Violet Ram's Head Build

[pickdropper]

I haven't been taking enough pics of my builds lately, but I am pleased with the way this one turned out.

This is a mudbunny built to Violet Ram's Head specs.  I didn't find the mid pot did much, so I did the Fred Garvin mods to it, which helped quite a bit.



Labels and I don't seem to get along too well so far, so I laser etched the text and graphic instead.





This is my first muff build.  Fun stuff.

[sgmezei]

Dude that build looks slick!! Looks like platinum. Awesome man.

[pickdropper]

Dude that build looks slick!! Looks like platinum. Awesome man.

Thanks sgmezei.  The "platinum" is just the raw color of the enclosure.  It turned out pretty cool.

[nzCdog]

Nice finish... did you take it to an engravers or something to laser etch that?  Looks great

[juansolo]

Nice!

[pickdropper]

Nice finish... did you take it to an engravers or something to laser etch that?  Looks great

Actually, we just got the laser engraver at work.  It's a cool machine.  I do the layout in Adobe Illustrator and then send it to the engraver like you would a printer.  You do need to be sure that it is properly lined up, as there are no second chances.  The main thing is that you have to account for the draft of the enclosure itself as the bottom of the enclosure is what physically aligns in the bed and it is wider than the top.

Other than that, it is pretty straightforward.  This particular machine isn't one of the more powerful ones, so it cannot dig into the metal itself.  If you want to engrave unpainted enclosures, you need to put on this special coating, which is then stains the metal when the laser hits it.

The other thing I've found is that taking off too much material can exposure the uneven finish of the metal underneath.  You can see that in this DMM enclosure that I tried engraving:



I think it still looks cool, but there is definitely some scuffing and scraping of the enclosure underneath the paint.

After engraving, the bigger pain is cleaning up the box.  I had to use a lot of flux remover and elbow grease on some of these.  Going forward, I am going to try running the job a few more times and see if the laser will do some more of the cleanup for me.

[marmaliser]

Nice work, that  looks like a real pro job and I bet it sounds fantatsic   

[k.rock!]

Wow...I wish I had access to a laser engraver! This looks amazing man...they look beautiful!

-K

[DutchMF]

That is a very nice build, dude! Guts are very neat, and the laser engraving is beautiful! Now I have to convince my boss we need one of those at work.......

Paul

[pickdropper]

That is a very nice build, dude! Guts are very neat, and the laser engraving is beautiful! Now I have to convince my boss we need one of those at work.......

Paul

Go for it!  Tell him to get the more powerful laser that will actually dig into metal.

[JakeFuzz]

Damn those do look awesome. What you could do is engrave a negative of the image in the paint and dunk it in some type of etching solution. The paint should act as a mask and you should come out with a perfectly etched enclosure. That would be awesome.

[jkokura]

This makes me want to go buy a laser engraver...

Jacob

[pickdropper]

Damn those do look awesome. What you could do is engrave a negative of the image in the paint and dunk it in some type of etching solution. The paint should act as a mask and you should come out with a perfectly etched enclosure. That would be awesome.

That is a really interesting idea.  I havent got into chemical etching at home because I don't have great ventilation in my office.  If I get setup for it, I may give that a try.

[JakeFuzz]

That is a really interesting idea.  I havent got into chemical etching at home because I don't have great ventilation in my office.  If I get setup for it, I may give that a try.

I would love to see the results if you do! Etching is pretty easy, I do it in my bathroom 

[stecykmi]

love that finish.

just out of curiosity, what's the manufacturer/model of that engraver?