Month: July 2020

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Building an Unraid server on a budget.

had an old HP Proliant 350ML G6 kicking around the office we have upgraded to a new server its got a 1.2 tb raid installed and had 5 x spare pair SATA ports. As we are still in lockdown i decided to make the ultimate server on a budget.

you can pick this server up fro around £150 on eBay complete. it was running 16gb of ram and 2.15 GHz processor with 4 core processor. and had a spare port for the second CPU.

I had to buy a second hand mother board due to me damaging second CPU socket and killing the monther board £30 for one shipped with 24gb of memory with it.

I also removed DVD drive to give me 1 extra SATA port for a SSD

on eBay, i picked up 2 x matched CPU 2.56 and 9 rams 4gb DIMMs for around £65 i picked up a GTX 1050 GPU and sound card for around £160 salvaged a 4 port USB card. i was going to use some old 2tb drives out of a raid server but when i the disk performed health check was getting some errors so decided as this project is sponsored by my company would invest in some NAS 4tb drives £104 each so got 5 one will act as a parity drive. also using a 500gb SSD for cache drive files. oh and extra fan for missing CPU slot and fan baffle for £36

i have also added ordered 2 matched six core cpu 3.05 Ghz maxing out the board for £40 will upgrade them when they arrive as coming from asia.

So all in if had brought it from the net i would be in under £1000. 16tb server with 60gb of ram 4 Gb GPU.

the hardware went together very easily i started off by fitting memory to the second processor DIMM slots. i then fitted changed out the first CPU and added the second one. do love big towers only got 2 cuts from heat sink and frame.

All came today and all installed looking nice and full inside the case build is all done. just fits thankfully a little tight in areas. but looking good.

now to turn on V-rt so i can use pass through tech and turn on some other features.

Setting up Unraid got 32gb USB flash drive download installer and flash drive plug it into a USB slot. In my case, the motherboard had an internal USB slot then on boot get into the bios and change boot order i did USB, CD and HD. the system will then boot USB first.

first boot takes a few mins you are greeted with the login screen. the user name is root password is blank.

you are then greeted with a register for trial or buy screen click trial.

would recommend adding community app plugin there are lots of guides on this but basically you to unraid web site and look in the footer for apps store and look for plugin url then go to add the plugin and then past it there a few seconds later all installed.

next up you going to need to build an array in my case its 5 drives, 4 for data and one parity drive for back up just in case one drive fails .

next up is adding services and some virtual machines going to be running Windows 10 and Ubuntu desktop 20.4.

First you will need to enable the array and set dockers going. would recommend looking on you tube space invader one seems to have some good tutorials.

I am currently clearing down 2 TB drive so i can make a back up of business array then will have an off-site backup as well as the current live version. this will live sync every day.

so far i am impressed with the unraid system couple of glitches but stable.

Starting to get things working.

Will update this project as i add to it. have set an octofarm server going and its also managing all the house entertainment. looking at other addons as well. have set up OpenVPN so i can tunnel into the server work from it remotely have 3 virtual machines running. processor seam so working ok till i get the extra 4 cores going 12 cores 24 threads but that’s a few weeks off.

going to be out of London for a week hoping to get one more project done before i leave as have also been running it back to back with wast board. but might break it into two parts as 3d printing side done but now going to work on making some aluminium clamps with fusion 360 and CNC machine. this is a new idea so as going to be in deepest darkest wales will use spare time to teach myself manufacturing.

Will post the 3D brackets project tomorrow or Saturday.

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CNC New Waste Board

New day new project after having a few failures due to double-sided carpet tape failing to hold bits down I have decided to modify my sacrificial board. saw someone do this on a youtube video so i have decided to make my own.

The Idea

Now as the board is bigger than max dims of the milling machine I am going to have to take some true measurements of limits of the machine. As the size of my sheet in the program.

I have these hammer in M5 t-nuts about 100 of them that brought a while back for this project. But then realized that the bed was smaller and my original plan would not work.

So I know the board size is 300 x 400 well according to the manufacture.  the wasteboard is actually sized as 380 x 550. Now to home the machine then figured out limits. In mach3 start off by homing all then zeroed X & Y. I then moved y and x to there limits and noted down the size in my case this was 227.6 x 387 so this is the material size. There is an extra 20 mm in x and y if I wanted as soft limits stop 10mm from each axis but happy with that as gives me room. Now on to the design side.

The design

This is double-sided job and my first attempt at one. So the first side is top side so going to my resurfacing tool to do a pass at .5mm as I know nothing has cut in that deep in the past. it will then do the edge bit

Then next up going to make a grid that is 25mm squares each square corner will have 6mm hole in it for bolt holes. To going to use v-bit to make grid followed by 6mm end mill to make holes the will stop 1.5 mm shy of the bottom of the board.

