Project - Air Cube v2

[waynio]

Thank you all for the feedback, let me know what you think of this possible v3.

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I really like the air cube v2, but the size is a lot larger than it needs to be really.

Last night I was fairly low in spirit and was stressed out & I did not feel like gaming or watching anything but was wide awake so I decided to mess about with sketchup by making a more compact and complex air cube v3, and 6 or 7 hours later I have a rough model that is buildable, the main part that will need revising is the middle expansion card mem/cpu air tunnel seperator, the challenge with this one is much higher than my previous ones, also the new great Thermaltake VL30001N1Z Level 10 case inspired me a bit on this one, particulary the heightened area for the cpu cooler, I hope to buy an enermax revolution psu for this and finally get core i7 or even a good amd rig since it will be a complete system needed whichever I choose (mobo, cpu, mem).

Lower deck --- The HDD cage will hold 2 ssd's and 4 hdd's with a fan blowing over them all, a fan in the middle of the back exhausting, I'm going to mount the psu so the fan can take fresh air from the other side, the front will hold 2 optical drives stealthed, 2 illuminated vandel switches, polished trim here and there.

Main deck --- lian-li mobo tray, just above the expansion slots a 120mm fan exhausting the warmth up to a duct that will guide outside the back of the case, standard 120mm fan in the normal spot for the cpu, and 2 120mm fans at the front but with a panel dividing the expansion slot area and the mem/cpu area for good concentrated air flow, polished trim here and there.

Top panel --- Should be self explanatory from the pics I think, with polished trim here and there.

So I'm going to keep the best traits from my v1 and v2 and step up my design a few notches higher this time, the face is just for a laugh on this sneaky peak ... or is it, maybe, maybe not lol.

I don't yet have all the materials (aluminium I need) but might get around to it in a month or 2, and when I do start I'll put updates on every couple of weeks to make sure they are quality updates rather than messy daily ones.

350mm x 350mm base
305mm at lowest area
391mm at highest area
combination of flat bars, angle bars, square bars, 1mm sheet for parts that need bends and 1.5mm or 2mm where there are no bends needed, I know I can do this, will just have to take my time on it to get it right.

Enjoy the funny pics Kryten with big eyes and a huge grin from red dwarf comes to mind, note the other little smillie face and think of the mouth as arms raising too lol

Heres a few pics before I added the silly face and extra angles.

 

[niko]

keep up the good work

 

[Shakeel]

wow its brilliant!!!!

 

[misterPK]

Unless it's part of some complex halloween plan, please don't build that case, it's hideous.

PK!

 

[waynio]

Unless it's part of some complex halloween plan, please don't build that case, it's hideous.

PK!

hehe true your not wrong now I look at it and I'm well rested, a sign of me losing the plot somewhat lol, but a lot of it should be good so here is a revised sensible version with heightened pci top for gpu power wires and a wrapped duct for the pci fan so there will not be any heat spots.

I know I said the v2 was going to be my last cube before trying a new form but I'm not 100% happy with the v2 mostly because of the top and sides with me not being able to bend them how I wanted and it became a 3 piece slide on cover, I still might re do the top, sides and front but with 1mm thick sheet instead so I can get nice sharp bends how I originally planned, dunno, if I can sort it out nicely and do a better paint job I think I'll forget about a v3 for now and do something new.

 

[malccy]

Must admit that I really liked the case when it was a square cube up until you put the front bit on holding the drives; I feel it was spoilt then.

Compliments on your building skills and also your patience. It does'nt matter at end of day; as long as your happy with it.

 

[waynio]

Must admit that I really liked the case when it was a square cube up until you put the front bit on holding the drives; I feel it was spoilt then.

Compliments on your building skills and also your patience. It does'nt matter at end of day; as long as your happy with it.

Thanks mate, I am thinking of re doing the sides and top, the front I will do when I get around to getting 2tb drives to save space, then there would be no need for the extension, can use the front panel for a template for the mounting holes so it will be easily done, I agree the extension does spoil the look a bit.

 

[waynio]

Good, bad or the ugly, or even insane, I already know the pics with the face are bad and ugly and maybe a little disturbing lol and should probably not have posted it, but I did and its staying there lol.

Sorry guys & gals for displaying my madness lol, not been 100% mentally sound for the last few months, please try to ignore the mental face, I don't know why I did that lol and then posted it as well shocking, definately a moment of madness for me, but I ended up changing it a bit to a good form I think, would like your opinions on the last batch of pics thou.

Now, why I have not been so good lately and probably explains my moment of madness.

I have been really stressed with my brother, so quite mentally beat down, I don't know if any of you have heard of legal highs, there are many different types available and can be bought easily on the internet so it is a huge problem, some of theses legal highs are deadly, he has been messing with them for nearly 2 years in secret, I found out for definate about 6 months ago because of his highly irrational and very paranoid behaviour, but I knew something was not right with him for much longer, He had an appointment with a drug abuse team and they said they have never even heard of these legal highs, so thats shocking in itself since they have been around for more than 2 years, and said if its only every other day and not every day then it isn't really a problem lol what BS, I can't believe how a drug abuse team being paid is not clued up about what is out there.

