely at cooling kits. I know that they are not the greatest to get record-breaking overclocks but I just had to give it a shot, this being my first water cooling effort ever. Checking the net, I looked for reviews from reputable sites and guess what, I found what I needed AGAIN from a review done here at OCN!

I chose the Coolit ECO ALC which edged out the Corsair H50 in the review (I suppose the reviewer knew what he was doing) and ordered it from Amazon (little cheaper than at the Egg).



Hmm..all is permanently sealed so it is really going to be hard and messy to mod this system. I guess with a lot of paper and tape, I could atleast paint it a matching color but lets see a little later on.

What can be done is change the 120mm fan for a CoolerMaster red led ball bearing fan for both looks and maybe a little better performance. I will try but it looks hard to attach another fan as suggested in the review to get a little better cooling performance.



(to be continued)
Edited by Papang - 5/29/10 at 9:59am