Project - Air Cube v2

[waynio]

This update is tiny but took a fair bit of effort to get right so here goes.

Luckily I had not cut the top ends of the side panels to size, so I went and took all the little angle bars off and filed them down so I could re do the side panels, I messed up twice so could only afford to make 1 more mistake, it took me hours to get it right because on my last chance I filed a little then fit the panel on over and over a whole load of times before it was just perfect, I'm just glad I progressed a tiny bit today so it was not a waste of time and effort .

Had 3 chances to get it right from here and was getting worried I'd have to order more alu by my last chance.

This is how it looks from the inside.

External, Just perfect imo.

 

[waynio]

great project did you change the size of the mobo tray? cause i would have made it a little bigger so it was flush with the rails where it ended if you know what i mean. nit picking really

Yeah, after I did it at that size I thought yep I should have done it same width as the bars, I could re do it but it would have to be 1mm thick sheet instead of 1.5mm, should have ordered a spare 1.5mm sheet, Doh!.

 

[waynio]

Got my new vandel switches blue ring and blue dot, ordered proper motherboard standoffs & screws, ordered countersunk rivets, ordered the other 6 akasa apaches, overclockers were out of stock , only other thing I will need to order is paint but I have some deciding to do and cutting on the panels before I get there, had a good day modding today .

Rather than take the frame apart over and over I built up a platform from a crate, a load of beer, some planks of wood and a chopping board lol so I could use the drill press directly on the case, it worked flawless, saved a lot of messing about .

With side panels

Top shot with all panels on, still yet to make the top panel

Shot from front

 

[waynio]

VortX It will be able to house 8 hdd's with good spacing, 2 cd drives, a long psu on the bottom shelf and when I eventually get enough for a couple of ssd's them too, the main deck is for absolute air cooling 3x120mm fans close to the motherboard blowing over the whole motherboard, could easily take the TRUE copper @ 2kg on it too, still only on the main fabrication part of this project, after that the modding begins .

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Today I found out the hard way that my sheet metal folder can not bend 1.5mm sheet aluminium precisely, it bended on one end better than the other, I stupidly took it for granted that it would be fine.

So it kind of messes up the plan for the side panels also, I do have 4 x 750mm x 500mm x 1mm sheet aluminium and a couple of metres of angle bar and a couple of metres of flat bar.

So I cut the bent part off and filed it flat and will have to be screwed into the top of the frame or slotted on.

Or

I could make what I had planned (angle flap on each side and side panels with an angle to hold down the top) but with 1mm thick sheet as I know I can bend 1mm no problem.
The side panels I have an idea to attach an angle bar to the top and file it down so it has something to grip to pull the panels off and still keep the slight gap covered, thats for tomorrow.

The motherboard tray has turned out ok with the normal sized standoffs.

More tomorrow hopefully.

 

[waynio]

Im supprised your not water / phase cooling a project this big?

I have tried water cooling before with a tripple thermochill radiator and d-tek fuzion water block with the quad nozzle with 1/2" tubing and a mcp655 pump and only got slightly better result from it like 3c difference and had me worried about leaks and maintanence.
I want to try and get a TRUE copper for this build .
phase cooling scares me lol.

 

[waynio]

lol just noticed I've been promoted to gangster hehe .

I went to do some on the case and only got the inside angle bars drilled for going up against the side panels to hold them in place well at the bottom, but was feeling very tired to drill the case & mount them inside the case as it all needs stripping down to the base so I'm having the day off and possibly tomorrow from the project, only got 3 to 4 hours sleep last night because of having to be up early for deliveries, hopefully no lack of sleep for tomorrow, got all the fans now and the ocz freeze thermal paste.

Still waiting for the countersunk rivets and some nutserts for the top panel, will hopefully have them by tomorrow.

I'm thinking of getting some nice draw handles and cutting them down a little to place near the bottom of the side panels so they can be pulled into place easier, that is only if I have any trouble getting them to slot in thou.

 

[waynio]

Couple more steps forward today and the countersunk rivets arrived, saving doing the rivets for the final build after it has been painted, I have everything now except the paint so no more waiting for deliveries yay .

Got the bottom angle bars installed for holding the side panels up against the frame.

Took all the mid panel bars off and filed them down a little because some of them were a smidge over the edge but took a little too much off but they work the same as before.

Marked and drilled the motherboard back piece mounting holes, and cut with the dremel and filed the hole for the back piece and attached the tray.

Thats all for today, more tomorrow .