Well he had some recently and fell down the stairs and had a fit, it was late at night and he was lucky my mum heard a bang else I don't know what would have happened to him, he has never had a fit in his life before at 34 and he fractured his spine, I did not even visit him I was so annoyed with him, 2 weeks later he is out of hospital with a brace and was told it could take up to 2 years before he recovers, he is very lucky he is not paralyzed.

1 day after being out of hospital he had some more which he had hidden, so he is surely addicted, all I can do is hope he does not have anything else, his stupidity has been driving me crazy even throughout when I was creating the air cube v2, would love to kick his ass but would not solve anything and I'd only feel bad with him already being in a bad way so its quite frustrating, I completely banned him from using my internet connection months ago, but he must have been carrying his pc to where my mums is and connecting the cable in the middle of the night, practically everything he says is lies, my mum & dad aren't doing so good and my brother is being an absolute idiot.

Sorry for the above, had to get it off my chest.

So yeah, I want to do a complex case that would be quite a challenge to keep me busy and sane and raise my modding xp for 2 to 4 months .

 

[PaulGreyhead]

Don't apologise, there's no need. I hope your brother can get some support and help for his problem. Seems he has lots of support in you and his family so hopefully it will work out in the end.

 

[Stormar]

nice to see something differant

 

[waynio]

It's been snowing quite a bit here in manchester, enough to make a massive snow man, it's been tempting lol, had a mad idea of making a giant snow man and rolling it into someones garden for a laugh but thought naa, but could imagine it lol , haven't seen that much snow in a while, especially coming up to christmas, there is a car parked in front of the house with a snow mans head sticking out of the roof with a hand waving, looked great last night lol, taken a pic of it today.

Wasn't as impressed with the temps as my original cube case, and been thinking what did I do wrong, what could be done to improve it without adding higher cfm fans?

Was thinking of cutting some holes in the mobo tray and adding fans to blow the bottom side of the mobo, but srapped that idea or at least put that idea on reserve.

As you all seen in the pics how much height the bottom deck had to spare, I have gotten around to re-doing some things.

I made a new hdd cage from scratch, 1st one I have made that is 100% spot on, it holds 5 hdd's or 2 ssd's and 4 hdd's, every single mounting hole lines up perfect and on both sides wow , so have quite a bit more space on the lower deck so now I'm working on a new front panel without the extension, keeping 3 fans for the top and having 1 optical drive and possibly a fan in the bottom front and rear, this of course means a new paint job, but i'll leave that until I get into air brushing.

I successfully used my holesaw for the front 3 fans but I really need a good variable speed drill with 13mm chuck, tried using cordless ones that have 10mm chucks and had to use an adaptor which makes it too big and clunky and was making the drills burn out, not permanently thou , the drill press can take it but can't reach in far enough to do the holes where I want them, so switched over to a power drill which has 100% go and wobbles & no variable speed, managed to finnish the job but was rough as hell so until I get a good drill I'm better off sticking with my trusty dremel for fan holes, but I'll make do with this until I get an ok drill, the holes will be smoothed out today.

Going to put a panel with holes for the wires where the gaps are on the mid panel to keep the tripple fan air where I want it to go,

I would use a good fan controller but have had them fail on me in the past nearly killing my rig overnight, I woke up to scary high temps, so lucky nothing was damaged so don't have faith in them any more.

I'll post the pics of it finnished later if I get it done today.

 

[waynio]

Marked it all out & got all of it cut up.

Bolted it back on the frame, the mesh I had in front of the tripple fans did not fit, there was gaps either side because of using a hole saw which made the holes that little bit too big, the holesaw made a mess to be honest because I haven't got a decent drill to put it in, I have another spare sheet of aluminium so can go back and do it again, wouldn't take more than 3 hours with me having this new one as a template.

Here it is switched on.

And now, the main reason I had a re-work, the temps.

This is at an ambient temp of 22c and is the same as my original air cube only with less noise and sturdier build, so I guess the bottom deck was suffering from a lack of breeze .

The new paint job won't be until spring or even summer, still need to get an air brush kit, a range of colours and loads of practice so I can do something decent.

Merry christmas everyone.

 

[Bloodshed7]

Wow very nice temperatures

 

[waynio]

And now with the lian-li dvd bezel attached to the drive and mounted inside properly , on the last post it was just the lian-li bezel placed in the hole.

The little black box is a quick swappable external hdd adaptor.

That is all until I mod it further & re-paint it.

 

[waynio]

First of all sorry for keep bringing this project back from the dead, but there is unfinished business and I'm re-doing the front panel, after that there is just the paint job, promise .

