WING X99 | A CNC-milled Scratch Build! (Benchmarks, temps and wallpapers posted!)

[Brodholm]

Same as the back and the top, but for the sides.

It's kinda neat, the mill produces these very thin rolls of aluminium when facing the stock.

As you can see these are very very thin. Nothing to do with the build but still kinda neat

Its very nice that these are on all the passes since this tells me that the machine is very consistent in the passes.

Left side done! Time do the the other side.

Right side done!

Next update! I will be making the slots for the air to pass through. Here is the fastening for the next milling operation. Had to use this many fasteners due to the 2mm thin edges that is left unsupported on the edges from this direction of the plate, so each have a light clamping force and I really do not want them to get lose and ruin the part.
 

[Hasle]

Coming along beautifully! That smoothly bent front panel is pure dirt (in the best possible way).

[Brodholm]

Thanks!

Now, more progress!

 

Slots for the air to pass through.

All clamped down and ready to go!

Damn, this was going so well...

Well, some damage to the collet and the holder. But everything was okay, just some minor scratches but still no fun...

It's my first mill that I break, I was running the end-mill to lean on the cutting fluid. Problem was a combined chip clearing (due to the lower air pressure with less coolant flow) and to little fluid lubricating the aluminium causing it to stick to the end mill and rubbing instead of cutting against the material.

This end mill costs about 30 USD. Shit happens and stuf breaks. Luckyly this is a small end mill so they are cheap compared to bigger ones so I guess that is good. But the smaller the end mill the more likley they are to break so I guess that evens out.

Coming along nicely now after that small hick up, very time consuming though. But low and slow is the way to go with such a thin diameter end mill.

About 1 hour later

Finally done!

Really like the results. I have nothing to complain about. Very happy that I could save the piece even though the tool broke. But since it snapped of during the roughing pass there was still material to be removed so it took away the damaged part. There is not even a mark on the piece. Lucky, but the chance of the tool breaking is at the highest when doing rough passes.

Same procedure for the other side. This operation takes about 2 hours with setup and material removal for each side.

[tikker]

This looks like an awesome project. Following

[Brodholm]

11 hours ago, tikker said:

This looks like an awesome project. Following

Thanks! I hope you will enjoy! More stuff coming later tonight probably. Got home from the workshop now after working for almost 18 hours straight. Need to catch some sleep and edit some pictures!

 

[Brodholm]

Time to mill the front of the case. Do not want to mess this part, lots of work going in to it.

Will be using this precision grinded bar to line it along the Y axis and this squared piece of metal to align the X axis and also clamp down the front.

Tried my toolpath on the test piece I made to make sure that I did not get any vibrations when doing the real part.

Will be using this 8mm end mill and no dust shoe so I should be able to get some good video. So look out for that!

Using these clamps to remove any vibrations.

B is for bottom

First cut done! Worked out great. "Just" have to flip it around and do the same thing on the other side.

Time for the top part of the front.

Top part toolpath done! Turned out great. Now on to the front and the logo.

Done and done! Was very nervous about this, with all due respect. Some hitch in the program caused the updated toolpath to not register. Took the cut down to 2mm instead of 3mm AND it tried to do the whole profile on depth 0mm instead of 3mm. I was very lucky to be able to stop it in time and fix the issue. Only thing that changed was that the cut is now 6mm deep instead of 5mm that I intended. Will make no difference in the end, but I was about 0.3 seconds from ruining this piece...

Will be fitting the logo and button here. Will be a magnetically dampened button. Hope it works out nicely! Otherwise some springs will have to due!

Last  "major" piece on the outer shell for the assembly to be possible is next. The case foot!
 

[Brodholm]

Mooooooore
 

Making the foot! This will have a piece of plexiglass sandwitched between the bottom part and this foot to try and give it a floating effect. I think it will look nice!

Had to do a very tight clamping to be able to use this sheet I had left

First side done! Time to flip it around.

Had to use some scrap pieces to support the outer edges

All done!

The side facing the bottom part of the case.

The part that is going to face the floor. The cutout will have a 2mm neoprene rubber glued it. Next up is threading and drilling to be able to assemble these flat pieces to a case.
 

[Brodholm]

Well, there have been a few, I have a small graveyard of parts that I have to throw away. So far I have made a new, bottom frame, top frame, PSU-holder, side frame and an extra front that I was going to use if the bend did not work out as planed on the first try. All in all about 20 hours lost/wasted I would say. But that is the nature of prototypes and one offs. Here are some of the errors and the new parts fixed!

