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Zdg Gym status report. v009 is still the latest version of the OBJ files as I'm still working on the chalk tray and considering options for the triangle signs. (Edit, Vault Chalktray added)
https://www.dropbox.com/s/8d5qiysutn0ex2t/ZdgGymPrelimObj_015.zip?dl=0
OBJ files only so far. Import at 100% size for Daz Studio. The obj files are UV mapped and surface zoned
so that should work for most just looking to check them out with your surface shaders of choice.
Daz Studio beta zip is way over over on Page 52.
(That should do, back to the original post content)
That is essentially the design that I like for the chalk tray, tho I'm still fussing with the geometry to tame some of the surface shading artifacts. I'm still not sure if a second mesh layer in the tray is a good idea for the chalk, so it is absent at the moment.
The triangle signs are going to be a bit of a challenge to UV map, not to say I'm not sure just how big they actually are in real life. I'll guess there about a meter tall or there about. Also some competition floors appear to have them on stands on the side of the podiums and others are just on the podiums. I'll see how it works out when I get there and if I need to make a Podium side stand of a sorts for the signs.
There, a few edge loops and all fixed. Added to OBJ zip v010 at the beginig of the post.
Guessing on the size of the three sided podium signs (Or whatever there actually called, I don't know). Counting some pixels in a photo and the width of the vault run-up horizontal to the thing gives some interesting numbers. Flat face of the sign is about 100 pixels and the one meter wide vault run-up lane is around 66 pixels, so that works out somewhere in the ball park of 1.3 meters wide for the display (close enough to 125cm). Plugging that into an aspect ratio calculator to get the height of a 6-by-9 display gives about 70cm or there about.
Modifying that three sided cylinder stand in to the dimensions looks close for the height even tho 125cm across a cylinder is not the same as the width of each face. I'm only looking for ball park figures so I'm not going to waste my time doing the trig to get the cylindrically diameter needed to get each of three sides to actually be 125cm wide. Besides, I'm not going to make this thing from a cylinder, I'm going to make one side and glue three of them together to make it, so doing three face diameter trig is useless info for making them.
So, I guess the screen is about 125cm x 70cm give or tak a bit for the border stuff. That's a start at least, now to make an oversized display... or a microscopic display, how big is a centimeter
lol. It's convenient because everything in Hexagon and Studio uses that multiples of ten system, it's inconvenient because I haven't a clue how big or small it is in reality.
In defense of the "British Imperial System" I will say say this and leave it at that (sarcastic joke detected). There are two kinds of nations in the world, those that had people walk on the moon, and those that use Metric. Ouch!
lol.
That looks like regular wide-screen TV feet sticking out of the bottom of that sign.
Yea, your on your own with that other chalk and stuff, lol.
Well, I expected to need to do a lot more to the geometry then just make the basic shape.
I'm surprised there is no odd shading artifacts without any edge loops on this one. hmm.
I guess I'll UV map it and see how it goes tripled up into a single obj.
I guess for something like this, the orientation of the mapping is kind of important. And yes, the screen is a separate zone so it can be set up as an emissive shader in Iray. I may even make that back hickey-thing another zone as well.
That looks rather good. The top and bottom bezel may need to be a tad taller for logos you may want to add, possibly.
OK, jokes and puns aside, that almost looks about right?
Time to get some coffee and stare at that for a bit.
Way off topic sort of, and some what relevant for Iray GPU loads. 2 hours 15 minutes on the CPU vs 23 hours on the GT740.
Why am I wasting my time running that on the GPU when the CPU is way faster
. If I had good motherboards for them, I have ten year old processors here that are better then that GPU for this, lol. The GT740 is running at 50c (120F) and the FX8350 is doing much better at 48C (118F) with the room at 78.8F 
, the GT740 just is not worth beefing the cooling on it, it can cook to death, lol.
