The birth of my custom gaming case - Personal rig update 2015 Part 3
Linus Tech Tips
·Linus Tech Tips
·2016-05-06
·
1,721 words · ~8 min read
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I'm a Save The Best For Last kind of guy so in my perfect world I'd be showing
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you guys the coolest Parts at the end of
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the video like the laser cutter but I
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want this video to be sort of a start to finish journey of the of the birth of
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the new case for my personal rig so we're going to go completely in order
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all the way through the bending and and the and the cutting until we arrive here
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freshbooks is the super simple invoicing solution that lets you get organized
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save time and get paid faster check out
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the link in the video description to try it for free all right so this machine
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you're looking at right now is a 2.5 kilowatt yes that is
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2,500 Watts carbon dioxide laser worth
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about a million Canadian rupes it concentrates all of that power on a spot
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about 7 1,000 of an inch in diameter
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giving it an energy density greater than the Sun and allowing it to vaporize up
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to 200 in per minute of 20 gauge cold
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rolled steel as you watch the laser start a new cut you'll see an initial
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flash where the plasma goes flying up as the beam hits the top of the metal then
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you'll see Sparks on the bottom from the inert syst gas uh protocase actually
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makes their own on site with a nitrogen generator blowing it down towards the
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grate which holds the metal in place during The Cutting process so the
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machine you're looking at right now is purely digitally controlled and has been
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running about 18 hours a day since 2008
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with only about 5 days of
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downtime the next stage is deing for
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small parts that would otherwise fall through the grate and get lost in the
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cutter there's little tabs to hold hold them in place that need to be manually
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removed but all of the parts do actually
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get deburred anyway because while in a perfect world little bits of melted
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metal would not cling to the finished Parts because the laser has to slow down
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going into the corners of a cut power needs to be dropped appropriately or the
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size of the cut will change and CO2 lasers don't respond as fast as the
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machine needs to move so power control on the corners is imperfect so for that
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reason two sets of rotary brushes are used first a high abrasion one to
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eliminate what they call Dragon's Teeth and slag with a less aggressive one to
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round the extremely sharp Corners that
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would otherwise slice up your hands fun fact the two sets of brushes that are
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used oscillate back and forth by at least one brush radius this ensures that
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every Edge is hit equally from all sides and gives the bare metal a uniform
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finish for applications where it won't be painted next is counter syncing where
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our very small project was run on a drill press with a spring loaded depth
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stop device to ensure that all the screws are perfectly flush but for
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larger projects there's actually a CNC router table that does this
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automatically next is the part where we all do the
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Bender do the Bender do oh I fell off my
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box anyway um anyway no actually this is the part where the metal gets bent
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protocase performs their bends on a press brake with a punch and die system
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that's designed for air bending where the punch the ground hardened steel
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piece that uh is made to be accurate within about a couple thousandths of an
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inch pushes the metal down into the D
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but leaves an air gap under it this technique combined with the accuracy of
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the controls being used so the one you're looking at is a CNC controlled 60
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ton press and extensive computer simulation of metal bending to
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compensate for spring back and Metal's propensity to stretch better than it
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compresses allows air bending to be very versatile and accurate without the same
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operator skill requirement as bottom bending where the punch bottoms out into
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the bottom of the die at the next stage
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pems or self-clinching Fasteners if
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you're one of those people that actually calls things selfadhesive bandage or
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facial tissue instead of Band-Aid or Kleenex and these are standoff stands
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and nuts that are inserted by a press that applies six tons of force to
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permanently fasten them to the metal fun fact the Press doesn't apply its Force
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until it's about a fingernails width from the workpiece to prevent operators
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from crushing their fingers when it comes to welding there is no single way
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to do it but protocase uses gear from an Australian company called fronius that
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helps to alleviate some of the issues with using more traditional Mig and TIG
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welding techniques like the tendency for examp example of thin sheet metal to get
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wavy or even knelt back from the attempted join leaving two ugly pieces
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of metal and a gap in between instead of a joint it actually Bears a lot of
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similarity to mig welding where a spool of wire is being constantly fed towards
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the join filling much the same role as solder would in soldering except that
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the difference with pronia's technique is that thanks to digital control of
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power and the spool feed rate the filler metal is actually repeatedly heated and
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applied 20 to 30 times per second rather than constantly this results in cleaner
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work lower power consumption and less heat being applied to the workpiece so
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with this Tech instead of being limited to working with 16 gauge aluminum or
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higher you can go all the way down to about the thickness of a pop can the
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only drawback is that machines from fronius cost about 10 times there's
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always a gotcha isn't there router Milling is used in
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situation tion where the design work is too fine to handle the heat of a laser
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so the setup you're looking at is a 5x 10t table with a CNC controlled cutter
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very similar to a drill bit that can be controlled to within about a thousandth
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of an inch the coolest thing about this Dad is the automatic tool changer so
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more of the process is automated even if it has to make a lot of different kinds
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of cuts then with all the parts bent and
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cut it is finally time for painting
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almost rookie mistake number one with any paint job is poor preparation so the
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entire project gets cleaned and degased
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etched with a phosphate to roughen the surface for better adhesion and in the
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case of Steel coated with a light touch of zirconium for corrosion resistance
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after that all the little screw threads and anything else that would be damaged
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or resized out of Tolerance by getting gunked up with paint gets plugged heat
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resistant masking tape is used for any areas that need to stay bare metal and
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then the finished parts are hung up on electrically conductive hooks where the
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powder coating powder clings to them due to static electricity yet another fun
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fact the nozzle of the powder coat applicator is charged at 100,000 volts
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to make the powder really cling to the parts so you can actually build up
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multiple layers of material before they're finally rolled into an oven and
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baked which leads us to the final stage
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assembly where the computer drawings are turned into a real life object that if
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all goes according to plan somewhat corresponds to the original computer
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drawing and from first inspection I'd say this went pretty darn well I can't
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wait to put my liquid cooled system into this truly one-of-a-kind rack mount case
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so huge thanks to protocase for building it for me it is really amazing what
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those guys can do with custom metal fabrication speaking of amazing what if
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there was a desk that could be lower and
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then hire oh there is right upd desk.com
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the providers of the desks that we use here in our editing Den benchmarking
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room and in my office they're fantastic because not only do they allow any
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individual user to get it customized to exactly the right height for their their
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best Comfort while they're working they are also quickly and easily adjustable
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so you can go okay I want to be sitting right now oh you know what I'd rather
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kind of stretch out my back a little bit and St work standing up for a little
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while no problem they've got presets so all you do is hold the button and boom
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it goes to exactly the setting that you set with the preset they've got a
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variety of different tabletops everything from corner desks to large
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straight desks to well smaller straight desks they've got a lot of different
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surface coverings that they can do and a little bird told me that if you contact
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them directly they can even work on custom sizes of tabletops as well so
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check it out over at upd desk.com Linus Linked In the video description if
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you've been thinking to yourself gee I sure would like a standing desk one
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that's wellb built high quality and all that good stuff so thanks for watching
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that you're done doing all of that stuff you're probably wondering what should I watch next so click that little video in
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the top right corner to check out our Channel Super Fun video with a Christmas
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relay race should be pretty good