LiteCoin/DogeCoin Miner

I have been mining for quite some time now and all my equipment has paid for itself while keeping me warm.   I bought my first set of hardware before the large surge in mining equipment prices.  I run my mining rig with CGwatcher running cgminer just because it saves the hassle of having to constantly monitor my rig.  I would strongly recommend using this software for any newcomer that is unfamiliar with mining.  Additionally, if you are just getting into mining, I would just purchase this kit from Newegg to get over2.4MH/s out of the box with 4x MSi TF 7970s (not sure how much longer they will have these in stock).  Now of course you are going to need to make a case to hold all these components and for that I would suggest the simple milk crate case build that I followed from Cryptobadger.com.  He has an excellent write up to get you started mining; including everything from hardware to software to tuning.  He also has his own list of hardware he recommends so you will have to do your own calculations and decide which is best for your situation.  The only thing I changed from his mining case was that I squeezed everything into one milk crate without a problem.

Don’t forget to buy powered and unpowered risers to space out and cool off your cards with your ever so fancy box fan.

I was having extremely high temperatures on these specific MSi 7950s that was causing my rig to constantly crash.  I spent about a month troubleshooting the rig on and off thinking it was power and heat.  I built a rig out of polycarbonate and 80/20 (below) to try to solve the heat issues.  I tried undervolting and setting custom fan speeds, but nothing was working.  The solution ended up being as simple as removing the black shroud that covers the circuit board.  Heat was essentially getting trapped in the shroud and this was causing the whole rig to heat up.

Here are some pictures of the rig fully assembled with all 5 MSi 7950s wired and ready to go.

All I had to do was remove a few screws and expose the beautiful circuit underneath.

Here are the pictures of my custom mining case I built in about an hour.  The sides are 1/2″ thick polycarbonate (acrylic may crack so be careful if you use it) with 1″ 80/20 cross members holding each side together.  They are placed to perfectly hold these cards.  I mad the case wide enough to just barely squeeze two miners into it for when I decide to expand.  All the components rest on a 1/8″ thick piece of plastic that I slid into the slot of the two lower pieces of 80/20.

You can see in these two pictures I upgraded to an 80+ Gold standard PSU to avoid frying my hardware.  I would recommend spending the extra dough to buy an 80+ grade PSU because if your hardware fails you WILL regret it!

After going through the hassle of building all these cases I thought it would to interesting to try and design my own case to see what people think.  I pulled a late night and got to work designing my own case to help cool components via convection.

Here are some preliminary renderings along with 3D printed prototype mounts.  The case is meant to sit in front of a box fan to move air over the components.  The case should be able to be stacked on itself by bolting the 80/20 pieces together; allowing for a very modular set up to cope with your mining set up growing.  I tried to keep the case aesthetically pleasing while cheap to manufacture.  I have not seen any other cases remotely close to this design and would appreciate your feedback on the design as to anything I could change/improve/discard: leave a comment.

Below are most of the design iterations I went through for the GPU mount.  The final design will be able to be laser cut and bolted together using a captive nut joint to hold the GPU in place.  The V3 design still needs to be slightly modified to add another mounting hold towards the top so it can support the GPU’s weight. 

3D Printer Emergency Stop Button

Every time I want to turn my Solidoodle on and off I have to plug and unplug the entire printer.  This ends up becoming a PITA!  In addition to this, anytime I want to kill a junked print, I have to either pull the plug or kill the job through the print software.  I was not able to find an easy to follow tutorial for installing a kill switch so I figured I would make one myself.

Here is a .pdf containing all the build documentation including a full bill of materials, wiring diagram and links to purchase the parts.  All in all, the project cost ~$5 and took about 30 minutes.

Emergency stop_FINAL – .pdf instructions

Solidoodle Improvements

There are several factors that affect print quality, two of which I have helped solve with these modifications.  One of the most inexpensive modifications you can make to your Solidoodle is to prevent the banding on your prints caused by backlash and wobbling of the z-axis.  The affects are very noticeable but can easily be fixed.

Simply adding another nut to avoid backlash on the z-axis will help your prints go from the picture on the left to the picture on the right.  One type of nut that can be used is a rubber flange well nut.  The rubber will help to hold the nut against the bed as it moves.  The nut can be found in most hardware stores or online for about $2.  Definitely the cheapest mod you can make to your Solidoodle!  Full BOM below, scroll down!

If you have warping issues while using the normal heated bed+hairspray+glass combo, I suggest building an enclosure to block any drafts that may cause warping.   I used polycarbonate to build my enclosure because I lack the power tools to easily cut acrylic and I can cut the polycarbonate with tin snips.   Here are the cut pieces of polycarbonate I used for the Solidoodle.

Here is the front piece of polycarbonate with the magnet tape attached.

Here is the polycarbonate enclosure mounted to my Solidoodle 3.  I found it easiest to stick the magnet tape to the polycarbonate and cut away the magnet tape with a razor blade wherever there are rivets or linear rods in the way.

Solidoodle Mods_BOM – .pdf containing all the parts needed to make these modifications along with sources and prices.

Next step: Add an emergency stop button to the case!