Well in any case, seeing as Iray for the GTX-10xx line is still in the works, I'll see if i can get a GTX 960 to take for an Iray spin. I can't promise any thing on the third, bills to pay and it's not what I really want to get. OK, I admit nvidea has yet to make the sub-one-hundred-watt Iray card that I was hoping for, at least one of these cheep throw away junker cards may be better then nothing for Iray to get me by.
P.S. if your curious what that thing is, here is a vid that covers it well and some info for that "Team". PA's, I highly advise you do not put that on your content creation workstation, as you need every single GPU and CPU cycle you can get your grubby fingers on for making content.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-6oyuYIA6A8
(I had too set the CPU to '6' instead of the default '-1' to get it to fetch more work units. Something about an 8-core CPU being called 7-thread by something that is not allowed by the servers. It's happy now.)
Sort of a so-so update on things. I went to go to the store to get milk for coffee this morning, and the brake pedal in the Jeep flopped to the floor. At least it happened in the drive way before I went any where, tho the leaking brake line is going to make things uncomfortable for the month. I'm now not sure if I'll have the spare funds to get that 960 to test on Iray or not this month, it's now dependent on how much the brakes cost to fix.
As for other things, I decided to put the GT730 back into the PC and leave FAM on the secondary GT740 card. To my surprise the desktop is much smother with the displays on the GT730 then it ever was with the displays plugged into the GT740. It sort of doesn't add up as the GT740 is 100MHz faster then the GT730 (same amount of CUDA cores and memory). I guess that settles it, GT730 for my future SPICE crunch boxes it is then, the GT730 is just better all around for them. All the old AGP motherboards are on there second set of caps any way that are not completely dead. And no, I'm not making a FAM farm, I have another project I've neglected because the aging motherboard thing (and lack of a good low watt PCI-express GPU to get the desktop out of the system ram).
As for the workstations (DAZ/CAD and DAW), that is still in limbo pending other bills. I would like to finish "Stellar Drift" (My last composing project I was working on) one of these days.
On the one hand, a separate mesh layer for chalk is handy because it can take transmaps. On the other, it's always possible to stick a primitive plane there.
Hope your brakes won't set you back much.
Yea, I have been dealing with a lot of stuff breaking as of late, even stuff that shouldn't,
The past ten years has been a torment of replacing stuff that I did not plan on replacing within it's implied life expectancy. Why dose the universe hate me, lol. This is only the second month in a row that I can't get a GTX1070, is the universe going to go for a third month as well. There are less painful ways to keep me from getting a good Iray card, the lack of driver support is a good enough reason as it is.
Zathras can never have anything nice. lol.
OK, I do have some nice stuff. I have this really nice Odroid XU4 that I've been stress testing heat sinks and fans on, I just have not had the spare time to compile the data into an intelligent post over on the Odroid forum.
Chalk tray, that opacity map thing was exactly what I was thinking, and the ability to deform the mesh around the feet of the figure. I've just been rolling around two questions in my mind. How far up from the basin should the chalk mesh be? And how best to atach a mesh ten times as dense, to another less dense mesh, with no merge down room on the edges at all? I may have to drop another mesh in there and not 'weld' them together, it comes down to the "Least shunned upon" way to do it I guess, lol. Five or more sided n-gons will crash some shaders, and OpenGL tends to drag down with many independent objects.
Yeah, not welding seems to be the right choice.
OK, working on that, tho I'm not sure just how that will work with d-formers, or smoothing if sub-d must be used for something some one is doing with the chalk layer.
I'm still not sure what would be good for a separation distance between the chalk mesh and the basen mesh (Basin, oops. I'll rename that zone.). As for providing maps to use with the set, that will come down to just how large the zip is for the gym set. I can't promise a zip update just yet, I do need to be a few places and am a tad distracted as well. If you have Zip v011 from a few days ago, you have the latest OBJ set.
Like I typed, I'm a tad distracted. Not to say I need to go pick up the Jeep (the "I miss my Blazer". lol) today and find out what the damages are from that.
BTW, if that is genuine UDIM mapping it will work, if it is bodge job UV duct tapping...
