60g Neurosis Stand

[MadeForThat]

So I modified the model, and printed it yesterday, and now it fits great! it will look a little messy with the wires facing toward the front, but I prefer to be able to move and check connections easily, so this should work. Another big benefit, is that I have room for another module should I need one some day. This is just a bit over complicated lol.

 

[Reefer Reboot]

Are the modules lock into place or do they just sit within the bracket?

 

[MadeForThat]

They lock in with a cover that uses the 3 holes below them:

 

[MadeForThat]

Today I was able to wire up the back box completely and mount it. I forgot to get a pic of it mounted. Start my new job with Sierra Nevada Corporation tomorrow, so progress may be slow here on out....

 

[Reefer Reboot]

Best of luck with the new job!;Nailbiting

 

[MadeForThat]

Not much new happening on the build, but here we are! I printed some mounts for the apex and the dos, and they turned out pretty nice! I mocked up the dosing container and trident waste water container, but realize that my saw cuts were not very consistent. I think I will need to set up my router to get them all exactly the same size for assembly...

 

[truepercs]

I went through the thread quickly i dont see anything regarding aquascape, rocks,etc. Might be a good idea to get your aquascape planned out and get it in a tub with bacteria, pods,coralline seed,etc.... so all is ready by the time you are finished. Could give you a nice start when you are ready and excited to get water in your new set up.

 

[MadeForThat]

That's a good idea haha, at the rate I'm going, id have totally purple rocks! I've already ordered the titanium rods to connect the rocks together..... not sure if that hints at where my scape is going lol

 

[MadeForThat]

@SVP if you hadn't traded me this equipment, I wouldn't be in this mess lol! Hope the Orpheks are treating your coral right

 

[MadeForThat]

Not much new, but I made yet another product that Neptune is soon to market. This one is a small box that contains 2- 24v to 12v step down drivers. When hooked in to the eb832 24v outputs, you can control whatever 12v devices you have. (It is actually adjustable from 3-24v should I need to change an individual output) In my case I want to run my ATO and refugium light, but do not want to use a whole 120v ac port for them. I will have an extra power port that I can use for whatever sump equipment in the future. My design here is really overly complicated, but I hadn't planned everything out, and it turns out I could fit it there lol.

 

[MadeForThat]

ACRYLIC!! so I got all of the acrylic for my sump, and before I go ahead and weld it, I needed to make a few features. This one is for the first stage of my sump, I would like to keep the overflow in a particular spot. I designed and printed a router guide and after clamping, was ready to go! Finish isn't perfect, but it is much better than I would have done by hand. I really need to build a table for my router, as I plan to round a lot of the edges to this sump.

 

[MadeForThat]

More acrylic shots, pretty much ready to weld/router hope my planning works out!!

 

[Reefer Reboot]

Which CAD/CAM are you using now? Did you get access to one at your new job?

 

[MadeForThat]

I am now using Fusion 360, I do have access to cad at my new job, but moving files out of the company by ANY means is strictly prohibited, and the same is true for moving files in. So even if I designed something on their seat of solidworks, I can't do anything with it for personal use :/ that's okay though, I had pretty much finalized my build, spare a few details on the controller side of the sump. I can open the files and inspect dimensions in GrabCad, so fortunately I have full access to my previous work.

 

[MadeForThat]

Well I have bad news, the acrylic sump seams are a disaster. I dont know why I was allowed to buy weld on 4, there should be a waiting period when buying a can. It could have saved an acrylic atrocity. The seams are bad, and by that I mean, I'm not sure I trust them to support weight. I am already planning to silicone, but I actually fear a full on blowout. To maybe help one person out there, here are a few things that went wrong.

Make sure the first panel you weld is PERFECT. perfectly square, and aligned the way you want it, before you put solvent anywhere near it. Especially do NOT attempt to adjust it after the solvent has started its work. That will suck in air and probably destroy your will to put in effort on the rest of the seams. Also apply pressure onto the seam to keep it together. I think that would have helped a bit with my first joint.