 

[waynio]

You might want to clean your heatsink.

hehe I know, I'll post a pic of it after it has taken a quick blast from the air compressor, makes parts like brand new again .
I only put that old rig on the tray so it is 100% properly aligned for marking.
Thanks for feedback all .

 

[waynio]

Hi all
I thought about making my own mesh now I'm using a drill press, this is a rough example on some scrap I did with a few different size drill bits, if I do try this I will mark the piece for a good guide.

This is how close I can get to the pci slot area.

I had to come up with an idea for using the reinforced cutting discs as the hole was too big for my mandrel so the discs were cutting ok but shortly after went flying off, here is my beta .

The dremel fix works great and was able to do the whole psu hole and there is still plenty left on the cutting disc , only bad thing about the dremel in the summer is it heats up fast, when I did my last case in winter it could go all day and not get a bit warm, so I will have to come up with something to cool it down faster.

My dad said he wanted to use the garage so I packed and cleaned up for the day, so More tomorrow.

 

[waynio]

Well my dad did not use the garage so I thought why not get back at it .

Here is roughly how the psu is going to be mounted.

You should really consider cleaning that Zalman...

Got most of it off, was a lot more stubborn than I expected it to be .

Well I went for it with trying my own mesh lol, the drill press was getting hot so had to have regular breaks from it so I would not damage it, these pics are spread out over quite a few hours, I used a 6.5mm dewalt drill bit, I think it turned out pretty good .

I 1st marked the hole which the drill press could reach to and then made marks every 6mm down and across.

On with the drilling .

I'll replace the final pic with a better one tomorrow when I have good day light, was getting dark when I finnished.
Possibly more tomorrow .

 

[waynio]

why have you got 3 sticks or ram in there?

lol I don't really know, it is possibly the 1st rig I put together myself or at least one of my very early builds, it is usb 1 not 2 so is a really old board hehe, but it is a complete system, I'm thinking of making a full pc with it for light stuff so I don't have to use my gaming rig all the time.

 

[waynio]

It was a gamble doing the mesh I know, but I have to say it looks damn good, so relieved .

Tried using a hole saw I bought a while ago, I was had as it is for wood not metal, price for a good near 120mm metal cutting hole saw is close to £30 I paid £10 so my fault really.

So had to go back to my dremel for doing the fan hole, got about a 3rd of the way round and it was too hot to hold, so thought ok I will make a cooler for it right away with a couple of noisy high cfm fans and a bit of scrap aluminium, it works very nice , it takes a minute or less to get it nice and cool again, where if I just let it cool off by itself it takes up to an hour.

And here are a couple of shots with the plastic pulled back a bit .

Only the edges need sanding so it is nice and smooth then the back panel is done and ready for painting or pollishing, Woohoo .

 

[waynio]

so.. if i understand you properly your not puting your main rig in here? or your gaming rig?

Of course I am, I would not make such a nice big case for those old parts , I plan on using this case for years to come .

page 1, 5th post is what is going in this case when its done.

The old parts you see in it at the moment are just for marking up properly, was just saying I might make another case, as small as possible for the old parts for a low power rig, but thats another project altogether.

 

[waynio]

Thanks for comments everyone .

phew, i thought youd breathed in metal smoke from all the drilling and gone crazy

lol

Have since sanded all the edges for the back panel 60 grit, 600 or 800 grit, 1200 grit but took no pics yet, really smooth.

On the google sketchup the frame alone was 360mm wide, 360mm deep, 423mm high but I decided I will be mounting 3 120mm fans on the front so had to make a simple change of width to 390mm which will give better space for hdd's also.
I just measured the form of it now and it is 387mm wide, 365mm deep, 442mm high. That is with panels on.
But I will be putting an extension on the front also like my last case only better I hope .
After I made the frame, it is mostly all freestyle pretty much althou I am also thinking what will be best before I actually go for it.


Here is my method for marking a mountable piece, I used this method for the front of my last case. Mark around the piece and cut Cotton buds to size and push them into the holes on the piece I want to mount and put a blob of paint on the ends, then carefully press it against the panel and we should have perfect marks for working on .

Here is my psu stand wip, since this pic I have siliconed the bars together and I'm leaving them clamped until tomorrow and then sand them down and mount.

And here is a few shots of the 3 fans mounted (not these fans, akasa apache's are going in the final build), I'm yet to cut the holes for the fans, I found out about the Dremel 545 Diamond Wheel and is supposed to be awesome, long lasting and is nice and thin for detailed work so have ordered 1 and just after I ordered it I seen 1 on ebay for £6 so ordered that too .

Just about perfect fit for 3 120mm fans, ultra close.

And finally I have decided not to paint it and try to polish the whole case to a mirror finnish, should be quite a mission .