This is so over my head, I need to read threw the Headus docs again. (the clock is ticking as well, that may be all I can do today with no zip update.)
Bread crumb for self. It is UDIM, good good. Zathras happy with, this correct tool. lol.
Now why is Headus not 'Rendering' both UV zones when I ask it to make me a texture stencil of sorts? I can get it for map 1001 and none of the others? agh. The TIFs are in the temp folder, tho it dose not open up more then the first one in the viewer.
I upload the chalk tray (top of page for link, zip v012), tho I left the old one in the zip just encase it is broken. It appears to work in Daz Studio, tho I have no clue if it will work in other UDIM compatible programs (nor do I know how to fix it if it is broken).
Morning, evening, whatever it is, lol. I'm still working on a few things here, tho I came across something kind of funny.
So, it's a $24 plan on a $300 graphics card that only covers the $24 plan?
That has got to be a typo. Now granted there are less expensive 4GB GTX 960 cards out there. I wanted a shorter card to keep it from having an intimate affair with the computer intake fans. 
Opps, was that a innuendo,
now I've been de-funded, That's just great, how can they de-fund me when I wasn't monetized to begin with, lol. Oh, this isn't that other site, we are all good, carry on y'all. lol.
In separate news, I had looked at that UDIM thing with the balance beam to try to get more texture pixels to the various parts. I'm just not sure about how the beam is cut in half to make UDIM packing do it's thing on more then one map.
I'm just not sure how that is going to be a seamless seam there in the middle of the beam.
Seamless is a matter of texture painting. Or do you want seamless tiling?
And I found out that you can change "subdivision weight" in DS and keep even single edges from oversmoothing. It isn't a 275% magic trick, but maybe you''ll find it useful: http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/1537976/#Comment_1537976
My first thought was about tiling shaders, tho my skills with GIMP are not good enough to cut up a map and place the parts exactly on a pixel per pixel placement. Any time a layer is moved or resized, Gimp blocks the view of other layers, so it is difficult at best to get things lined up properly.
Headus is a tad finicky of how the 'packing' of map layouts work. You kind of hit a single button and let the program try to figure it out, so putting things where you want them to be isn't exactly easy.
So the UV map in the zip is better for both making maps and tiled shaders, despite it being so inefficient that texture maps will need to be over 4k in size for any logos or emblem art on the thing to look good up close.
I just don't see a way to improve that in headus unless I can put the beam across two UDIM zones as a single continues part (it wont let me have more then one UDIM zone unless I cut up that beam).
I'm sure Headus has a method to the map 'Pack' thing, I'm just not sure how to best work with it on the balance beam.
That "subdivision weight" looks very nifty for daz Figure/Prop asset files, I'm not sure it would be easy to imbed that into a regular OBJ file. So I imagine it would only be good for shared stuff in the content library path kind of like Morph dials. You can put a morph on an OBJ in studio, tho that morph is only in the scene save file and not the original OBJ file. That's why I have not bothered making a morph for the FX floor mat yet to have it drape over the corner of the raised FX floor.
Yea, when things happen to me, I get slam-basted, lol.
This morning I set the GPU to 'Finish' the work it was doing, because a new card arrived. Now granted I will probably be eating ramen noodles for a week to make up for the price of the new GTX960 card, tho I think it may be worth it for dabbling in Iray.
Now granted I expected to wake up a tad sooner then I did, tho it's all good. I will be running some Iray benchmarks on the three cards while I fill out some paperwork. And it is a lot of paperwork all at once. There is so much to be do-ings, not much time.
So needless to say, today is going to be a tad busy for me. At some point, I'll need to head out to get copies of some stuff for a few of them, so there won't much time to play in Daz Studio. Housing, Electric, heating assistance, and my Armature radio license renewal, to name a few.
Oh, that's just great, and a new bank card that I must change all the bills over to. I thought that was the bank statement I must make copies of for all them programs, now where did the bank statement go, agh. lol.
Zathras have sad life, probably have sad death, at least there is symmetry.