New side fram  (the one that got shatter marks is being replaced)

New side frame in progress with the updated design

Here you can see the added material on the sides. I just added a few millimeters of extra material. I should have done this from the start. Part got much stiffer and nicer looking. Mabaaaaaaad

Done!

Not a screw up here I just did this after I fixed the left side so this is in this update. But here I did the last machining pass on the back side for the LED strips on both frame sides.

Both turned out great. Really pleased.

Here you can see the first bottom frame. It has this quite deep (0.25mm) dwell mark due to the PID controllers on the motors not being tuned correctly. I fixed this after I did that part so it bothered me so much I made a new one just for that silly mark. I just knew it would end up bothering me so much If I left it in. So the OCD costed about 2 hours of extra work. Not much in the grand scheme of things though. Really pleased with the new one also

Reluctantly found out I had messed up on the top fram, this was not very fun since that is a very time consuming part to make. I had a bad toolpath that had taken about 4 mm to much on where the "top line" should be. Did not notice this at first so that was a bit bummed out about this since I thought it turned out good. But this allowed me to do some redesign on the fastening of the plexi sides and the plexi top so all in all, turned out good after all!

These are the slots that will secure the plexi sides in place

Done! That's all the bad parts fixed. Now it is time to drill and tap all the holes so I can assemble this into the outer case. This should be fun and very nerve wracking at the same time. Do NOT want to remake any more parts now, sick and tired of doing the same work twice
 

[Brodholm]

I'm squeezing in another update before new years. I have had a fever the last few days but I am all better now. I am also going away for a few days but after I get back its time to assemble the outer case!!! Cant wait! 

Time to get to work with some drilling and tapping! I will try to explain this as thorough as possible since I know some of you are not that experienced with drilling and tapping and are looking to make your own cases. If you already know the exact procedure you can skip the small "tutorials" I have written in these walls of text

Okay, some tips when drilling. Make lines on the correct places. And use a die to mark the location. Use a smaller size diameter if you are drilling a large hole. For these holes (3.3mm) it is okay to go with the correct diameter at once. When you are drilling, be sure to have higher speeds for small diameter drills and lower for higher diameter drills. You want to get a nice cutting speed on the flutes. 

The reason why you should pre drill with smaller diameter drills is that the cutting speed is much less on a smaller diameter drill and you want that to achieve a certain cutting speed, lets say X mm/min then you need to go Y amounts of RPM. But if you have a big drill you still do not want the flutes to go over X mm/min so you have to lower the RPM to not have the outer part of the flutes go over X mm/min. This means that the closer to the center you get on the big drill you get slower and slower cutting speeds. In the center you are basically just pushing the tip through the material instead of cutting. Giving you a bad finish and usually off centered holes. So that be sure to think about that when drilling. 

Basic formula for drilling should be: Mark the lines, do a die mark, drill a hole with a smaller diameter at faster RPM, switch to the correct size diameter and slow down the drill. And when you are drilling aluminium you really need some kind of cutting fluid to insure that you don't rub the aluminium and therefore breaking the drill. So use cutting fluid to make sure those chips don't weld to the drill. Also, do peck drilling, breaking the long chips. And if you are drilling deep blind holes, take the time to remove remove the drill from the hole all the way up and remove the chips if the hole is deep (I would say 3-4 times the diameter). 

Following these steps will take longer than just "drilling holes". But it WILL save you parts and time in the end. The quality of the holes and precision will be better, and having to deal with broken drills is a huge pain in the ass. Remember, broken bits can seldom be drilled out due to them being as hard as the drill itself, remember you can only drill materials if you are using a harder material than the one you are drilling. 

There are a lot of techniques to get drills out of holes if you mess up, and I am not going to go in much deeper than this. But if you do break one, I would recommend searching on Youtube and you will find lots of videos showing how you can try to get them out. Sometimes you just have to scrap the part.

Anyway, this is how the results should look if you follow all the steps.

I drilled these with a piece of aluminium clamped do the the very thin wall I had to bore here. Did not want the material to "bend out". Probably would have been fine anyway but the extra time vs to having to redo the part was a easy calculation.

There are several types of taps for different kind of holes. The one to the left is a blind hole version that you can use when you have shallow holes that you need to tap all the way down (almost all the way). The right one is for normal through holes. You can see that its much easier to get in and align since its tapered. The left one here is a bit better for aluminium I have found. I ordered that specifically for aluminium and blind holes. Both of these are M4 taps from dormer. And each tap is about 30 USD or so. You can get cheaper ones but you really want good taps with good material. Ebay taps looks basically the same, but they are not nearly as good and break much more often. You want the material hard and flexible at the same time, something that is not very easy to achieve.

