Leaderboard

then I printed the head of carnage and add some of color

after I changed the color and add the glue.

After a quick weathering with just some acrylic silver paint and a black wash, it was time for a test assembly. Some parts are still missing, but now the X-Wing was ready to be shown at an event for the first time. So we wrapped up all parts and sent it over to Dallas for the Solidworks World. We made a short video about the convention, showing some of the making-of process already. Full making-of is coming soon. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Wrg2pgYHPTs

Next, I added some more color to the exhaust. So it looks like its actually used. For the wings, I masked all the areas for the next layer of orange color. If you are interested, its a 50:50 mixture between Beasty Brown and Bloody Red from Vallejo Game Color. Some more grey details were added. The front part of the turbine was dabbed with silver color to achieve a more used look. The body also became a orange and grey layering of color.

Hey there. Might as well post some pretty renders of part 2 of the "seriously, haven't you fixed or discarded the DDC yet" saga. With the pump assembly perfectly in place, it now transpires that I can't make the tube routing from pump to radiator through the floor to work without a stupid, ugly amount of adapters, and it's too tight for soft tube too and just kinks. So as suspected it's time to return to the custom pump top idea. Completely redesigned this time though. Enjoy the renders 😊 I've extended the body width by 19mm to cover the distance between the pump body and the radiator holes in the case floor, so now an EK 90 degree rotary fitting will align directly above the radiator port's centre line, with sufficient vertical space to get a compression fitting on and angle some tube. That extension means I've gone down a distro plate approach to go from the volute outlet to the port, which has of course necessitated o-rings and a sealing plate. And yes, the strong resemblance to Aquacomputer's DDC top is intentional; wanting to keep the look, I've drawn on many design cues from their dual DDC top to create mine as a homage to the top I've had to discard. I don't think I can get in trouble for that 😛 To allow for measuring and manufacturing tolerances I will be using Mayhem's ultra clear soft tube for this part of the loop, but it's very clear for soft tube, 13mm OD is indistinguishable from 12mm OD acrylic when piped in, and once I have Oil Black Pastel coolant running you'd be hard pressed to tell the difference between the soft and hard tubes I think. And I'm also very excited to say I'm discussing manufacturing of this right now. CAD models are being verified as I type 😁

And now the fun stuff, making the mold. I'm starting off with a few layers of gelcoat. Gelcoat is a polyester resin, like the resins for fiberglass, used for the outer coat. It's durable, finishes up nice, and works great with fiberglass resins since it has a lot of the same properties, like not curing in air, allowing follow up applications of gelcoat or fiberglass to bond chemically with the previous layer. If you've got a fiberglass reinforced tub in your house, gelcoat is most likely what your seeing, backed by layers of fiberglass. In fact, a lot of tubs are made very similarly to how I'm going to make this mold, by applying a thin layer of gelcoat on a mold and then backing that up with fiberglass. And here's what I'm using, plain white gelcoat but I'm gonna dye it blue. Normally you'd use a tooling gelcoat for a mold, which is harder and more resistant to damage, but I'm not planning on making 100 shells a day so regular gelcoat should work and that's what I have on hand. The dyeing it blue is to help with casting the shell. If I'm casting with gelcoat, I can see thin spots in my coat, but more than likely I'll be using CF or a similar composite and the blue will let me see spots where I might have a gap. I'm going for two layers of gelcoat, about half a pint for each should give me coverage. After brushing it on. You could spray it, but it's not necessary since the finished side depends on the plug and not what the exposed surface looks like. I gave each coat about a half hour to an hour to set up before the next coat. After the gelcoat was down, it was time for the fiberglass backing. This is the resin I'm using, polyester layering resin. It doesn't include a wax so that the outer skin of a coat doesn't set up and the next layer can bond with it. For the first layer, I'm using chopped strand fiberglass. It doesn't have the woven look because this is just strands of fiberglass laid in a sheet and held together with a binder that the polyester resin dissolves. And laying up the first layer. Next layer I did woven fiberglass because I had a roll laying around that wasn't being used up. And a last layer with more chopped strand. There's no real reason to have mixed the layers or what order they are in. Chopped strand takes up a lot of resin and adds bulk and strength quickly whereas woven cloth is thinner and uses less resin. Since I'm looking for bulk and strength, the chopped strand is more what I want. Woven cloth for the whole mold would work fine as well, it would just take a lot more cloth. And with everything all cured up, things got a little meh... I pulled my divider off and realized that I had a lot of void spots and just an all around bad finish. I blame this on not getting all the wax off the divider and the gelcoat being able to pull off while curing. Also, my registration glue dots, not the best. But it's what I've got so lets start by cleaning up the edge. It just so happens that my new job and company is fiberglass and gelcoat repair so this shouldn't be a problem. I started the fix by grinding out all the rough spots. Then after some sanding to make sure the patches had something to bite onto, I layered in some gelcoat, leaving some dips for my registration. And then sanded it out. It's not perfect but I figure any imperfections are just extra registration. And it could be a problem that my patches are only mechanically bonded to the mold instead of chemically bonded, but that should only be a problem while making the second half of the mold, and I've got an idea about that. And last time I said something about a sponsor...check out this beast. I want to thank GeForce Garage for sponsoring a RTX 2080Ti for the build and for being great to work with all around. They're always helping me out if they can and getting me in on cool projects. This will definitely go a long ways towards making this the fastest thing at a LAN. Thanks for following along, more to come soon!