No modellers I use support UDIM, so I don't know how to fix this =(
You're right, it's a DS specific thing, but you do plan to release the final version as DS duf props, right? This weight setting will stay in scenes and in figure/prop assets.
Isn't that how it goes of late, there all behind on the tech they are capable of. UDIM has been out for how long, Iray has been around for how long, and yet brand new affordable stuff is not up to the minimum required for them. The brand new 3GB GTX1050 dose not have the minimum recommended 4GB of memory for Iray
. So there are only four cards that will do Iray with a single HD figure and cloths in the budget range of many. The 4GB GT730, 4GB GT740, the 4GB GTX960, and the yet to have Iray drivers 6GB GTX1060 (If you can call over three hundred USD affordable, many can't). So I'm not surprised that it takes a hundred dollar UV mapping tool and Hexagon (or more expensive modeling program like "Marvelous-Whatever-brush") to work with UDIM files.
Did I just type 1050 instead of 1060 again, oops. lol
(EDIT), apparently there is an add-on for Boeing, errrr, Blender that supports UDIM stuff.
If you can figure out where it is and how to land it without crashing, lol.
Absolutely will. I'm just not willing to start saving daz files till I know the geometry and UV mapping is good to go. Some things require redoing all of the work from scratch in Daz studio to fix, so I've been putting off the daz stuff till later on. It is going to happen, and the OBJ files should be usable for many in the intern. I'm going to set up a basic MAG floor setup to complement the WAG floor, then the Daz files will be made and packed up into 10MB zips.
Have you looked at the non-commercial version of Mari for UDIM capabilities?
https://www.thefoundry.co.uk/products/non-commercial/mari-non-commercial/
I don't mind Blender, but I do mind its add-ons =) They often become incompatible with newer versions, but being free, they are often abandoned by developers. And if you get used to the add-ons, it's so annoying to deal without them.
So I'll wait when UDIM support is in the "trunk".
...why 10 MB? Or did you mean 100MB?
Does it do UV mapping? I'm personally not interested in Mari as a painting program because I have Blacksmith3D and Substance Painter.
And then, with non-commercial software, there's a legal problem I never understood. Maybe you or Zarcon happen to know?
So, we make a freebie and paint/UV-map it in a non-commercial app. Does it mean our freebie should also be marked as non-commercial renders only??
Mari was one of the first Motion Picture CG Suits that implemented UDIM (to the best of my knowledge) with a price tag out beyond the Van Allen radiation belts. Often such corporate level endeavors have some rather strict (you can never use it for commercial stuff of any kind) licenses if not crippling limitations in the software with the stuff closer to the stratosphere. I honestly never looked to see 'IF' they had anything close to affordable stuff for individuals that get less then a 'Titan X' before bills. Not to say, I can't use that to make CC0 stuff, because CC0 stuff can be used by others for commercial purposes, and that kind of violates the "never use it for commercial stuff of any kind" clause. As a student in a class (that I am not), that is a very nice offer for learning CG in a Formula-one class software suit, incredible for a job application to the likes of ILM or Pixar, I will give 'The Foundry' that.
In unrelated news, I did break open the plastic on the GTX960 box this morning and ran some tests to complement some tests run yesterday on the GT740 and GT730 cards. I posted some results and other info in the Iray benchmark thread, mostly for Iray on the affordable. In a nutshell the GTX960 is a power hitter with Iray, I just question the power consumption and cooling requirements of the setup compared to the far more frugal GT730.
http://www.daz3d.com/forums/discussion/comment/1560136/#Comment_1560136
OK, I know, every one wants to know how it stacks up with 'Games' instead of the CUDA capabilities of the thing, and who cares if it requires three ZPMs to power it.
Honestly, in heaven it did have a few noticeable stutters at low quality, tho over all was not that bad.
The GT740 had more noticeable stuttering at the same settings.
And the GT730 clearly is not up to the latest games, even tho it is twice the performance of the 8600GT at half the watts. I still would love to duct tape three GT730 cards together into a single 900MHz, 1152 CUDA core, 12GB DDR3, Iray crunch card that only uses 70 watts.
