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How to Make Apple’s Mac Pro Holes
- sago 7y agoAnd here's someone following though and making them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s29YZqe9Cso https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s29YZqe9Cso
- yawniek 7y agosaw this recently, winston moy does very cool videos, make sure to check out his other projects!
- wongarsu 7y agoFor a more practical take on the same problem here's a youtube video of somebody machining the holes on a CNC (and testing its performance as a cheese grater): https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s29YZqe9Cso https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s29YZqe9Cso
- seniorsassycat 7y agoDo you think this is the process that Apple's manufacture uses? Could they use an end mill the same size as the hole, instead of a smaller end mill that follows a circular path? Could they have built a machine with many end mills, correctly spaced, to drill all holes in one shot?
- toasterlovin 7y agoThis is an extremely expensive, low volume product. I would not be surprised if manufacturing uses the same process as prototyping.
- newman8r 7y agoI bought one in ~2014 - when I picked it up at the Apple store, the representative told me it was the first time he'd ever seen someone buy one (apparently he'd worked there for several years). I exclusively use Linux distros on it now - hopefully they make it easy to do that on the new machines.
- machinesmachine 7y agoMay I ask why do you buy Mac of you're working exclusively on Linux?
- newman8r 7y agoIt was for work at the time, they had iPhone apps in their portfolio
- robdachshund 7y agoWhy would you waste your money on a proprietary, overpriced cheese grater if you are running linux?
- scarface74 7y agoWhile I don’t doubt that the MacPro was a low volume machine, I doubt that most people buying one were buying it from a physical Apple Store where customization was limited.
- opencl 7y agoIt's impossible to install Linux to the preinstalled SSD on any recent Mac, though on this one you can at least add your own additional storage and it probably won't be too hard to get Linux booting off that. Aside from the SSD the hardware seems to be pretty normal stuff that already has Linux drivers. Though I don't see why anyone would want to pay the rather large price premium of this machine if they're not running MacOS on it.
- wil421 7y agoLooks more like a fun weekend project[1] than an impossible task. At least for my mid 2017 MBP. I’ve always had issues with WiFi cards doing a hackintoshes or Linux on macs. [1]https://gist.github.com/roadrunner2/1289542a748d9a104e7baec6a92f9cd7 https://gist.github.com/roadrunner2/1289542a748d9a104e7baec6...
- shawnz 7y agoBut the holes are spherical, not cylindrical. How could you do that with an end mill the size of the hole?
- mrchucklepants 7y agoBall end mill.
- neetdeth 7y agoWith a ball end mill, theoretically. Not that it's a good idea - you need to be able to actually evacuate material from the surface you're cutting, and milling is different than drilling in this respect. But I imagine you could come up with a very fast two step program using a cylindrical end mill for plunging/roughing and a relatively large ball end mill for finishing.
- benj111 7y ago"milling is different than drilling in this respect" Is it? With drilling you need to evacuate material also. Or am I misunderstanding something, I am far from an expert in such things.
- deleted 7y ago[deleted]
- dlgeek 7y agoYou'd want a ball mill. Keeping it in good condition and sharp might be an issue, though. (Although not nearly as big a problem if the case is aluminium.
- DannyBee 7y agoYou could do this a variety of ways. Ball mill would work fine. If you were doing this in "real" volume, you would likely likely just cast aluminum into this shape. However, companies like apple/amazon/etc have a tendency to just find a supplier who can sell them semi-specialized machines and buy a lot of them. Apple has bought out (either the machines or capacity) for things like laser drilling. Amazon echo/echo show's were made by buying a ton of semi-custom machines from these folks: https://mdaprecision.com/ https://mdaprecision.com/ (They talk about it in various places)
- olliej 7y agoThis is now one of my favorite videos :)
- 8ig8 7y agoFor the woodworkers, here’s a guy making a low tech version out of cherry... https://youtu.be/jd9AFRhygKY https://youtu.be/jd9AFRhygKY
- jakobegger 7y agoExcept those are cylindrical holes, not spherical ones.
- fouc 7y agoI wonder if there's a good way to make spherical holes w/ the standard woodworker tools. Unfortunately he only did cylindrical holes.
- culturestate 7y agoSure, you can get ball-end router bits[1]. It would be a pain in the ass to replicate this design without splitting the stock down the middle, though. 1. https://www.toolstoday.com/router-bits/ball-end-router-bits.html https://www.toolstoday.com/router-bits/ball-end-router-bits....
