a miracle delivery... need advice

[solRNY]

heres a closer pic of the cracks...

this is looking at the right side,
crack looks like it started at the weld seem, almost like the weld created a weak point, and the dry box being a square created a rigid point, when flexed/stressed it cracked,

this is looking at the left side,
both material seem to be of different thickness, that the overflow is slightly thinner, probably makes no difference if they were both 1/4",
i should of asked for 1/2" thickness ,

lots of lesson learned... its going to be challenging making another overflow bulletproof... only if i knew someone that can bend glass!!!!!!

 

[solRNY]

You are an incredibly patient person!
I admire your attention to detail throughout this entire process. Very impressive! This system is going to be AMAZING when up and running.

thank you Scott for the very kind words
i am not sure about being amazing but being up and running is good

am wondering if one can tell rather this is cast or extruded acrylic by looking at the cross section?

 

[solRNY]

not much forward progress on building a new overflow... near finish with my DIY acrylic bender utilizing 2 heating element sandwiched, but while testing the heat elements, 1 of the 2 blew up... sigh... when it was working, it heated a test piece acrylic nicely,

anyway, am not a fan of the cold so thought i had to share this video i made today, towards the end it is difficult to hear, sorry,
<iframe width="640" height="480" src="http://www.youtube.com/embed/0X-KFSrKo8Y" frameborder="0" allowfullscreen></iframe>

 

[solRNY]

its been a while but there progress!!

a friend built for me this overflow using 1/4" black ploycarbonate, i was excited how it came out, and it fits perfectly!! i am learning that ploycarbonate is very flexible, probably will not crack like acrylic, being so flexible i dont think 1/4" thickness will hold up to the tower of water, so i am planning to "laminate" the inside with another 1/4" glass along with some glass bracing

though this is much forward progress, i am reserving this overflow as a backup as i still want to explore using 1/2" black acrylic. much thanks to my friend for giving me this option, here are some pics of what he made,

front shot:

flare:

outside looking in:

 

[solRNY]

been in contact with several acrylic outfits, seems like none wants to take the challenge when it comes to 1/2" acrylic, maybe that my design is too complicated and that they sense i am too picky

figure i have to give this a try myself as i now have a back up overflow. after the first heating element diaster, i best get my arylic bender design completed. as the replacement heating elements and other parts arrived, i constructed this acrylic bender:

all the parts made and laid out, the heating element is 2kW at 240V, but since i am using it at ~120V, it will put out ~480W, and ~20W/in.

built two benders out of angle aluminuim from Lowes, found my chop saw to be very useful not only for wood and pvc, think i might need a new blade soon,

closer pic:

 

[solRNY]

here is the benders once i got done wireing them to two wall dimmers:

here if my first test, kinda scary as the previous heating element blew up, slowing ramping them up and down gave me a little confidence. slipped a test 1/2" acrylic inbetween, slowly rampped up to 5A, ~600w total, 300w for each element, there it remained for ~20mins. came back as i saw the 1/2" started to melt, now my heart started pumping, lifted the one end up a little and it was bendable! now i am excited!

pulled the 1/2" acrylic out of the dual benders and bent it 90 degree with ease, raced around finding clamps and the left over jig so to see if i can form it to what i needed

 

[pascal32]

looking good man. Do I need to drive to your place and add water so we can get the suspense over with?

 

[solRNY]

i let it cooled down for a while, when the clamps were removed, to my surprized it did not spring back, so this is a plus. the face of the 1/2"arcylic is a bit melted, distored, as the idea was the top bender should be hotter as heat rises and the bottom less hot, but i am finding different. will have to take some inside material out too as it compresses and piles up,

this is a pic of the inside bend, now i am thinking i dont care what the inside looks like so i will make the bottom bender hotter than the top, and will round over the jig so to get a more rounded bend, many more iterations of this before i put the final 1/2" black acrylic to the heat!

dont have a overflow yet, but am very happy i got a boomerang!