It's nice to daydream, even tho a sub-one-hundred watt card like that will probably never happen. Oh well.
Also, it will be intresting to see how the 4GB GTX960 stacks up against the 6GB GTX1060 (not the 3GB GTX1050 wan-a-be 1060 card), when Iray is ready for the GTX10xx line.
(EDIT 10Sep2016) Forgot the Cinebench, there y'all go.
Kettu, that 'Non commercial' bit is just a 'sticky mess' if you go there, It's just a lot easier to just not be on the slippery slope of mixing "for commercial" and "noncommercial only" stuff to begin with, lol. Some user agreements are quite clear on weather the stuff you make with something can be shared or not (like that Skin Map set by Morris, or AoA2 shader settings), other times it's more like a "you have no rights" as they cover there backsides legal headache.
10MB files was a pseudo limit at shareCG, it's mentioned on there upload page next to the zip source location upload thing. I'd rather not push my luck with larger zips there.
Ugh, I reinstalled that client twice from scratch, and it still thinks the GT730 is the GTX960 (and vise versa). It's late, It's at least running, I'll try to fix it later on. I never ran Cinebench on the cards either, I guess tomorrow is going to be busy after a little antenna replacing party on a local mountain.
Morning y'all. I'm still working on some of that paperwork, and I have more that I must do as well, that is my life.
I also tried to pull one card and wipe/install FAH for the one GPU and it appeared to work, till I put the GT730 back in. Everything else knows what GPU is what one except FAH.
And for some odd reason, because I reinstalled the FAH client a few times on this single computer, the stat server thinks I now have 8 things (cards and CPUs) running this, even tho it is all on the same computer with the same three graphics cards I've been swapping out the past few days. I guess it doesn't matter as much as it did with BOINC, as the stat servers don't appear to show what you and others have for hardware. I give up, It's at least crunching on the correct card even tho it thinks it's the other one.
I noticed something else pass threw my email as I was working on my first cup of coffee. It looks like some of the socket G34 motherboards are dropping in price (still way out of my budget range). Least time I looked at the dual socket G34 stuff, the fastest Optron available for them was 8-cores running at two-point-something GHz, and the total 3delight power of a fully loaded dual socket G34 system was about the same as a single AM3+ FX-8350. Half the cores at twice the clock (a single FX-8350) verses twice the cores at half the clock (two G34 Opterons), it works out to about 32 horsepower either way (8 x 4GHz = 32 HP, or 16 x 2GHz = 32 HP). That is just insanity to pay ten times the price of what I already have to get the same amount of 3delight performance. Oh, but apparently there is a unicorn floating around, a 12 core Opteron that runs at 2.6GHz (around 31.2 HP per processor), I guess that two of them would be better then a single FX-8350, if you can afford the price of the ECC ram and motherboard for them. In the end, it would be significant cheaper just to build a second complete FX-8350 computer just to render stuff while you work on stuff on the first computer. And on a closing note on that, Most AM3+ motherboards max out at the 125 watt FX-8350 because they can not supply the 220 watts needed by the FX-9000 processors.
Oh, the W1SRA adventure from Saturday went "OK".
The day started out rather well with good looking weather.
The trees up there did kind of block most of the view, so I didn't get many good pics.
And just as the climber got the fist part of rigging to the top of the tower, nasty clouds came over the horizon,
So it was called off for a later day. It was not all bad, as some eyes did get a good up close look at the antenna, and that is far better then the former guessing from a distance prior to someone climbing up there to look.
That photo looks like you interrupted a drug deal and it's about to become the last photo you ever took!
yea, that's why I chose that one, they all have rather natural expressions.
(left) Oh a camera, must smile for the camera. (middle) How dare you take photos up here, I will bounce you for that. (right) what are you doing idiot, quit goofing around and just get the equipment out of the truck. lol.
In all honesty, they were having a short chat about whom was going to be doing what for lowering the old antenna down the tower when I interrupted them with the camera and saying something stupid at the same time.