- faceplanted 7y agoThere's drill bits that do that
- mdorazio 7y agoThought this would be about the machining setup to make them, not the math of the CAD setup. To actually machine this, you would basically use a ball end mill (which has a roughly half-sphere end) and drill a bunch of offset holes according to the pattern outlined in this writeup.
- machineroo 7y agoOr you can load the CAD setup in something like SolidWorks and it will generate for you the required toolpath for a specific machine.
- cjsawyer 7y agoThat’s what they said. The tool path here isn’t the hard part and if you used anything other than a ball end mill you’d waste a ton of time and come out with a worse result.
- defterGoose 7y agoA ball-end mill wouldn't be the best tool for this, they're meant more for 3d contouring. They've probably just used a normal endmill and interpolated each hole or used an appropriately sized drill. And at the volumes they're manufacturing, waterjet or laser-cutting (not as good for aluminum) are likely the method of choice.
- jacobolus 7y agoA waterjet / laser cutter makes no sense as a way to cut a hemispherical hole. It seems highly likely there is a ball end mill involved in getting the final smooth shape (maybe after roughing out the holes with a cylindrical tool). The main question is whether the ball is the same size as the hole, or a bit smaller (which would require it to move around in little spiral paths instead of just going in and out once).
- defterGoose 7y agoA waterjet/laser makes plenty of sense if you're interpolating anyway. And ball Mills aren't designed for plunge cutting, so using two different tools would be a suboptimal solution. Since the holes have no features in the z dimension, there's just no reason to use one in this particular case. Edit: ok, looks like it is hemispherical, so you're right. I had thought initially that it was two layers of offset circular holes.
- pibefision 7y agoI have trypophobia. Cannot believe this is a new design style.
- xvector 7y agoSame here. The front of the Mac Pro and the back of the XDR display physically nauseates me.
- war1025 7y agoI never had that problem until I read an article about that being a problem people had. And then I spent several years being very weirded out by evenly spaced holes in things. And then I got mostly over it. And now your comment has my skin tingling again at the thought....
- hinkley 7y agoI wonder if you can find an appropriately sized speaker cover to snap onto the front of it...
- simongr3dal 7y agoWord from the people who saw it first-hand at Apple's WWDC is that it is not a problem when you're looking at the machine AFK, because your vision has a depth sense, but video and images look very weird.
- sp332 7y agoWhen I first saw the ads I thought it was two flat pieces of metal with circles cut in each. It took a lot of photographs for me to understand the actual shape. So I can see a shift in perspective making a big difference in perception.
- drifkin 7y agoSame! I didn't realize it wasn't just circles cut on two sheets of metal until I saw this video on their design page: https://www.apple.com/105/media/us/mac-pro/2019/36178e80-30fd-441c-9a5b-349c6365bb36/design/case-manufacturing/large_2x.mp4 https://www.apple.com/105/media/us/mac-pro/2019/36178e80-30f...
- alanbernstein 7y agoOn the subject of Apple's hole-machining process, I recently noticed how tiny the light-grill holes are on the older wireless Apple keyboards: https://i.imgur.com/l9n9Cp2.jpg https://i.imgur.com/l9n9Cp2.jpg. Look at the ruler, marked in mm - the holes are less than .1mm in diameter. I was wondering how they did this, I guess a laser or plasma cutter is the only way?
- anbop 7y agoThey mill it from the back until it's quite thin and then blast some holes through with a laser.
- kss238 7y agoI would guess Electric Discharge Machining.
- solarkraft 7y agoIt's an either super thinly machined or super finely laser perforated area (or both). They used to do this on MacBook Pros as well, I'm not sure whether they still do it.
- evv 7y agoLasers. I think their technique is top-secret, because I don't see lights-through-metal on many other products. https://venturebeat.com/2011/11/04/apple-laser-manufacturing/ https://venturebeat.com/2011/11/04/apple-laser-manufacturing...
- alanbernstein 7y agoCool, I figured someone must have reported on it, but couldn't find that.
- amelius 7y agoAren't lasers a standard method for cutting 2d work? Perhaps they are using the same technique, but in a 3d setup. Edit: found an interesting link: https://www.twi-global.com/technical-knowledge/faqs/faq-what-are-the-problems-with-laser-cutting-of-aluminium-and-how-do-i-overcome-them https://www.twi-global.com/technical-knowledge/faqs/faq-what... > The 'aluminium cutting system' which most modern equipment uses is actually a way of protecting the laser rather than an innovative technique for cutting.
