I’m sick of not having lighting for my Alienware Area-51 and Alienware Aurora cases. They work part of the time but can’t be easily controlled. The lighting is Proprietary and out of date. Alienware and later DELL made no effort to support the lighting with Windows 10 or Linux. These are what the two cases look like with lighting on:
That is the Area 51 circa 2006 with blue lighting in the vents and Alien Heads on sides and front. The Front Alien head is the power button.
And that’s the Alien Aurora R2 in Blue and Red lighting. The Front Alien Head opens the access door for the media drives. The power button is a hidden button behind the head on the top of the case.
I need a rack to dry and store brandy snifters. So I made one. The snifters are 3″ in diameter with a 2.5″ base. I didn’t see anything like this online.
The project uses light weight plywood and a 1″ dowel 5″ long. Here is the plan for the top and the base. The top and base are 6″ square. I used a forstner bit to drill the holes and a scroll saw to cut out the slots.
Walnut stain, Poly varnish, and felt feet on the bottom complete the project.
A while back I bought and hooked up a Dust Deputy to the shop vac that I have been using to clean my pellet stove. The Dust Deputy is an after market DIY cyclone separator. And for what you get it’s pretty pricey.
The kit I got comes with two 5 gallon buckets and a hose along with the separator. But it required some ABS pipe, glue and some work to get it hooked up to the shop vac that I’d been using. Turns out that hose diameters are no where near standard on these vacuums of course. But I’ve got it going and have not had to clean the vacuum filter in over a year. I have emptied the 5 gallon bucket once in that time. But Wait There’s More. A Better Solution has arrived.
The left picture shows the Home Depot picture for this use of this device. Clearly a mess since you are dragging two separate canisters around your shop or other area as you clean it. That’s gotta be a pain. On the right we see a fellow who has designed a simple modification for a Ridgid vacuum to hold the Dustopper together with the vacuum. Takes less floor space and moves as one unit.
Clearly this is what I should have done. And I may yet do this.
I still cannot understand why Ridgid or some other shop vacuum company, Dyson even, has not just made a vacuum with a cyclone separator built into it. Why these nonsense add-ons? Is Dyson holding a patent that keeps others from doing it, but is not doing it themselves? Dyson does not make a vacuum suitable for cleaning shop areas after all this time.
There are many Dice Tower design / construction videos on Youtube. Here are a couple of pictures from some I found. The problem with these designs is that they are made from foam. The one on the left is made with a foam core / glue gun construction with EPS foam blocks then cut and glued on. While the paint job is very cool, the light foam board construction is going to sound silly when you toss in the dice. The one on the right uses EPS foam blocks glued around a vase and a spiral ramp of foam core inside to bounce the dice around. Again, this one will just sound silly as it’s used.
Windy Weather 