As soon as the safety brief was done and the gates unlocked, the camera was put away for the rest of the time... Until after all the stuff was put away just as the clods came over head.
So I did not fill the SD card as I usual do.
Morning y'all. The past few days I did not have a chance to do much in Studio as I was getting ready for a section-8 inspection. So another 'project' had some dedicated time on the workstation, and team Barnacules is doing rather well from the looks of it.
I honestly did not expect to get into the top 500 with all them Titans going at it. The Stat server did go on vacation there a few days on Labor day weekend, so that put a few odd looking anomalies on the graphs.
That GTX960 is no slouch at folding from the looks of it as well. One of these days I'm going to have to look at under-clocking the GTX960 down under one-hundred watts TDP. Tho I'm sure even that will not be sufficient for what my dad asked me this past Thursday. He is looking for a 'dead-Silent' GPU for his PreSonus DAW, that can play Skyrim on a 4k monitor
, I can honestly say that dose not exist in this universe as they are polar opposites. The only way to do it, is to get the DAW out of the Studio and drop in a couple of Titan XP cards. Perhaps in another four or five generations of GPU architectures from now can you gat that kind of GPU power into a completely silent passively cooled PC without it being "Flash-Heated to Death" from pyroclastic flows erupting from the graphics cards, lol.
Awesome photos, Zarcon =) I like all those power line / carrier / whatever towers, they look awesome among trees IMO.
Well yeah, I either stick to resources/software with clearly defined licences or just plain out ask the vendor/developer, if they seem approachable. I was just hoping there could exist some universal legal decision for the murkier cases, like a court rule or whatever.
Oh, yeah, I remember that upload distinction now. I have larger files hosted up there, and they seem to do fine, though.
Yea, I do kind of enjoy taking the pics when I have spare AA batteries floating around, the camera dose eat threw them rather fast, lol. I don't think there has been a case in international court about that, so it's down to local laws for whatever countries are involved on a case by case bases, as if that is any less gray at all.
It's been a busy week, and the time I had off was not much. This evening 'we' just got the railings built on dad's deck after a tree squashed them a few months ago (sorry no pics, I ran out of AA batteries after looking at mom, comp.). The tree didn't harm anything other then the deck, so it was not as bad as ot could have been. As for mom's comp, well it was a bit of a community effort that I'm sure involved dumpster diving. My brother scraped up this thing when he was in high school, and despite all it's flaws, it at least functions which is better then the former door stop. At the moment it has three major problems, and I'll start with the lack of an intake at the front for the intake fans.
The motherboard standoffs are to short, and most of them are missing, and despite the shorter standoffs the cover will not fit on the case with the APU cooler. The shorter standoffs are causing problems with the USB and HDMI plugs. And back to the fans, that should have Harley logos on them (yes they are that dead), the front twin 80mm fan mounts are pointless at best.
This is not a computer case, it is a glorified RGB illuminated CPU and GPU convection oven.
And, the 4GB of DDR3-1333 is just not enough for basic Facebook stuff. So it at least needs the correct memory for the processor, and a new case with new fans. Now that GT740 that I had done some testing on earlier is already over there, I just don't dare put it in the computer without it having the correct standoffs and a better case to hold the weight of the card. The memory is a no-brainer, I just need to wait till the third and click the buy now button. So that leaves the new case. I showed mom some photos of the Arc mini R2 (not miDi), and a 'Core 1300' to think about. Unfortunately one of them looks rather scarce, and the others will not work (it's not an ITX motherboard, and the others like the 'Define' are way more then what's needed). There is some time to look over options before committing to a specific Fractal Design case, yes I am that done with dealing with junk cases that lack basic fundamental quality and thermal principles. (takes deep breath)
And I wanted to post this sooner and didn't have the time. Gamers Nexus, AKA Steve and Andrew, Nice job.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ieMvtUpFENM
The CG was done in Blender not 3delight, tho that matters not. His assistant Andrew managed to figure out how to do that in blender, and I've yet to figure out where the altitude is on the EADI in blender. I think It's a cool vid.