 

[solRNY]

looking good man. Do I need to drive to your place and add water so we can get the suspense over with?

thanks Pascal, havent made water yet

 

[Oscar19]

sick!!! tank soIRNY keep us updated

 

[solRNY]

sick!!! tank soIRNY keep us updated

thanks!! here are some more updates, having fun with acrylic


so to deal with the acrylic material building up on the inside of the bend i routed some away with a roundover bit on both sides as shown below,

not sure how accurate these readings are, but i think its getting hot

this is looking at the face at the bend, ignore the line as it is from the inside of the bend where material is building up but wont be seen thru with black acrylic,

the face looks very different from the first boomerange, seems as the roundover has made the top and bottom lines distort making it worst... this one is going to be tricky to solve... anyhow, i now have made two boomerang!

 

[solRNY]

now that i am feeling confident with my acrylic bender at making boomerangs, i spent all day finishing up my design and finishing building this overflow jig, i know it is such an overkill :spin1:

the design has two seperate parts, made it so i can slip the acrylic bender in and out, the bending will take place on this side of the jig,

this left side is to anchor the bent acrylic, once i figure how to clamp it down :fun4:

 

[solRNY]

all setup to test a full length 1/2" acrylic tomorrow

 

[toddmh]

Lang is is by far the longest build I've ever seen lol,there is sooo much good info in this thread I think you should shrink this thread into a blog to make it more easy to follow..So it's all your posts without the 20 pages of wow what an awesome build comments

I can't wait to see some water in this bad-boy..

 

[drukkosz]

uffff took me a long time to read all 21 pages . sucks about your overflow and sucks even more that you cant find anybody to do the work for you.
I was really hopeing that i will see some water and fish in that tank after spending entire morning reading about it hahahah

Good luck with your build. Cant wait to see more.

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

the face looks very different from the first boomerange, seems as the roundover has made the top and bottom lines distort making it worst... this one is going to be tricky to solve...

Make it one inch "taller" than it needs to be, then slice half an inch off each side after the bend is made.

 

[Flanders]

I am blown away by the amount of time and creativity you put into solving this problem, and your patience. I tip my hat to you!

Aaaaand... could I ask in what section of Lowe's you found that angle aluminum?

 

[solRNY]

Lang is is by far the longest build I've ever seen lol,there is sooo much good info in this thread I think you should shrink this thread into a blog to make it more easy to follow..So it's all your posts without the 20 pages of wow what an awesome build comments
I can't wait to see some water in this bad-boy..

thanks Todd, i agree that this build is taking far to long, much longer than i ever anticipated, not sure what happen to all the time gone by... i am such a slacker

uffff took me a long time to read all 21 pages . sucks about your overflow and sucks even more that you cant find anybody to do the work for you.*
I was really hopeing that i will see some water and fish in that tank after spending entire morning reading about it hahahah
Good luck with your build. Cant wait to see more.

thank you for your time spent and interest in our build, am hoping to have water in the tank soon with the first being lots of fire fish

Make it one inch "taller" than it needs to be, then slice half an inch off each side after the bend is made.

thanks for the advice, am thinking i probably can reuse the jig so to route off the 1/2" excess

I am blown away by the amount of time and creativity you put into solving this problem, and your patience. I tip my hat to you!
Aaaaand... could I ask in what section of Lowe's you found that angle aluminum?

thank you so much for the really really kind words, greatly appreciate it

Lowes have a very small selection of angle al, found it a little ways from the isle full of drawers of speciality screws, sorry, wish i knew what the section was called

 

[der_wille_zur_macht]

It's in one of the aisles labeled "hardware." After the electrical aisles but before the insulation aisle. I was just there yesterday.

If you can't find what you need there, Geddes Glass and Metal has pretty much everything you could dream up.

 

[Haffs09]

thanks Todd, i agree that this build is taking far to long, much longer than i ever anticipated, not sure what happen to all the time gone by... i am such a slacker

Good things take time! Let's see, if we were having a contest to see who's tank took the longest to get up and running, I'm pretty sure I'm still in the lead :spin3:

Tank ordered Oct.'08
Tank wet Feb.'11
Fish added Apr.'11
Fish pulled Dec.'11
Fish reintroduction Apr.'12

You have a lot of good stuff in this thread!