@Mosquito -This one was just gummy. Switching it on with new grease was like someone turning a knob from 1 to 10 really slowly. @Bill Owen - I've had to explain a few times when strangers see it. The double-takes are priceless. Think I should post your Exodus vids on Bit's log so they know I wasn't totally idle last year. -and because I'm hyped.

This is my biggest project for the Raspberry Pi. Spent MONTHS designing this, and over 100 test prints of various parts. This is essentially the final product. I may or may not add more to it later. If you have any questions, let me know. If you have ideas or suggestions for the next version, I'd love to hear them! Parts list below the video: This project wouldn't have been possible without the help of ModMyMods.com and their perfect little Raspberry Pi Cooling Kit. Stop by their website and find the parts to keep your next project cool! ModMyMods.com: https://modmymods.com/ Parts List: Raspberry Pi Cooling Kit: https://modmymods.com/modmymods-raspberry-pi-mini-water-cooling-kit-mod-0171.html Raspberry Pi 3 B+: https://www.adafruit.com/product/3775 PrimoChill ICE - UV Green: https://www.primochill.com/products/primochill-ice-intensified-low-conductive-coolant-32-oz-uv-green PrimoChill SysPrep: https://www.primochill.com/products/primochill-sysprep-cooling-loop-pre-treatment Thermal Glue: https://www.ebay.com/itm/151449306446 UV LED strip: https://www.ebay.com/itm/202135337154 Green push switches: https://www.ebay.com/itm/322067802424 12V power supply: https://www.ebay.com/itm/263059629108 5V power supply: https://www.ebay.com/itm/262631188471 Panel mount HDMI connector: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0746BYHPJ Inland PLA+ 3D Printer filament: https://www.microcenter.com/product/504209/premium-175mm-black-pla-3d-printer-filament---1kg-spool-(22-lbs 64GB Sandisk MicroSD Card - Class10/UHS-1: https://www.microcenter.com/product/455914/64gb-ultra-plus-microsdxc-class-10-uhs-1-flash-memory-card-with-adapter 18GA silicon coated wire spools - multi-stranded: https://www.microcenter.com/product/513471/18awg-flexible-silicone-wire---5-pack CoolerMaster MakerGel Maker Nano Thermal Paste: https://eu.coolermaster.com/en/cooling/thermal-compound/mastergel-maker/

pah! just a bit of compressed air and we are ready to go again 😛 Next, I built the cockpit, that will be openable at the end. And one pic with the mobo in place. Then also the body got some layers of spray filler. Now that all small imperfections are visible, I started to apply body filler to those areas.

Great to see progress Kerry! Also, we support people doing DIY of any sort here at the Zoo, we've got a specific forum all set up for non-PC mods/projects http://themodzoo.com/forum/index.php?/forum/72-maker-or-non-pc-worklogs/

Looks good, and look forward to the final pictures

Right?! Looks like my driveway! (snow)

Wow, that looks fantastic, GREAT job with that fan grill.

Kerry, facebook link isn't working got video DLed, watching now Excited to see this!

Thank guys Today i update my project. Hope you like it Some pics after painting . It is not perfect but ok. Testing psu cover with led light . Making the rear fan.

So finally after a while another update on the X-Wing. I started now to glue all the pieces for the wings together. Used some metal pins to ensure more stability. I used 2k epoxy glue to get a very good bond. To make sure every thing will stay in place while drying, I used some clamps. After I let the epoxy dry for one day, I ended up with the entire wing. As you can See, I already included some wires to controll the light later. And ofc a short test if the upper and lower wing fit together. Looking good so far.