Lean and Green - modular dual PC scratch build
- Thread starter waynio
- Start date
Thanks infernox, I quite like the orange, red, light green, violet.
Thanks Tealc, 1 thing that would set this to be even better is some kind of motor that spins it all over the place in all directions but extremely slow but would be an overcomplicated bunch of stuff going on lol.
Made a couple more videos in different colours, the violet & blue aren't coming out right though on my kodak.
Soldato
wow, very nice, reminds me of iron man
Thanks hyperst, a few have said this & that it looks like the HAL 9000 from space 2001.wow, very nice, reminds me of iron man
A good productive evening, night & day.
I decided to tackle the stand, already printed the mounting points so just had to cut them from the sticker paper & carefully place in the right spots.
Gone back to spot drilling since the new drill press is nice & love the table height adjustment, goes up & down by turning a crank but you do need to tighten it up so it's square but wow it is far better than my previous rock bottom budget bench drills.
Also bought a cross vice at the same time as the drill press, it is extremely useful.
Tapping.
Mounting, I used 4 12mm m3 countersunk screws on both sides.
More guide templates which I had to redesign because I had no 3mm 20mm flat bar & only 6mm.
The depth setting on the drill press, I'd have probably screwed up without it.
To keep fixings hidden I decided to file angles that the flat bars fit on to.
These are the flat bars but didn't take any pictures of the filing process but I had to make them match the angles on the big panels.
And extra support added.
Few shots before I get on with the HTPC.
Need a rest now but I am on a mission to get this completed before December, want to play Hitman & assassins creed 3 on this rig.
Associate
Love the build, it looks amazing. Subbed and will be following future progress. Can't wait to see how it looks when its finished
Thanks Mike
hoping to make progress steady & regular but life tends to throw things at us all eh so can't say for definite but I'll be aiming to make regular progress. I hadn't got around to fixing the bottom nose plates to the feet all this time so finally got that sorted, they were just placed there all along until now.
I used 5mm aluminium rod cut into 3 25mm pieces & pushed them through the nose & also drilled the plates so they would slide on & for fixing to the legs I drilled & countersunk 3mm holes through the 10mm panel hidden by the side arch panels & for placing a marker on where to drill I held it all in place how it should be, placed a 3mm drill bit through the hole & gave the bit a tap with a chunk of metal which gave perfect position, then 2.5mm drilled the plates, tapped & screwed in place with 12mm countersunk screws.
The shoes & stand is now complete except cleaning up any rough bits & surface finishing but all that can wait until everything is together because it's the 2nd to last step before taking to the anodisers.
So sorry about leaving you to expect HTPC progress this time but had to get those plates fixed on & they were a bit tricky to do right.
HTPC is definitely up next though now.
Associate
just amazing man
Thanks Carl
This is from 8th October, forum wasn't loading for me at the time.
I since officially quit competition modding not that I ever did any other than get nominated on bit-tech, many reasons why, everyone has their own idea about what modding is being the main 1 & how it should be done & I got tired of petty BS but love modding still so onwards I go as a completely uncompetitive modder.
I needed to get that out of me so it would stop bugging me, grinds against creativity being negative which might have made me actually go & rage quit modding if I kept on tolerating it lol.
So uncompetitive but definitely continuing the craft but without any BS interfering with my thoughts which will be nice.
On with it then.
I changed the optical cover to use a 10mm plate for a cleaner look.
Making the edges perfectly flat by filing & using the disc sander.
Applied the top & bottom templates.
Drilling nearly all the way through the optical plate leaving about 2mm as an alternative mounting point since I changed the design slightly.
Had lots of tapping to do in this session.
This is a sweet method for drilling exactly where you want to, 3mm hole, 3mm drill bit, give it a tap with something & it leaves a nice mark for drilling, just as good as drilling through a stack of panels.
Here is the 6mm hole I drilled which leads to 2mm depth 3mm hole for alternative mount point.
In place.
Fixed in square bars & round bars, used m3 grub screws in the round bar that go straight through the panel & into the square bars & then marked & drilled countersunk holes to fix the round bars.
Cut some 10mm round bar with hack saw, made the ends perfectly flat on the disc sander, drilled, tapped & added grub screws so they go through the panel & into the optical plate.
I called it a wrap at this point, think I started at about midnight & finished up around 4PM, was knackered.
So that was a bit ago now but been flushing the negativity out of me by having some fun since & now I'm set to get back onto this.
Associate
well its looking very strange but nice,you got some skills man
Thanks mate
That about competitions, I was just going through a negative thinking patch & I managed to snap out of it, I opted back in lol. 
I'll have updates flowing again any day now, just working on speeding things along a bit, got until the 5th December to have this complete, gonna be quite a mission.
No step by step photos this time, this is some progress from yesterday & today, been trying to get back into making this come together but nothing new was done that you haven't seen already, drilling, tapping, heating brass inserts into the IO piece to fix to the sliding mobo tray, everything shown here now though is fully fixed together & it's nice & solid, alignment of the triple layer mobo tray holding pieces was off a tiny bit also which needed some filing so there aren't any steps you can feel, tiny problem of it looking slightly off now so I'll do something to make it look better than intended.
Already started on removing the steps but some can be seen still here.
http://i433.photobucket.com/albums/... Scratch built dual PC project/LAG-762.jpg
http://i433.photobucket.com/albums/... Scratch built dual PC project/LAG-763.jpg
After that they aren't steps but just surface differences in need of further finishing.
http://i433.photobucket.com/albums/... Scratch built dual PC project/LAG-764.jpg
I could do with buying a detail power sander for doing all the outside edges as soon as I can, filing will be too iffy with it all being cut to the line, bit of power sanding will speed things up a little without taking too much off.
