Liquid cooling minor case mod

I put together a PC for a Vista build about 3 years ago, and every summer since then I have had concerns about its ability to survive the heat of our basement. I had been considering a water cooling rig for my Quad-Phenom machine because it idles at about 40c during the winter months.

I didn't want to have to build and leak test a system myself so I settled on Corsair H50 All in One CPU Cooler as an alternative.  I thought this would be a good compromise to the noise/heat dissipation as well as the overall build and test problems of normal water cooling systems.  The theory was really there, but it all fell apart when I realized that I didn't have a 120mm rear exhaust fans.  The only option that I had was the Acrylic side of the case had an 80mm hole.  After a little research I found that a 4" holesaw is ≈ 102mm and decided I would give that a try.  If you have ever tried to cut a hole in acrylic you probably know what was wrong with this plan, despite having 4 clamps holding the acrylic down, everytime I lowered the drill press down to the material it caused it to jump a few millimeters before I could get the drill head released.  The surface area of the hole saw allowed too much grip.  Plan b was to drill the hole in some particle board and use a trim router to finish the hole.  The key to this is going slowly enough that you don't heat the bit up too much and start melting the acrylic.  All things considered, for 45minutes of work it was a pretty successful project and I managed to not ugly up the acrylic too badly.

TI Valueline dev board links

I ordered some of the Texas Instruments value line microprocessors today, like most geeks on the internet I saw them yesterday on Hackaday and was interested. Unfortunately so was everyone else and the servers where unable to take it. Relying on the short attention span of other geeks I waited until today and was able to successfully place my order. Below are some links for my own reference when the darn things show up.

Wikipedia

Dev Wiki

MSP430 ValueLine product family page

CNC interest

There seems to be a lot of interest in diy CNC machines on Hackaday, and the Make Blog that has really gotten my interest in these machines piqued. I would like the ability to work on metal with a higher degree of precision than my hand affords me. I think that some of the MDF CNC plans would likely be enough to get me started making pieces of aluminum to upgrade to a more sturdy machine. I am only looking for about 24" square working surface, so it would be pretty easy to keep put away. I have been looking at these plans from CNC zone, and think that this style of Gantry is probably workable for my needs. Like everything it will need to be modified for my needs, but it is a decent touch stone for working this process.

For some reason I really struggled to get this post written. It is not for the lack of choices, but rather lack of completed affordable choices. There are lots of build logs with photos and ideas, but few that are great start to finish how to build articles with BOM's and parts schematics. The ones that are complete with Build of Materials are in Kit form and range in the $1000+ range. It seems that cognitive leap from idea to implementation requires that you extend the effort in brain exercise or monetary form. I have the left over part of a Ikea birch counter top that was bought for my wife's craft corner that I believe is sufficiently rigid for the task of being a router table and is attractive to be a long term tool. The rest of the machine will have to be aluminum and MDF. In all, I don't want to be much more than $800 in this project so we will see where that budget takes us.

Some interesting sources for information that are helping guide me at this point.

http://www.cncroutersource.com/
This site looks like it will grow over time, at the time of writing the site is updated several times a week and has some good thoughts on design, and talks about options rather than focusing on a single design and build. I think it could be a great source ones the links get laid out properly (I get enough page cannot be found errors to make me think it is a work in progress)

http://solsylva.com/
This site sells router plans and seems like a good resource for people that are interested in building, but not engineering their solution.

http://www.xylotex.com/
Excellent source for drive system and step motors.

http://buildyourcnc.com/
A CNC kit site that I like, they have great looking designs that are pricey.

Home made injection molding

This is the coolest piece of home made machinery I have ever seen. A custom injection mold with heating a cooling for the materials is more than my feeble hands could ever build.


via Hackaday

Another thought improving Blekin lapdesk

The hits keep coming from the wellspring of ideas known as the make blog! So in this installment it looks like there are magnetic valves activated by heat. I realize that these have to be purpose built for the application, but it may be helpful for my crazy plan to improve the Belkin Lap Desk.

Improving the Belkin Lap Desk

Ever since I saw the Belkin Lapdesk I thought that it needed improvement. It needed either passive or active cooling of some form, and I was hopping to not add another thing that needed to be plugged into a wall outlet. This mod adds two active fans that are plugged in to a 12v wall wart, and while I definitely it improves the overall usefulness of the stand it doesn't meet my other goal of not wanting another device sucking power.

I saw an article a few days ago about Icyballs that may be closer to what I am hopping to use. It would require electricity as I am fairly sure I need to have a microcontroller to engage the heat element to reverse the natural evaporation process. I have no experience with this type of work though so I think I am going to need to find a chemistry nerd and probably a welding nerd to pull the whole process.

Logitec comfort lapdesk needs to be remixed

I am sure most people have seen these little desks, I think Belkin makes something similar too but I think that this plastic is or leather design that everyone comes up with will only protect my legs not the laptop from the heat that baby is kicking off. I think that the Logitec one could be improved by replacing that plastic fin with an aluminum one. I am not sure how to pull off the rigid base for the fabric to be attached to, but I will post updated shots of a prototype.

Computers in Plain sight

The Sheeva plug got me thinking about the idea of computers that are innocuous enough to be left in plain sight, but still deliver significant enough computing power to potentially reshape daily life. The Sheeva is powerful but lacks one of the important things that makes computers useful, an interface for humans. The transformative nature of this type of technology comes from interaction, so lacking an included meaningful interaction method we have a computer. I rarely browse Think Geek, but a random link click brought me to their pages where I found the iGala digital photo frame. When I saw it I was posotive that it had to be running at least a little bit of embedded os, and that it had to have some potential for an always on general purpose computer with wi-fi and a touchscreen. One Google search later and I was proven correct that someone else thought the same thing and even went so far as to get shell access for you. When this go back on sale, I am pretty sure that I want one no all I need to know is if ucLinux supports webcams.

My current ideas are controllin a usb Webcam for survellance (or baby monitor), adding audio out for touch screen audio streamer, or using it as a touchscreen controller for home automation. I have to imagine that these are cheaper than anything Crestron has thought of building. Other thoughts include always on Torrent seeder (slow I know, but so low power) capped at 5 connections or something similar. I think that there is a lot of potential here for people with interface design experience.