Project Log: Hail to the King

DarthBeavis

2[H]4U
Joined
Feb 24, 2006
Messages
3,403
This project was commissioned by NVIDIA as a gift to Gearbox for the launch of Duke Nukem Forever. Partners in this project include:
NVIDIA - Financed the project, project manager was Kris Rey, Community Manager from NVIDIA. Special thanks also go out to Eric Liu, Leslie Pirritano, and Mike DeNeffe (all NVIDIANS) for making this project happen. Sean Wix and Tim Springer from NVIDIA were patient enough to let us use their lab space and provide trouble-shooting to get some insane dual-screen 3d action going.
EVGA - supplied Classified 3 motherboard and two Hydrocopper 2 580s
Danger Den - Laser cutting services and all water-cooling at a nice discount
Crucial - killer Ballistix Smart Tracer ram and two SSDS
East Bridge Manufacturing - Discounted metal fabrication services - hub and mini gun came out beautiful!
BoxGods - insane design that make the project so much easier
ASUS - two 23" 3d monitors
Frozen CPU - nice discounts on various parts especially the UV Green wire for the PSUs
Silverstone - 1500 watt PSU
Fernando from Painters Supply in Salem Oregon - busted his tail to help get skin painted in time
The guys at Mid Valley Metal works for the use of their HUGE powder coating oven for bending the skins
My wife Delia who helped me heat bend the pod skins and who put up with the mess in our great room while I built this puppy
and my best friend (next to the wife) Chris Fletcher who gave up his time to travel with me to NVIDIA to complete the build
Gearbox and 2k for making the game and supporting this project!!!

I will not reproduce everything in the Geforce.com article found here http://www.geforce.com/#/News/articles/nvidia-presents-the-duke-nukem-forever-pc-mod but will instead add to it to provide more details and allow you to give feedback. Geno and I feel we want to not only produce worklogs to publicize the project but also to make the worklog a learning experience and to give back to the community. This worklog will be spread out over a a week or so - please keep checking for updates.

As stated in the article, we had several concepts for this project which were considered before arriving at one which everyone liked. My first submission was a school-girl themed design. I will not go into too much detail on this one but you can figure it out if you look at some Duke artwork. The second concept was the single Duke logo with buildings on each side.

duke01.jpg


If we used this concept, I would have included some pretty insane miniature buildings.
dwn1000.jpg


Geno, true to form, came up with a few twists "just in case" we wanted to go in a different direction. This was his just for giggles concept:
5272011124709pm.png
 
Epic, as usual Darth. Read the worklog on the link, will look forward to the rest of this one.
 
Once Geno had the Solidworks drawing done, Danger Den set to work cutting the acrylic. Here you see some of the pieces from Danger Den
dscf1007x.jpg


Geno had East Bay Manufacture fabricate the hub and gun

dscf0978xm.jpg



dscf0981w.jpg



Used a wooden buck to heat bend the acrylic the round shape needed to skin the pods



The first effort bending did not produce a perfect result. Had to reskin the buck as the vinyl flooring did not work well

Before bending:

dscf1011b.jpg


After first bending

dscf1012mf.jpg



dscf1014k.jpg


After second bending


53201133012pm.png



dscf1072z.jpg



dscf1070.jpg
 
Needed my Wonder-Twin g33k powers to complete this project:

592011103628pm.png



Jig for drilling and tapping holes in end of rib sections:

dscf1047m.jpg


Counter-sinking holes

dscf1048n.jpg


Gluing the pod covers to get them ready to paint:
dscf1022o.jpg


Tapping the manifold:

dscf1037.jpg


Getting ready to leak test the manifold:
dscf1050l.jpg


dscf1056.jpg



[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5ceqTuhlBi4"]Duke Manifold Leak Test[/ame]

The next step was to glue the skins onto the pods. I used Weld-On 3 - a thin glue which uses capillary action. You apply it to the seems with a syringe.
dscf1075h.jpg


Making the window bubblers. Layered 1/8 UV green acrylic . . .stripped down hypodermic needles so air could pass thru them at a reasonable rate

dscf1135ek.jpg


dscf1139d.jpg


dscf1140f.jpg


dscf1141c.jpg


[ame="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=J4ccjDQIX28"]The Reservoir[/ame]
 
Need to take the monitors apart to paint the enclosures

dscf1078y.jpg



Masked the pods so there would be windows left after painting - paint done then pack it all up for roadtrip to NVIDIA HQ . . .

dscf1100.jpg



All the stuff laid out at NVIDIA HQ

dscf1101w.jpg


Installing the floating PSU

dscf1105p.jpg


dscf1103n.jpg


dscf1106f.jpg


All the pods in place looks pretty good

dscf1109y.jpg


Installing the mobo

dscf1115cp.jpg


dscf1117x.jpg


Let's get those monitors on . . .Epic mod time! Should wrap them in bacon and deep fry them?

dscf1112b.jpg


Tomorrow we will look at the PSU and rad pods close up - and then get it all fired up including some video
 
Back
Top