According to Cathar, he wont make them for sale.
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Originally Posted by Cathar
Before you guys all start jumping on the "me too" bandwagon, I need to stress that the XS is a bit of a special prototype. I don't really intend to sell it in any quantity. I may never make more than 7 or so. The XS is an R&D block that will go towards helping me decide whether I have things right for a Cascade II. I'm just letting you guys in on some early R&D that's all. The machining time for it is pretty high and it's not really something that I think many people would want to pay that much for. Rough guess for an XS - approaching $230-250 (Australian) even if it were to be made in copper. The lessons learned here will fold back into a design I've drawn up for a far easier to machine Cascade II, which will sacrifice some of the bleeding-edge machining tolerances of the XS in order to create a balanced block that should be very near as good. What I'm saying is - still a long way to go from here. Think of how car companies make hard-edged prototypes that go like the clappers but cost a silly amount, and then soften it up a bit to make in into something that actually can be justifiably made, but still retain 90% of its origins.
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Originally Posted by Cathar
Well I've suffered a setback. Picked up the completed block today. The tubes are a little clogged up which is due to the way that polycarbonate machines, which is basically not very well. I went to clean out the tubes and some of the tubes just bent away and fell apart. I attribute this mostly to the "too deep" machining of the tubes, with them being bent sideways while rubbing and vibrating against the cutter as it was cutting down. Overall the tube walls are about as thick as on the Cascade and it never had such issues, so I can only guess that the bending while being machined did something bad. The bases of the tubes also look to be "stressed". So basically this middle plate is a no-go. Will have to do two things. One - ensure that the next plate is done properly. Two - head down to the plastic merchant and find something appropriate. As it stands, perhaps 15% of the jets are damaged, including right over where the CPU would go, so I can't really test the block for overclock stability if the jets aren't doing their thing.
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Originally Posted by Cathar
Well I've declared this middle plate attempt a failure due to the issues raised above. I've had a chat to the machinists about fixing the issues and we'll be making up two more middle plates - one in polycarb with focus on getting the jets nice and clear, and one in Delrin. The Delrin one will probably get made first, however due to the machinist's work schedule and Easter, we're probably looking at 2 weeks away before I get a replacement middle plate.
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Messy, some from OCAU. But the core is here.