A slight intermission regarding some 'classic' stuff and color of metals.
yes, that is a clock hand from a vid I just stumbled onto by 'Clickspring'.
It's just steel, and it can look incredibly different depending on how the surface was treated, not just the lighting.
What I get from seeing some of the vids is that there is no single correct shader settings for a particular metal, so all that matters is that it has a similar appearance to what the creator had in mind.
Chris did a really nice job on that clock, makes my tin-snipping of fan-grates in computer cases look like a botch job. Here is the vid from the blue heat treating of the clock hands, and there is many other vids with very good shots of the metal surfaces being machined in his shop.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NhjiIPohUyw
My tools are practically nonexistent compared to all that cool stuff Chris has, tho for the most part I almost get by, I am not a machinist by any stretch of the imagination. I have a coffee can of dull files to de-burr edges sniped by my tin-snips, and I have a dead Dremel. I have a few drill bits, tho I lack a drill for them, lol. So my fumblings with modifying computer cases has not been in full swing the past few years.
On second look, the Dremel may be salvageable, if the black and white wires will stay in them press-in finger trap things on the switch. The white wire is just flopping around in the other finger trap connection, to cheep for blade connectors or screw terminals, What a piece of work. I thought it had a dead winding, because the last time I tried to use it before it completely stopped, it was bucking like an engine not firing on all cylinders. The hot wire flopping around in the breeze explains the sputtering
, how it passed UL qualifications I'm not sure.
(time for some coffee and to think about something other then that death trap.) It lives. I had to dislodge one of the brushes from the all-plastic brush guide to reunite it with it's spring, and take the switch apart to fuss with the metal innards to get it to grab the wires in the finger traps.
I don't believe they soaked me over a hundred USD for that thing back in 2006, a replacement switch now costs just as much a complete kit. I'll give it one ot two more fan mounts before the brushes bind up in the plastic brush guides again. I'll need to find an equivalent that has a potted armature and potted field winding with brass brush guides, I don't want another one of these rip-offs.
I really don't have anything against artist, tho I do some times wonder why they call some things what they do. Some will take off the shelf parts, plug them into a computer case with off the shelf lights, and call it a "Case mod".
I'm not sure how many of them have not modified anything that went into there computers with flashy lights and windows that came from the factory. I guess that makes what I do "reengineering computer cases" or something more drastic like butchery, lol.
And butcher computer cases I will continue to do.
I still want to build my brass and walnut case...now that would be a case mod.
Yea, I've thought a lot about making a case from scratch, tho I've never really got to building many of them as I kept changing my mind on some stuff. And yes, I did consider water cooling at one time. BTW, that is four fans (2 x 2) on each radiator baffle, one dead fan would not be a major problem.
I've also modified a few XT towers to have similar cooling methods that others have used (Great minds think alike), like one by "DIY perks" that he later made a more polished version of. It started way back in the days of the K6-III with rather lout 80mm intake fans and evolved from there.
Some times baffles and "turning vanes" help, and other times there not needed.
There is a difference between "Prof of concept" vs something more appealing to Consumers. Here is the concept that "DIY perks" made.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CB-_JIjhAyA
That was his concept that later was refined into what he called the "Cloud Unit". I like the GPU cooler idea, tho it would be best in the lowest slot on an ATX motherboard rather then the top one used most commonly today.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RZoX7glIAS4
One thing that often gets glanced over when trying to make quiet computers, is that the hotter the components, the more air flow is needed to keep them cool, and that ultimately makes for a louder computer. Can you imagine if top end graphics cards needing twice the power they use today, 440 watts a card, well don't tell the graphics card manufacturers that Mat may have found a way to cool such cards...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nrmeYMjup_s
So, yes, it can be lots of fun fussing with that kind of stuff when you stop worrying about the appearance of 'Ketchup and mustard" colors, and start thinking about how the stuff can be arranged differently, lol.