Side 1

Side 2 will have 17mm x 1,5mm deep circles over the holes to allow for the nut holders to be recessed into the wood.

Side 2

the rendered model looks a lot better.

side 1 rendered. i have lessened the grid depth
Side 2 renderd.

The process

I have already drilled 4 holes in the board to hold it in place i need to still get some shorter bolts and counter sink the nuts but that will be done after i have run the program

Side 1

This is going to be a 3 tool change process. we are going to start with 22 mm surfacing bit to a depth of 0.5mm to clean off any damage done to board it will then run around the edge of the board, the second pass will be drill function using 6 mm end mill. Finally will run v bit to make the grove grid. and outer border.

Side 2

One pass 6 mm end mill and the job is done. this pass will cut 1.5 mm depth 17 mm diameter circle so the trended inserts can be countersunk.

Running the program

Side 1

So first up the skim. in with my surfacing tool and time to zero it. do love the z probe script written by Charlie look at my review on the CNC machine for more details. right all set up to go have no idea on speeds and feeds on this. ok first and the second attempt failed miserably think i know why my rpm was far too slow so gave up for the night. new day new vigour lol did some light reading overnight and found my Spindle will go up to 24000 rpm i was running way slow for bit size so have adjusted tool to 18000 rpm from 1800 will try this again today.

Ok i am dumb i have miss calculated the size of material doh re-run the edges then hit the soft limits so did some recalculations and then rehashed my board completely.

Luckily being CNC no damage done so the board adjusted the gcode and off again i went with the board skimming. so process 1 ended up as 3 processes dont worry have made adjustments to the master files.

Some pictures of the resurfacing process. in process.

  • Away we go.
  • doh size is wrong
  • Resized to to proper dimentions
  • dam it it soft limits
  • Right 0.5 mm down and done only 3 more processes to run and we are done.

The re designed board:

Side 1 redesigned.
Side 2 re designed

Next up the grid. so out with the 30 mm surface tool. in with the v bit and time to zero the tool.

  • V-bot away
  • think i need to work on speeds and feeds as very slow.
  • All done for tonight need to hover it but thats tommorow.

right holes tomorrow and then time to flip the board. hopefully will line up not sure if i should enlarge cut out just as the flip is the unknown hopefully will work out

Now to swap tools and put the end mill in and zero the tool. before running the 98 holes that need cutting. all ready for me to press start later. as the son had his nap got vacuum over the baseboard.

cleaned and ready to drill.

Disaster forgot to enable the spindle when on a destructive path gouging through grid i then reset but it had moved waste board and then ended up drilling through the bed in 2 places destroying 6mm endmill in process. managed to save it by flipping board so going to start again and not be so tired when playing with CNC machines.

Redone first 3 stages now for the flip going to finish off by drilling manual thought 2 halves as not to risk damage.

drilling done.
side 1 done.

Back on track and only another evening to waste on the board cnc humour.

continuing on with 6 mm end mill so no need to zero the tool final run of the cnc machine for this project. Well, i thought that was going to be the case but no i was wrong.

going to be glad to see the back of this project lol.

Right, this has gone a little wired on me as most of the circle are circle but some are not i think its to do with the soft limits stopping the bit from moving i think i am going to have t rethink side 2 of the board. Depth has not penetrated the holes so going to have to drill each one manually. oh and final fuck up they are not central to where i drill through the board.

So back to program and time to rethink design. the joys of doing things your self lol ill be worth it in the long run though lol. going to skim the board by 1.5 mm and then should be able to finish off machining of the board. I hope.

side 2 remixed for the 3rd time

will run that tomorrow as had enough tonight and it is 1 am again one day i will go to bed early. its a curse.

Another day first up out with an electric drill and six mill drill 98 holes to do drilled and now am going bolt the board down and run the skim and dam it, I have miscalculated the skim by 0.25 mm so time to modify the program. and run it again went well till dust shoe dropped had to kill the cut 20mm from the end of the run. Right enough is enough mach 3 g-code editing here we go figure out where it turns to run the last side edited the code to start there and away it went job done.

all skimmed ready for t nuts.
front re done

98 t-nuts to hammer in to the wast board and its done.

can see the damage it di in the first run and the skim i had to do and now hammer time.
all hammerd in now to flip it hope none fall out and mount it back on the bed.

The finished item only took week to run in the end all a good learning curve as most projects are already thought of my next project for the machine just need to get some aluminum and some M5 screws. also going to make some 3d printed ones as well.

all done at last.

Now to make some clamps over to fusion 360 to make my own as don’t want to spend out when i can design and make it my self metal and plastic

So that will be then next project should have 3d printed side done buy end of the week. that will be part one part 2 will be me teaching my self fusion 360 manufacturing.

keep reading.