Secondly, Make sure any panels that need to be the same width, and appear to be so, are DARN close to identical. This was an issue for me, because I began by welding the baffles onto one side of the sump first, then welding on the opposite side. this means that any difference in the width of the internal baffles, resulted in a gap on the second side. I saw that one coming and sanded all of the baffles as they were assembled, with a large 3/4" sheet of glass and some adhesive backed sandpaper. I sanded until I had 1 flat plane to weld on the final side. That took the entirety of "Pans Labyrinth" with me stopping fairly often to read subtitles. Would have been much easier to match the panels before assembly.

DONT MAKE THE FIRST SEAM YOU WELD THE MOST VISIBLE ON YOUR SUMP. should be pretty obvious that the most visible seam should be done when you have the most experience. Well starting off I thought "I can take all the time I want with this first one and get it right, and at least the most obvious will be prefect." that was great until I realized I had welded it at an angle and had to break the seam mid cure to adjust it.

All in all I think I will probably be doing this again, after a bit more panning. I plan to do some testing on this to see if it has any structural issues. I would have very little concern if my sump was staying in one spot for 8 years. The issue is the impacts of sliding in and out the sump. There is a slight bump when you close it, and the same exists when you open it. Not that big of a deal, but this can contain as much as 20 gallons or 170lbs of water that will then slosh against these possibly unstable seams. I made this out of 9mm acrylic to be more than strong enough to embrace this, but I may only be getting 1/8" of welded support at some points in some seams.

Once the plastic wrap is off and I have been able to investigate the seams hopefully things aren't as bad as I think they are. If you read this far, take your time and make a PVC sump. Welding acrylic sucks. If anyone knows a really good person that knows their acrylic, please send them here, because I will definitely be looking for some expert guidance on whether or not I should just plan to throw this thing out.

 

[MadeForThat]

OPERATION GOOD ENOUGH:

While designing a PVC sump to replace my mistake ridden welded acrylic, I finally decided I was being far too critical, and that I should put more effort into covering up my mistakes rather than truly fix them. It's a concept that I think I can use for almost every aspect of life
So here is the plan to bury the evidence. Step one is cutting and fitting the 1/4" (6mm) triangular acrylic rod to fit all 4 corners, then the bottom sides. For bottom sides it was important to sand mating angles into the corners, so that the 3 triangles meet in a nice clean and strong corner. Once they are all cut, design a completely over complicated tool to put pressure on the inside face of the triangle rod while it is hardening. Now do that again but more complicated. Now that you have the tools and the rods cut, find the least noticable corner and try welding it in. Find out that the plastic you printed the corner clamps with was softened by the extremely violent solvent. (Weldon 3) Start printing a new set of clamps Then take a few hours to peel the first set out of the corner from on top of the acrylic while you ponder why you never considered that before. The worst is over, the worst corner is what it is. Wrap the second set of clamps in tin foil so it cannot be melted with the solvent. It works great, start pounding out the remaining corners. When clamping pressure is applied it will consistently squirt melted acrylic on the clamps, so the surface of the triangle rod is danged to look like ****. Accept it. Overcome it. That's why they make Black silicone, and you can paint the outsides of the corners with black paint too. No one will ever even see it. It's more important that the weld is solid and the seal is perfect. Good stuff, this sump is completely and utterly overbuilt. Total water capacity is less than 20 gallons and it is built out of 3/8" (9mm) acrylic and all external corners are reinforced with 1/4" (6mm) chamfers. IT. WILL. DO.

So yeah just gotta router the edges flush, round out some corners, silicone, and paint. It took me a while to get this corner support work done.

Gotta push forward

 

[Reefer Reboot]

R&D at it's finest!

 

[MadeForThat]

Cheers dude, I've done a lot of that on this build so far haha still have a bit that needs to be done for the tubes so that they don't kink when sliding in and out

 

[Reefer Reboot]

What kind of tubes are you planning to use? Silcone?

 

[MadeForThat]

Yeah I got some black silicone tube from AliExpress and I'm going to give it a try. It was extruded onto a conveyor so unfortunately it has a flat side and has a profile more like a D. That makes it pretty easy to kink, so I may try to find another supplier. Very few supplier say it is food safe, so I steer away from them. I don't necessarily trust that what I received is food safe based on the amount of smell. I plan to set up a bucket with a pump pushing water through for a few days. Once that has had a chance to leech I plan to put a damsel and some frag in and see how they fair over 24 hours. If they die I don't think I will use the tube