- elil17 7y agoAre there thermal advantages to the design or is it just for looks?
- redorb 7y agoI think there is some, but it couldn't be worth the cost. The marketing said there was 'more air than metal' which I thought was good marketing.
- olliej 7y agoMaybe it does help reduce weight? Seriously the old cheese grater was absurd
- Someone 7y agoThey claim it is ”a lightweight lattice pattern that maximizes airflow while creating an extremely rigid structure.“ They also claim maximum continuous power is 1280W at 108–125V or 220–240V/1180W at 100–107V, so I can imagine getting enough airflow without building a hoover (I don’t expect this thing to be silent, but they will hav tried hard to make it as silent as possible) was a bit of a challenge.
- gohbgl 7y agoOf course it is for looks only. On the official render images you can see that there is a normal round hole mesh behind the cheese grater.
- londons_explore 7y agoLooks only. It is far from an optimal shape for airflow or thermal transfer
- Smoosh 7y agoWhat concerns me is that I haven't seen any sort of dust filter on this box with high volume fans. That seems to be a recipe for rapidly dust-coated components.
- dbg31415 7y agoIn 7th grade wood shop in the early 90s I built this design into a wood box we had to make. I used a drill press with a plunge ball router bit, and set up the design to start about an inch in after the joins. The design looked great, box used 3/4 inch plywood, and was about 24” x 14” x 14”. My shop teacher hated it, said it wasn’t art class that it wouldn’t be as sturdy. Anyway long story short, when I was about 4 years older someone sat on it and that was that. So yeah, was cool... wasn’t as sturdy.
- Theodores 7y agoIt is not exactly the radiator grille of a WW2 era Jeep - 9 slots stamped out of steel. If you had to build your own computer and you had the choice of more RAM or a fancy hood ornament, what would you go for? I would be inclined to go for the former. But it is not about that. If you go into a post production edit suite where they do fancy things then the clients have a fancy sofa with a well stocked fridge. Not a few plastic chairs and a cooler box. People hiring these services expect a certain amount of wow factor to know they have arrived. Years ago the tech had a certain amount of power projection to it. If the box was big and purple with 'Silicon Graphics' written on the front of it then you knew the toys were the real deal. But, despite the fancy cases to these machines they were not fancy for the sake of it. They just exuded class, much like how a European hypercar just says something that a Toyota saloon fails to achieve despite having four wheels and an engine. I am not sure that Apple really hit the high notes of wow factor with this case design for the benefit of the clients. The case speaks more to the users than the clients. A veritable status symbol, but, then again, when it comes to bang per buck, it is more hood ornament than engine displacement. Design is about efficiency of manufacture as well as how it looks. I look at this and I know that some robot spent a long time drilling the holes. It is hood ornament. One thing you want with vents is ease of cleaning. The design statement, if made in plastic as a pop-out panel could be popped out and given a scrub. In 2-3 years time with a layer of gunk inside how do you get this cleaned up? It gets a bit fiddly. And all for a hood ornament. I think that it looks pretty but how do you put the thing in the machine room? They could have done a 19" rack variant with 'ears' rather than a cheese grater. Sure it has wheels for under the desk but I would prefer to press the power button on the front rather than wheel the box out first before getting to the button.
- syntaxing 7y agoI think there's a large concensus that this is made via milling but wouldn't ram EDM be the best method for a shape like this?
- d-sc 7y agoMaybe, but then the EDM tool will get used up. So then you have to figure out how to machine it.
- m3kw9 7y agoOne thing that copiers forgetnis to shave the edges so it is not jagged and slice up your fingers, I will bet the edges one the Mac are shaved
- ksec 7y agoHas someone figure out an explanation why these holes makes better air flow as suggested by Apple? It would have been easier if the metal holes were used heat sink. But I doubt they are, and those shape should only block airflow, and not improves it.
- GuB-42 7y agoI tired doing a few calculations and by surface area alone, the pattern is about 55% unobstructed. That's better than the pattern from the original cheese grater, and given how terrible the trash can was, one hopes they did better this time.
- ginko 7y agoThe only thing I'm thinking of when seeing the Mac Pro's holes is that they must be a complete PITA to keep clean of dust.