Before taping be sure to countersinc the holes so the thread goes in easily and you get no burrs after you have threaded the holes. It also looks much nicer and you will have a easier to to get the screws to thread.

Use some kind of lubrication, I am using a thin oil that works good for threading.

Be sure that you go down straight into the holes, enter a millimeter and then check from all sides that you are going perpendicular to the surface you drilled. The thread is like a drill, it will actually drill the whole off center if you have a bad angle and snap or stop when you go to out of center. 

Go slow, make sure you are in center, after you have turned a few rotations, turn the other direction half a turn or so to break the chip, and then continue threading. Take your time. If you think breaking a drill is bad, breaking a tap is worse. It is also much easier to break a tap since they are thinner and harder usually.

Be sure you are in center and only put axial force into the threading and no radial. If you use to much radial force you WILL break these small threads.

Here you can see some finished holes. Notice how the countersink will help your screw to go into the threads instead of "sliding along" the surface as you try to find the hole.

Since doing one hole is pretty much the same as doing a 100 I am not going to show all of the holes. Next up is assembly of the outer case

[paddy-stone]

Nice, well done again.

 

Just as a side note. I can remember manually tapping holes and die-ing bolts/screws when at school... I both loved and hated it at the same time. On the one hand it was boring, laborious work... but on the other it gives you some basic skills and know-how, and you can easily break the chips and don't need too much fluid for doing the job.

 

Thank you once again for a marvelous job, I am so jealous of your skills. I would have loved to use CNC machines and stuff at school, but they were VERY expensive at that time and we didn't have one in the entire school, even when I went to college there was maybe only 2 CNC machines in the entire campus, and they were only small, and we were not allowed to use them... only the tutors were authorised to use them as they were so expensive and so they only wanted skilled/trained operators.

I would still love to have a CNC/milling machine now, over 20 years later

 

Keep up the good work, I am almost positive that there are many members that would love to have you build them some cases/parts... but think the cost would be too high because of the amount of hours you have to put in. You should definitely enter competitions if you don't already and consider making a business out of this work. I'm thinking that once you have the prototypes all worked out for kinks/edits etc, it should simply be a matter of loading materials and letting the machine do it's thing, with regular checks of course. But it's an idea... I'm pretty sure you probably already thought of this, but just putting it out there

 

[Brodholm]

On 2016-12-30 at 1:19 AM, paddy-stone said:

Nice, well done again.

 

Just as a side note. I can remember manually tapping holes and die-ing bolts/screws when at school... I both loved and hated it at the same time. On the one hand it was boring, laborious work... but on the other it gives you some basic skills and know-how, and you can easily break the chips and don't need too much fluid for doing the job.

 

Thank you once again for a marvelous job, I am so jealous of your skills. I would have loved to use CNC machines and stuff at school, but they were VERY expensive at that time and we didn't have one in the entire school, even when I went to college there was maybe only 2 CNC machines in the entire campus, and they were only small, and we were not allowed to use them... only the tutors were authorised to use them as they were so expensive and so they only wanted skilled/trained operators.

I would still love to have a CNC/milling machine now, over 20 years later

 

Keep up the good work, I am almost positive that there are many members that would love to have you build them some cases/parts... but think the cost would be too high because of the amount of hours you have to put in. You should definitely enter competitions if you don't already and consider making a business out of this work. I'm thinking that once you have the prototypes all worked out for kinks/edits etc, it should simply be a matter of loading materials and letting the machine do it's thing, with regular checks of course. But it's an idea... I'm pretty sure you probably already thought of this, but just putting it out there

 

I don't know really. I could most likely not make these at any reasonable price on our machines. Much to labor intensive and while a part usually takes 1-3h to make (not including programming). AND it takes about 30 mins in just setup and then there is tool changes, flipping parts manually, re-zeroing etc. That makes each part crazy expensive seeing how CNC operations is about a 100 USD/h. Then you need all the surface finishing from sanding and glass blasting. I would love to do stuff like this for a living but I am afraid that cases like these are a bit too expensive.

Would love to make these for "a living". I think this might be "too extreme" for the general market.

[Brodholm]

Finally its time for the case assembly!


Finally enough part to assemble the outer case! All outer cover panels is held by magnets and will be glued after anodizing.

Just a blast to assemble it! Finally you go from just flat pieces to an actual case. It was a lot of threading before I could do all this but I was very careful to get everything right.

This is where the button assembly will fit.

Very pleased if I may say so. A very proud moment and a huge relief to have the outer shell together. Next up is the inner segments of the case!

[Brodholm]

Can anyone recommend a glue for neoprene rubber on anodized aluminium? I tried "contact glue" but that only works "ok" and you can easily tear of the piece from the aluminium.