 

[waynio]

It's metal... don't you mean filling?

Well yes, 1st dremel cut, 2nd filing, 3rd sanding start at 60 grit, then 600 or 800 can't remember which, then 1200 for ultra smooth finish so no need for rubber moulding .

I'm assuming no more activity cos you've finally gotten round to dring the beer (how many cans) rather than using them as a case rest??

hehe I very rarely drink and when I do I don't have much, the beer is my dads, if he did not drink I would not have been able to do the makeshift table lol, but I am virtually always buzzing from all the coffee I drink
Think I had 1 day of no progress since cutting the bars to size, not bad .

 

[waynio]

Late update today, been busy with other things.

for the love of king dremel please say polish

hehe .

Got my new diamond dremel cutting disc, not tried it yet also got very little done today.

Been in a bit of a pickle about what to do with the top ends of the side panels and how to mount the top panel, the flush rivet nuts I have do not mount well at all infact they are terrible I tested on scrap, and the flanged rivet nuts would raise the top panel by 1mm so not good.

So I searched the net and eventually found rivet nut bushes, or clinching nuts lol in size M3 18 & 20 swg, these I have seen on some retail cases including lian-li cases, I have always wondered where the hell would I get those from so I have ordered some, here is a pic of one of them.

I have cut to size & placed angle bars on the inside at the top of the side panels, I'm going to put 1 bolt into the side panel and have the top panel countersunk & bolted up from underneath so I can just remove the side bolt, remove the top frame bolts & the top would slide off, any of the exposed bolts will be covered with dome nuts when I get some except for the side panel ones which have to be removable.
Now I have thought up a plan I should be able to push on forward without scratching my head so much lol.

And here is 1 of the psu stands stuck together with silicone, it is 6 90mm long x 20mm wide x 3mm thick flat bars, filed & sanded, I will be sticking them down rather than bolting them to the bottom panel, want to leave space for the case feet.

And this pic is from a guide I came across which got me interested in polishing the case.

Credit due to Jani 'Japala' Pönkkö for the pic.
Original article

 

[waynio]

Been relaxing today as I sprained my neck the other day dodging a wasp lol and was really bad today, could barely move my head but got a design made for the front fans thou .

Used a fan grill to make a circle on paper and tried a few ideas and thought Yep that looks good for a 120mm fan hole, I'll go for that and alternate the cut out bits, this should take a while to do & be hard to polish later .

Snow flake flower type thingy .
More tomorrow my neck is a fair bit better right now .

 

[waynio]

The diamond dremel disc bit turned out pretty useless for 1.5mm aluminium so I used the reinforced chunky discs entirely for doing this, Just needs filing & sanding smooth now, took hours to do and I expect will need a couple more hours filing and sanding.

 

[waynio]

LOL, it took 2 hours to get 1 of them to this point and still needs a little more work, my creative zen mp3 ran out of juice so micro update while it charges back up, can't do this without my music , forgot to charge it up last night.
I seem to have taken a smidge too much off the top piece to the left, I was trimming a bit here and there with the dremel so I could get the needle files in and seems I have messed up a little.

 

[waynio]

My clinch nuts came so now I can have permanent nuts in place so it won't be so fiddly.

I just gave up after hours of filing with the needle files, was driving me mad, still more to do on them, I don't mind filing but needle files on detailed parts like this is incredibly tedious, it takes forever to do.
To be honest the only way I think these grills will look good is if I fill any imperfections and paint it, I did want to polish but they would look pretty poor as they are, if only I dremeled from the other side, the other side is much better, this piece of the case is turning into frankencase II.

And here is a shot from the other side.

Orbital sander would be too big so I looked around the house for a tool I could modify and found a panel sucker for pulling out dents in panels it is of perfect size for the holes after I trimmed the edge off, I'm thinking of attaching a round piece of sand paper to it and rotate it clockwise and anti clockwise until it gets down by about 0.8mm so it would get rid of surface imperfections, because if I am to polish the whole case they would need to be as close to perfect as can be or they will stand out pretty clearly.

It will still need more filing before I can do this to get it spot on, kinda wishing I did plain old lines instead would have been cleaner, 120mm grills are much harder to do than the big ones I have previously done, so I will have a go at doing this and maybe it will look even better unintentionally with the grills being sat into the panel , but if it turns out poor, I can just have plain holes and I think that is how this is going to go .

Just before I posted this I had an idea to put the diamond disc to use, maybe I could trim the imperfect bits off, kind of slimming it down some, seems like these grills are going to take a while before they look nice, I estimate possibly 2 more days.