Upcycle Progress: New Project + Gathering Materials

2 months ago

Post 3 - 2025 : Upcycle Progress

Since my last post, I have decided to go a new route for my project. The other day I upgraded my PC, specifically the CPU (central processing unit) GPU (graphics processing unit) and RAM (random-access memory.) My friend who was helping me with the upgrade said, “You should take these apart and make an exploded display of them.” I thought that this would be perfect for the upcycle project. I was much more inspired by this idea than my scrap metal Eiffel Tower. Exploded view is an aesthetic itself, with mediums in art; 3d modeling; technical sketching; and more. An exploded view of a computer case showing internal components like the PSU GPU and storage driv | Premium AI-generated image Engine exploded view. Any tips for exploded views? : r/cad

I have experience with this in CAD drawing for a class last semester. We modeled an animal and then sliced it into sections, separating the sections into an exploded view to then be laser cut and assembled out of acrylic

I plan on taking the old parts that came from my PC, taking everything apart within the parts so they get down as small as possible, and laying them out in an exploded view display. I will do this layout on a scrap piece of wood from the BTU.

Luckily this scrap wood looks really nice so I won’t need to paint it, I think it used to be a shelf. For keeping the pieces in place, I will use E6000 glue. Since I just recently changed the idea for my project, I haven’t made much progress, but I do have all the materials. First step is taking the electronics apart as much as I possibly can, I want as little as every individual screw to come off the parts. I will complete step 1 by the end of this week. After this I will arrange them on the wood, and glue them in a way that the glue is hidden. I can also route a notch on the back with a palm router so it can hang on my wall when Im done. The layout I want to do is technical, so if I take out a screw I want to glue it in the direction of where it went. With this said I also want it to look nice and not too chaotic on the wood. Here is a photo of the parts I have:

The left is a nvidia gtx 1060 graphics card. The silver square is a ryzen 5 2600x cpu. The fan at the top is an amd heatsink. The sticks on the right are 2x8gb of DDR4 ram 1067 MHz. If you know about PC components, you can see why this upgrade was warranted, all of this is from 2018 when I built the PC in 8th grade. I am super excited for this new path I decided to take for this project. Without this idea, these parts would eventually get thrown away and I didn’t even think to put further use to them till now. Feel free to comment any feedback on how I should layout the pieces to look the best, or any feedback on any part!

3 Comments. Leave new

Tanmay Mhatre
February 10, 2025 3:05 pm

Hey Joe, I like your project as a PC Enthusiast. It always reminds me of my old days building the Ryzen build. Sadly, I’m on a Laptop right now. Your project showed me a lot of progress and planning behind it. Also, make sure that you can arrange your exploded view things in a 3D floating frame, which would make it more awesome, in my opinion. This project is really intricate and requires a lot of time. I wish you the very best for the final product.

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Daniel Carranza Valenzuela
February 9, 2025 9:22 pm

Hello Joe,
I like the idea of creating a display of an exploded view of your old PC. Getting to see the inner components that go into making a PC is always cool. It reminds me of when companies used to make their electronics with see-through plastic, a practice that isn’t really done anymore.
Anyway, I did have a question/concern about how exactly you are going to create this view. From my experience with exploded views, they tend to pull away perpendicularly from the main body. Would that mean you would be making this pull away from the wall/frame, or am I thinking about this incorrectly? Is it more like the GRID® 4S-Grid Studio disassembled iPhone?
Either way you choose to approach it, I am excited to see how it turns out in the end.

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Arden Villanueva
February 9, 2025 7:41 pm

Hi Joe! I like your project and how it is meaningful to you in a way since you’ve had these pieces since 8th grade. I think maybe adding a frame around the edge of the wood & pieces exploded and acrylic over top to really make it framed and enclosed would be cool too. Good luck with the rest of your project!

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