Project Anima Mundi

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Hey folks-

Oracle is now on what may be a permanent hiatus, so I have started to fiddle around with another project. I seem to be a fan of the cube, and this is no different, being 11 inches on all sides. The case should be almost entirely plexi glass as I happen to have piles of 3/16 acrylic laying around that needs to be used for something. The design really isn't that far out there, but what I plan to do with the lighting and paint should really set it apart. No previews or hints on that, you'll just have to wait and see.

Now on with the pictures!



Everyone knows how much I love sketchup...




Working on the back panel. I still need to work on the curves on the PSU portion of the acrylic, they didn't turn out quite the way I wanted them.



This little nub will be where the PCI/ AGP/ PCIe? cards screw in. Note the edge. That's just been rough filed and flame polished. All the exposed edges will be filed, sanded, and flamed polished to a glass-like finish before all is said and done.



Waiting to become the hard drive racks. I'm trying to figure out a way to get a little rubber involved to insulate the rack from the rest of the case a bit. Haven't given it too much thought yet, but I'm sure I'll come up with something.

Now a little guessing game, 10 points to anyone who can figure out what new toy I bought, and what new toy I'm building:

 

[Captain Slug]

You bought a knee mill and you're making a strip heater.

 

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You bought a knee mill and you're making a strip heater.

10 points! Plus 5 for the speedy reply.

At this point I'm just playing with a beefy drill press and a mill table, but my legit straight from Grizzly mill will be here within the next month. Yeah me!

 

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And the plexi bender is 99% completed!




That would be a 14 x 5 x 1/4 piece of acrylic There is a little bowing in the middle, but that's my fault for not holding it long enough while making the bend.




Playing with some 3/16 stuff. I left the last bend on there too long so it bubbled a bit, but I've got the timing down pretty well now.




I still have to do a little cleanup, add some more sheet metal, and hook up the thermostat, but I'd say for a project that cost me all of zero dollars, this has turned out pretty well.

 

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I've roughed out my plans for the hard drive rack, emphases on rough. All these pieces were taken straight from the table saw to glue, so no filing, polishing, or finishing was done.




It might not make total sense to everybody just yet, but I'll have the whole thing made tomorrow, so bear with me.

Someone on HardForum has asked me to try to watercool this thing, he's also been nice enough to donate some money to that cause (since I'm a broke college student ha). So tonight I'm going to try to figure out if its even possible to watercool an 11 inch cube internally. I'll post my results.

 

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Well, technically it's possible. An 11 inch cube with a completely internal water cooling system? Apparently it's not outside the realm of possibility.

We'll see...

 

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Now imagine all that with brilliant flame polished edges and a little bit of black paint

 

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You would not believe how much dust and dirt bare plexi attracts in a shop...full of dust and dirt

 

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or...

 

[Sephis]

Looks pretty awesome. I really need to learn how to use sketchup. I like the watercooling idea. Its possible to watercool something that small, but be prepared. It will take a bit of patience.

 

[tyler_bishop]

Subscribed!

 

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A little foot work. For whatever reason this plexi just does NOT like to be flame polished. I think I'm going to have to break it apart and do it piece by piece to get some sort of a decent finish.

Next thing I have to do is decide on a color scheme so I can start painting and lighting this thing. Should I go with black paint and white lighting like I planed with Oracle? Or maybe red paint with some red high lighting and white main lights? Some shade of gray for paint? Thoughts? Suggest paint color, pinstripe color, main lighting color, and highlighting color please.

 

[jimmsch]

What mobo do you plan on using. The color scheme might want to match that. Otherwise maybe go with your favorite football team colors. In any event it is looking mighty fine atm.

 

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What mobo do you plan on using. The color scheme might want to match that. Otherwise maybe go with your favorite football team colors. In any event it is looking mighty fine atm.

I'll be using whatever mATX S939 board I can find that's cheap haha. Unless some kind soul has one they'd like to donate...

Anyway, I'm leaning towards a red/ black/ gray with white lighting color scheme.

 

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Small update. Sorry about the pictures, my camera is at my new shop. Just worked on the feet a bit more, trying to get them to polish up better.





And now for something a little different...



Now do you notice the water between me and the lights? Nice night out on the water, right? Well considering I'm sitting on the top of a pickup, not so much. That pickup happens to be an F 350 with an 8 inch lift running on 40 inch tires, and there was enough water to pick us right up. Ended up drifting about 300 feet before we stopped moving. And yes, we got rescued by a man in a boat. So that was my Monday, how was yours?

There will probably be one more update before I have to take a break for a while. I'm moving into a new 3000 square foot shop, so that's going to take up the majority of my time for the next few weeks. Any modders in the Bellingham, Washington area that need a place to work should get a hold of me, we can work something out.

 

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Anyone see the mistake I made?



LIGHT!





So I'm thinking that I might frost the edges of the feet (yes, after I put in all those hours flame polishing them) to diffuse the light and spread it out a bit.

Thoughts?

 

[Oroka Sempai]

Now do you notice the water between me and the lights? Nice night out on the water, right? Well considering I'm sitting on the top of a pickup, not so much. That pickup happens to be an F 350 with an 8 inch lift running on 40 inch tires, and there was enough water to pick us right up. Ended up drifting about 300 feet before we stopped moving. And yes, we got rescued by a man in a boat. So that was my Monday, how was yours?

Uhhhh... how'd you manage to end up in the water?


I really like your work with the plastic, creative and it looks really good.

 

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Uhhhh... how'd you manage to end up in the water?


I really like your work with the plastic, creative and it looks really good.

There was a rather large flooded area that someone got stranded in, and we thought that we had enough weight and size to make it out to them. Turns out we were wrong. Apparently the water was moving fast enough that it just picked us up and washed us out into the middle of it (the whole thing was probably 800 feet wide). We probably could have swam out, but it was pitch black and freezing. My partner in crime's father happened to have a dingy near by, so he went and got that and came and got everyone. Meet a couple really nice young women, you really get to know someone when you're stuck on top of a pick up for 3 hours heh.

We ended up pulling everyone out the next day, in a dump truck. There wasn't a chance in hell that SOB was floating anywhere haha.

 

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Fixed the backwards PSU issue, as well as added an additional expansion slot and made a couple other minor adjustments.

E

 

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Thanks to nOObtard for the radiators!

Updates incoming.