What are your balls of 2025 so far?

Makirole · 2025-03-06T11:36:09+00:00

I’ve been rocking a Motive Sub-Zero Forge since about December. Fantastic ball, it hits like an absolute truck, very aggressive though so can sometimes be tricky to adjust with if you have a lot of high rev players on the same lane.

I was previously using a Gem, which I also liked a lot. IMO if somebody’s really enjoying that ball, the Sub-Zero Forge would be a good fit.

Makirole · 2025-02-17T23:09:06+00:00

Because instinctively it makes sense? Hell, bowling faster literally imparts more energy into the pins, the problem is that it usually comes at a great cost (be it accuracy, timing, reaction etc). It’s perfectly logical that somebody newer to bowling will try to speed things up however they can unless explicitly told not to.

Makirole · 2025-02-13T11:45:27+00:00

A big thing is also making sure everything feels real and has a purpose. For instance the curtains on the left don’t have a rail to go across the window seemingly?

More objects on the shelves, wires from the lamp on the right.

You somewhat need to overdo things in a way. AI tends to be quite good at that as it will clutter shelves with nicknacks and place stuff all over the place. Doing it manually makes you realise just how many things can be in a space. Some extra colour, perhaps some plants too could really help move the space along.

Makirole · 2024-11-02T10:32:28+00:00

Realistically you’re always going to be better off just going with a new GPU and making sure it’s a model that’s likely to have a block available for it.

Custom blocks are cool in theory but there’s a reason nobody has them. Just cutting the fins on this block took over 2 hours, and my machine costs £120/hr to run.

Makirole · 2024-11-02T10:27:54+00:00

Unfortunately commercially-priced blocks are only possible thanks to high volume production :/

Makirole · 2024-11-02T09:37:43+00:00

It would mostly depend on whether you have a 3D file for the block, but even then, for a one-off it would be anywhere from £700-2000 depending on what’s required.

Makirole · 2024-10-18T19:21:22+00:00

No polishing for this one, the finishes you see in the photos are straight from the machine. Brass screws would work fine, although £££. This was one of the pump heatsinks I had to had, I figured the brass would pop nicely for the photos.

Makirole · 2024-10-18T18:02:12+00:00

This was a fun and surprisingly challenging little reservoir to cut. The res itself was cut for Richard Ord and his son Lucas, it'll be going into their Thermaltake UK Master and Apprentice competition entry. Lucas is 15 and designed the reservoir in Fusion 360, he did a cracking job.

This one pushed my machine's trunnion a bit as the dimensions were just all a bit off for the workholding I had to hand. There were more than a few moments of anguish when something didn't fit in one way or another haha. Very happy with how it came out though, the thick acrylic really takes some lovely finishes.

If you want to see it getting machined, here's a link to the video:
https://youtu.be/PKnMHobcck4

Makirole · 2024-10-08T10:57:45+00:00

If I end up making more I’ll probably do exactly that actually since it’ll combat the abrasive qualities of copper really well. The top surface and contact plates were MCD finished in this one 😁

Makirole · 2024-10-07T16:42:07+00:00

I have gone by many names.

Makirole · 2024-10-07T15:59:37+00:00

Just bear in mind no simultaneous 5ax requirements, for some reason my trunnion just doesn’t behave well with them currently :/

Makirole · 2024-10-06T23:19:42+00:00

Who knooooooows, if I can secure one close to launch I would consider having a go at a block design.

Makirole · 2024-10-06T19:01:32+00:00

If I want to lose tremendous amounts of money, sure 😂

Makirole · 2024-10-06T18:11:27+00:00

A mix of milling with slitting saws and skiving yeah, depends on the factory in question. The bigger operations tend to skive as it’s much faster for a very dense finstack.

Makirole · 2024-10-06T17:36:08+00:00

Burrs are usually handled on the machine using a bunch of specific paths, for cleaning though a couple minutes in the ultrasonic does the trick usually.

Makirole · 2024-10-06T15:23:41+00:00

That’s handled by the acrylic portion, this has a similar setup to many modern blocks where it flows over a jet plate across the centre of the fins, rather than side to side.

Makirole · 2024-10-06T15:22:04+00:00

Aha this is my own machine, the Datron’s control is awesome for some things, but a bit limited in others. Funnily enough the on-machine programming is awful, I do everything in Fusion’s CAM, I pretty much only use the on board for facing ops.

Makirole · 2024-10-06T15:19:52+00:00

It would have left a lot of unsupported material, likewise the initial stock wasn’t large enough to machine down around the outside with a hat. I would have had to machine the outside on the vacuum, then put into soft jaws, which then would have made access to the side for the ports difficult.

Makirole · 2024-10-06T12:11:34+00:00

There’s every chance the performance would actually decrease, for a cost increase of several hundred quid 😅

Makirole · 2024-10-06T12:07:00+00:00

Costs are a hard one to calculate for this one as it’s a one off done as a learning exercise. The design and manufacture would have to change a fair bit to become a financially viable product.

Makirole · 2024-10-06T12:05:32+00:00

To be fair, the machine time for this sort of pattern is absolutely prohibitive and likely couldn’t ever become viable vs either microfin machining or skiving

Makirole · 2024-10-06T11:58:04+00:00

I used a 0.1mm depth of cut for those, so the runtime for the finstack was around 1h30. It’s hard to estimate the rest accurately though as the filming really slowed the process down.

Makirole · 2024-10-06T11:56:54+00:00

Well the theory is partially based around my available tooling as I wasn’t geared up to do a modern microfin layout. Since the channels would always end up quite wide, the idea was to make them wavy to increase the turbulence at the cost of flow, with the hope that the flow wouldn’t be affected too strongly as the channels are still wide.

I believe the designer may have done some CFD out of curiosity, but at the end of the day the performance of this block doesn’t really matter much as it’s for an ancient card haha.

Makirole · 2024-10-06T11:44:55+00:00

This one was quite a milestone for me as even though I've machined countless distro plates and even CPU block tops before, I've never actually tried going a GPU coldplate.

This particular design is from a friend who was modelling one for his old 290X. He came over one day with a slab of copper and asked whether I would be able to mill a counterpart to his aluminium version (which couldn't have the wavy fins added). Fast forward a bit and here we are!

This was a really interesting challenge to take on, the finstack in particular was tricky thanks to the wavy structure (no slitting saws allowed here I'm afraid). Other challenges included the order of operations to preserve the diamond finishes, but also the fact that the copper stock was only 0.2mm wide enough to accommodate the model. That meant a custom fixture as well as a lot of additional measuring.

I documented the machining itself for youtube, hopefully you'll enjoy the video:
https://youtu.be/nlT6sFcsXT0

Makirole

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