Got my reinforced cutting discs and extra mandrels from america woo hoo , got about 250 discs now, whenever I have a bit of cutting to do I'll pre-load 10 mandrels for quick change overs, so rather than fiddling around with changing discs I'll be able to really get stuck in whenever doing dremel work now .

I've been itching to mod something for a bit now after checking out all the amazing mods going on , wish I could afford to start a new project but I could brew up some designs in sketchup while I can't, can't seem to look through a load of worklogs without being inspired to do something myself .

I decided to have another shot at making a front panel, 3rd one now , the original one with the front extension was to allow for 2 hdd cages, I got around to getting bigger hdd's so I wouldn't need 2 cages, I wanted it to have the grills built into the panel but I fluffed it up and the last one was a rushed effort done badly with a holesaw but the added fan for the bottom improved system temps by at least 6c so it was worth re-doing the front, but because I did the fan hole so close to the dvd drive it had a weak area that was very prone to bending between the 2, I wanted to fix this by raising the fan by 10mm and by doing built in grills instead of just a hole as I originally wanted, also the dvd hole was not as good as I wanted it to be so it all just made perfect sense to get this panel re-done with my moral being high again and having a spare sheet of aluminium .

Wow, enough blah blah .

Got a standard fan grill and drew around the inside of the last wire and used a cd and a saucer as a guide to make a pretty basic pattern and used an exacto blade to cut out the holes.

I decided to do the cutting from the rear side as on my original front, the grills I did turned out better on the rear side.

Cut a new sheet of aluminium to size and added all the mounting holes, put masking tape on the areas I'll be cutting and taped the stencil in place & used a sharpy marker to print it on, for the switch holes I just drilled a hole and used a round file until they fit perfect.

60% of 1 of the grills.

Dremel work done on 1 of the grills, used 3/4 of 1 disc, 1 disc broke, 1/4 of another disc, so 90% done on 1 of the grills, started too late on this and with 3 more to go, thought I'd leave it until tomorrow and give the neighbors peace @ 6pm .

I'll hopefully get the rest done tomorrow and have it installed on the cube with pictures .

 

[waynio]

Spent a lot longer than I anticipated on the dvd hole, but it is such a perfect fit for the lian-li bezel now, must be within a hairline of precision so was not wasted time.

The spirally type grill took a while to do too, had some hiccups with the printed guide coming loose tried my best to keep it clean dremel work for minimal filing to be done, been sleeping til lateish lately which is why this took a long time, didn't want to be making a racket driving the neighbors mad in the evenings, so now I just got the cleaning of the cuts to do with files and sanding.

1 thing I must fix is the roof, I think 1 of the joints somewhere in the frame must have been put in slightly wrong as the sides & top front left of the case piece don't sit perfect at the top as they did before I polished and painted it which is pretty much why I added a painted angle bar there to cover it lol I really should fix this hiccup.

Who knows, if I'm happy enough once I finish this panel and fix part of the frame I might add a window on the other side & jump into airbrush land and repaint the exterior, this case needs a nice finish and then I could see it as my 1st decent scratch build.

I know I pretty much left this mod as finished but with me being low on money to do a completely new project at the moment I figured I'd make the air cube a bit better.

I get the feeling there is 0 interest in this now? or are you all waiting until it is finished with a new paint job, nonetheless, the updates will keep coming until it is final .

 

[waynio]

OK, last update before I give it a new paint job but not sure when that might be (need to get an airbrush and some paint), hopefully soon , actually there will be 1 more update with the panel installed, then nothing until it gets a lick of paint.

I did a little extra trimming with the dremal and then used a range of tiny files to get rid of any roughness and then went over the whole panel with 60 grit sand paper dry, then 240 wet, then 600 wet, here is the outcome.

 

[waynio]

Unexpected update

, Even I didn't expect this update, was just meant to be with the new panel attatched to the case, but.

I went to file 2mm edge of excess panel off the top and side of the panel to make it a perfect fit, was going to just install it as is until I got around to buying an airbrush.

But I forgot about the extra can of paint which I used for a faint haze over the lighter blue and seen it sat on the shelf when I was tidying up with a can of primer and clear laquer so just thought why the hell not and cleaned the panel of any dust, oil or prints and primed it, then coloured it and then added the clear, all by the notes on the cans, so once it has dried & have it on the case and update a few more final pictures, then I can officially call this case closed & enjoy the refined case & enjoy everyone elses worklogs & look ahead to designing whatever good ideas come to mind in the future.

I very nearly forgot about the dvd bezel DOH!!!!, but luckily there was just enough paint for it .

Wanna watch some paint dry lol .

 

[waynio]

And here we go, last pictures on this case I believe, borrowed a slightly better camera for these last shots, woo hoo .

On this one my new 5870 peeks over .

Was well worth re attempting the front

 

[booyaka]

lovely finished job. Nice work