Project - Air Cube v2

shadowscotland · 27 Jul 2009 at 12:08

pastymuncher said:
That is a very good circle you cut out with a Dremel. Looking good.

Was just thinking that myself - just goes to show what a bit of time and care can acheive. Ok a CNC machine could have do it all in a few minutes but I really like the 'almost' perfect look.

That grill reminded me of something I read at uni The Perfection of Imperfection - and how hand made object get some of there beauty by not being 100% perfect close up - but still looking regular further away.

Sorry if that too deep for a monday morning - what I'm trying to say is I like it

DeadMan · 27 Jul 2009 at 14:28

Looking real good!

waynio · 27 Jul 2009 at 19:16

Thanks for comments everyone

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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

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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

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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

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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

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PermaBanned · 27 Jul 2009 at 19:21

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

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

Looks really good though... i can't imagine it fitting under my desk

G-Dubs · 27 Jul 2009 at 20:56

great looking build

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??

waynio · 28 Jul 2009 at 09:40

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

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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

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G-Dubs · 28 Jul 2009 at 21:57

it really does look fantastic, and a credit to you.

So.... paint or polish or brushed effect?

Please say polished

for the love of king dremel please say polish

waynio · 29 Jul 2009 at 00:35

Late update today, been busy with other things.

for the love of king dremel please say polish

hehe

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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 · 30 Jul 2009 at 00:50

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

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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

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Snow flake flower type thingy

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More tomorrow my neck is a fair bit better right now

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waynio · 30 Jul 2009 at 23:19

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 · 31 Jul 2009 at 14:12

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 · 31 Jul 2009 at 21:33

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

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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.

~>Dg<~ · 1 Aug 2009 at 12:25

keep up the great work :cool:

waynio · 1 Aug 2009 at 16:29

Thanks DG

There were slight overcuts in some areas, the edge joints were weak in the left and right grills, the middle grill was very good.

here is the back side, the mounting holes for the front panel did not align 100% and would have required drilling the case making it in to a mess if I flipped it round.

Simply too scuffed up for looking good after polishing.

When I started trimming the rough areas down, I thought I'm gonna pull this off and it was looking good and clean, But when I nearly completed filing 1 of them, 1 of the spokes broke off so I cut every other spoke off and shortly after figured they would not be strong enough to be polished so as gutted as I was I cut all of the grills out, filed and sanded the holes down to a smooth finish and that is that, just wish I chose the simple grill of lines.
I have enough spare mesh to cover all 3 holes so it is back to being basic now.

I don't drink but I think I'll have a few tonight to lighten up & refresh

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So next up will be to make the front optical extension.

The Badger · 1 Aug 2009 at 22:29

Looks good. Keep up the awesome work.

Monkey Puzzle · 1 Aug 2009 at 22:43

Ah well, nevermind. Sucks to have lost all the work put into cutting them, but at least you have yourself some cool shuriken now.

shadowscotland · 2 Aug 2009 at 11:12

Hand tools are great for many thinks - but not geometic fan grills.
Agree with monkey on how anoying it is to losing all your handywork,
but in a way I think your build will be better for the broken spoke, and subsequent removal of the 'shurikens'
Perfection of imperfection is one thing - non-matching mirror images is something else.

All credit to you trying though - and I really enjoying the update and progress.
Keep up the good work, looking forward to the finishing touches

Mark A · 3 Aug 2009 at 15:37

You could make the grills out of some alu mesh and make a slightly domed press out of mdf, just so they're not dead flat and i think it could look pretty good.

I know what you mean about the needle files taking ages. I made a little Hiper logo out of alu and polished it up to stick on my PSU and it took forever.

Never again!

Fenris · 3 Aug 2009 at 15:57

Realy loving this build so far, pitty about the grills but luckily it's not a massive set back.

You could always make up some grills to be fitted either inside or out, could end up looking pretty cool.

waynio · 4 Aug 2009 at 19:33

Wow Mark that hiper logo looks very well done
Never again!, lol it is a bit too much effort really I know, it needs serious patience and ability to do a mind numbing task for ages while remaining focused on the goal

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After the nightmare with the grills I'm keeping everything else simple as possible except for the front extension, seems everything I have been doing since then has been a bit shabby, maybe I need a bit of a break from it, dunno.

The front extension
1st I made a paper version of what I wanted & cellotaped it together and lay it flat and taped it down and marked around it on some sheet alu so I could do it in 2 pieces rather than 4 for a nice clean look, but because I really should have designed it 1st in google sketchup so I could get accurate dimensions, it turned out wrong.

So for this case I will be doing the front extension in 4 pieces like my last case, I designed it on google sketchup this time to get accurate dimensions.

I have all the parts cut to size and bent properly, I'm currently working on the angle bar connetors for holding the 4 pieces together, its not going to be easy getting this part spot on, I have countersunk rivets so they won't stick out like my last case.

Pictured is the 2 piece version I badly made with the 4 piece version I'm working on, doing all the parts are pretty easy except for the mounting brackets, rather hard to mark correctly, the normal angle pieces are pretty easy it is the different angle pieces which are hard to get right.

The metal bender I have came with 1 full length steel slab for putting on top of the piece to be bent and only allows for simple bends, I tried using 1 of the flat bars cut to a perfect size to allow me to do tighter bends right next to each other but the only flat bar I have is 20mm deep so it leaves a print of a 20mm bar but bends my piece really well so when I get a 70mm deep bar and cut to size I will be able to do this spot on.

I would even be able to make my own pci/io back panel so I won't have to recycle or source another motherboard tray and back pci/io part again except for 1 to flatten out so I can use it as a template.

The countersunk rivets are very hit and miss if they connect good, the countersunk bit on the rivets are not as deep as the screws I have been using so some of them are not staying firm, this is my 3rd attempt and looks like I will have to re do the upper part and the sides on the extension again, either I got lucky when I did this first time round on my prototype or I'm just having a bad few days, the bottom piece is perfect so I can use that at least.