[KrMaH]

1 hour ago, Brodholm said:

Can anyone recommend a glue for neoprene rubber on anodized aluminium? I tried "contact glue" but that only works "ok" and you can easily tear of the piece from the aluminium.

I think locktite has a rubber infused superglue that I dont think will have negative reactions with the rubber...
But if all else fails theres always Tec7

[W-L]

1 hour ago, Brodholm said:

Can anyone recommend a glue for neoprene rubber on anodized aluminium? I tried "contact glue" but that only works "ok" and you can easily tear of the piece from the aluminium.

Is it for watertight seals? 

 

I've heard of pilobond working for rubber gaskets and stuff before, it also looks liek 3M has a version similar to pilobond:

http://www.centralvacuumstores.com/central-vacuum/installation-kits-and-components/pipe-fittings-and-accessories/central-vacuum-pliobond-industrial-contact-cement

https://www.amazon.com/3M-Neoprene-Performance-Adhesive-Gray-Green/dp/B000WXL202

[paddy-stone]

2 hours ago, Brodholm said:

Can anyone recommend a glue for neoprene rubber on anodized aluminium? I tried "contact glue" but that only works "ok" and you can easily tear of the piece from the aluminium.

Gorilla glue? I use it for attaching wood/metal to plastic/rubber and it's fantastic  https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01CIQILY0/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

[Brodholm]

Going to attach the big rubber feet (basically a big sheet of neoprene rubber). Using Orings for the seals so no glue there

[Brodholm]

15 minutes ago, paddy-stone said:

Gorilla glue? I use it for attaching wood/metal to plastic/rubber and it's fantastic  https://www.amazon.co.uk/gp/product/B01CIQILY0/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o00_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

Would try it but I cant find it here in sweden

[paddy-stone]

1 minute ago, Brodholm said:

Would try it but I cant find it here in sweden

Amazon should deliver though, right?

 

Found this for you, if any help

SWEDEN | Gorilla Glue

www.gorillatough.com/sweden

Please contact the distributor below: Sweden Hellström & Wåhlberg AB Linjalvägen 8 SE-187 66 TÄBY Phone:+46(0)8 756 88 30 Back to distributor page.

[W-L]

20 minutes ago, Brodholm said:

Going to attach the big rubber feet (basically a big sheet of neoprene rubber). Using Orings for the seals so no glue there

In that case you could just use some CA glue or something like loctite 411. Alternatively you could go with a a high bond adhesive tape like a thin VHB or tissue type from 3M. 

[Brodholm]

5 minutes ago, W-L said:

In that case you could just use some CA glue or something like loctite 411. Alternatively you could go with a a high bond adhesive tape like a thin VHB or tissue type from 3M. 

Actually found this now and found a local store that has it:
 

Loctite ® 454
http://www.loctite.com.au/3320_AUE_HTML.htm?nodeid=8802626109441

Substrates and Applications

• Abrasive tips to metal-machine tools
• Stainless steel to carbon fiber-cutlery
• Glass-filled polyurethane to steel – Firearm assembly
• Aluminium to rubber pads – Ladders
• PVC to EPDM rubber – Appliance consoles
• Urethane foam rubber to painted steel – Handle grips
• Paper to PVC – Packaging materials
• ABS to PVC – Vacuum cleaners
• Acrylic to PVC – Plastic fencing
• Braided sleeve to rubber – Hoses
• Synthetic rubber to ABS – Legs to equipment housings

 

I hope that this will work.

[Brodholm]

Finally back home, have started the huge job of editing pictures and video. Anyhow, next update is done! More to come!

First inner part done!

What could this be?

Any bets?

Pro tip to myself, when you refill the cutting fluid, put the lid back on...

You are starting to figure out what this is now I bet




Close to done!



You guessed it! The back for the motherboard tray!

Time to get serious. Doing the motherboard tray. Over 3 hours of machining calculated on this piece + setup and tool changes. This is 20mm of aluminium. When the pieces start to get this big they do not only get expensive but also a lot of work going in to them!

Time to flip this badboy around.

Main body is done! Time to do the channels for the cables

Jump forward in time a few weeks. Decided on cable paths. Milling these here. But I thought that I would post these together since it is the same part

All done, and VERY pleased with the results. Took quite a bit of work to figure out how I wanted this and to get the design balanced visually.

[H3LLSMAN]

I would want a CNC machined Tower 900, this is an insane amount of work though awesome. 

[Qwweb]

How heavy will the whole case be? That is a lot of aluminum.

Also what alloy are you using? (6061, or 7071, or other?)

[Str8f4c3]

Ohhh the hype level just got kicked up!