I'm stopping doing massive sessions & will instead just do a session every day, started this project with that in mind but didn't take long for me to start burning myself out by not pacing myself properly.
I paid for a 2 year photobucket sub so changed my settings to what I re-size my images to when taken off the camera but think I'll make future ones a little smaller than this & reserve bigger res for final shots of things.
alignment of the triple layer mobo tray holding pieces was off a tiny bit also which needed some filing so there aren't any steps you can feel, tiny problem of it looking slightly off now so I'll do something to make it look better than intended. Already started on removing the steps but some can be seen still here.
http://i433.photobucket.com/albums/... Scratch built dual PC project/LAG-762.jpg
http://i433.photobucket.com/albums/... Scratch built dual PC project/LAG-763.jpg
After that they aren't steps but just surface differences in need of further finishing.
http://i433.photobucket.com/albums/... Scratch built dual PC project/LAG-764.jpg
I could do with buying a detail power sander for doing all the outside edges as soon as I can, filing will be too iffy with it all being cut to the line, bit of power sanding will speed things up a little without taking too much off.
I'm stopping doing massive sessions & will instead just do a session every day, started this project with that in mind but didn't take long for me to start burning myself out by not pacing myself properly.
I paid for a 2 year photobucket sub so changed my settings to what I re-size my images to when taken off the camera but think I'll make future ones a little smaller than this & reserve bigger res for final shots of things.
OK, the HDD rack alternative version, earlier box version was missing a 5th slot unfortunately so I screwed that one up, this one isn't a box one & instead a plate with added slot pieces that fix to the aluminium above & below & has fixing plates for 4 HDD & 1 SSD.
Decided to use the 3mm brown tint acrylic.
Freshly cut.
Sanded to the lines.
Bunch of bits.
Drilling the fixing plates now so I don't drill in the wrong spots later.
The fan perch v2 it should fit perfectly to the custom fan when I get them made.
Because of how well the IO pieces worked out I decided I'll do that technique of using a template on 1 of the pieces, draw & cut around the extras & stick them together fully before cutting the pattern for layered pieces of acrylic from now on, I'll just have to go on the slowest cut speed so it isn't as prone to melting.
Here are the acrylic parts waiting to be glued together, might do this before I go bed.
4 HDD & 1 SSD tray.
Cut.
Sanded & drilled & countersunk.
End of latest session.
Looks like I should reduce picture size a little more, I'll try 900 as the biggest dimension next.
Decided to use the 3mm brown tint acrylic.
Freshly cut.
Sanded to the lines.
Bunch of bits.
Drilling the fixing plates now so I don't drill in the wrong spots later.
The fan perch v2 it should fit perfectly to the custom fan when I get them made.
Because of how well the IO pieces worked out I decided I'll do that technique of using a template on 1 of the pieces, draw & cut around the extras & stick them together fully before cutting the pattern for layered pieces of acrylic from now on, I'll just have to go on the slowest cut speed so it isn't as prone to melting.
Here are the acrylic parts waiting to be glued together, might do this before I go bed.
4 HDD & 1 SSD tray.
Cut.
Sanded & drilled & countersunk.
End of latest session.
Looks like I should reduce picture size a little more, I'll try 900 as the biggest dimension next.
Soldato
Such awesome work
Thank you ade appreciated, seeing other modders always raising the bar really motivates me to catch up to similar quality level, this is my 5th scratch build now since I think 2008, I think most people prefer sleek & minimal looks though but I went with OTT detailing for this from every single angle along with nice functions. Thanks RoXoRz I was wishing the same not long ago mate but I just got into making things with what I had, enjoyed it so invested more in extra tools & bits, been a fun obsession.
Thanks ReekiTiki
Thanks Joe, glad it's being enjoyed.
42 days left if including today, need to push harder.
Micro update but it's an update.
I cut 4 little pieces of the same aluminium I used for the hdd trays to make spacers for while I stick them together, the adhesive does it's initial setting fairly quick so I managed OK with just 4 pieces to do the spacing, would have been easier with 6 more but I didn't fancy cutting more, I need a new band saw blade, current ones are well past useful & was not nice at all to cut with.
Upper & lower hdd slide rack.
Fan perch stuck together, weighted down & is almost 20mm thick, I'll cut the shape, slim it down to 19mm & on next session get these parts mounted.
42 days sounds like a fair bit of time but it soon comes & goes especially if you goof off playing games & have some AFK to slow you down.
Tweaked my camera sharpness & contrast settings a little too & picked up some good photography tips from Paul Tan but none of the lighting tips will be used until I'm past the main workshop stuff.
Associate
Looking good, i love this build.
Thanks Mike 40 days left since it's just crept past midnight.
OK the HDD slide panels have cured for a while, you can see here the holes that need completing.
Completing the holes.
Then I had to dismantle some of the HTPC to get to the level on top of the optical section for adding a few mounting holes.
Was tricky to align this template spot on, new holes & the ones the drill bit is pointing at was tapped, all the rest was countersunk.
Back to the acrylic & placed brass inserts in the holes.
Pressed in with soldering iron.
Reassembled & had to take about 2mm off the width of all the HDD trays so they would fit in, I also mounted spare HDD's & an SSD to them to see how it looks.
Full.
I'll do more today after a sleep & some food.