Wednesday, April 4, 2012

TechStation got here! (+ some more planning)

Well, today I got a package in the mail...


which contained ...


parts for a TechStation  (ping pong table covered in boxes for parts...)


assembly almost done....


...and done.






...and put all my hardware on it.  Big thanks to Scott and High Speed PC for making this happen.

Having this TechStation now allows me to very easily swap out components, which I will be doing as soon as I finish this post.  

Onto some more thinking about the oil portion.  Today in a tech class, I noticed a fellow student working with some 1/4 inch polycarbonate.  I started thinking that this may work just as well as acrylic, and I would probably be able to use some of the school's supply.  I did some initial research of the effects of mineral oil on polycarb, and was rather confused.  I found a few sites saying it would be unaffected by the oil, while another which said it could start to show signs of etching after about 30 days.  I can't have that.  This thing needs to be 100% solid, so I probably will be getting some 3/8 or 1/4 inch thick acrylic sheets to use.  

One more major thing I decided to incorporate into my design is a radiator.  This will allow me to have some active cooling of the oil, so I can be sure the oil stays in a reasonable temperature zone.  When I spoke to Casey Dill back in February, he told me he can't use his oil cooled build for more than about three hours before he would have to turn it off due to the heat of the oil.  He strongly recommended that I include a radiator in my design.  So, this adds another layer of complexity to the project; I will need to figure out how to mount the radiator (or 2, depending on the specific type I get) to the case, and where to mount other things like a pump, and inlet and outlet fittings, and a pump.  

Well I think that was everything I wanted to mention, I'm going to to go work on my CAD model of this thing.

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