Project : eye-tx

[bugeyewrx]

So while my other project , Zotac Rebox is under going a bit of a rethink I'm making a start on another project

I thought I'd have a go at something more ambitious ....

End of the long PAD process .

First former , from 4mm acrylic . I'm going to us it to cut the main former from 10mm .

 

[bugeyewrx]

Routing the 10mm former . The big piece of mdf is to stabilise the router .

Shiny new former

 

[bugeyewrx]

As I've got a lot of fiddly routing to do I made up a router table .

First job was to true up some bits of acrylic .

Seems to be a good fit

I'm going to use my first template to make two more , one for the bottom and one for the top parts of the case . Where the top and bottom parts meet there is a mitre . I made up another template to cut them so I could get them all exactly the same .

Three parts of the top template glued together and the lower one cut .

 

[bugeyewrx]

So cut cut a long story short , after a couple more templates I have these .

Then these .

An finally some parts

And they fit

 

[shootersam]

Very nice

 

[Hyburnate]

Cant wait

 

[bugeyewrx]

Thanks for the comments

Now waiting on a couple of parts so I can work out the depth of the case .

 

[redfist]

looks good, how are you thinking of cooling everything?

 

[Hyburnate]

looks good, how are you thinking of cooling everything?

I'm guessing with air, you don't see many watercooled ITX builds.


Is it going to be all see through?

 

[ReU_VOoDOo]

trying to wrap my head around this one, looks cool though!

 

[bugeyewrx]

looks good, how are you thinking of cooling everything?

Yep ... air cpu fan and probably a small case fan as I don't want any vents in the top .

Is it going to be all see through?

Funnily enough it won't be clear at all , just using clear for the internals as that's what I have . It does make fitting stuff easier though as you can see through the case to line up screws etc . I haven't decided on the external finish but I'm currently thinking about some sort of combination of brushed ali and carbon fibre . I'm not sure about the carbon though , I think it might be getting a bit over done . Not too much of a disappointment I hope

trying to wrap my head around this one

Me too

 

[bugeyewrx]

So now that Rebox is done and Raspberry Rebox is waiting on the hardware I though I'd make some progess on this one

I want to fit the front rear formers to the base with some machine screws so that I can take it apart to work on the various bits as I go along .

The formers need a 3.5mm hole in them for clearance on the 3mm screws I'm using but the base needs 2.5mm holes for the thread . I didn't want to drill a 2.5mm hole all the way through and then try and drill it out in the former after as I find the acrylic tends to splinter when doing that .

The other problem I had was holding everything true and square while drilling the holes , I don't have a milling machine just the pillar drill .

So I came up with this contraption

I set the depth stop on the drill to go just through the former and leave a little mark on the base , you can just see them with the former removed .

Action shot , drilling out the 2.5mm holes in the base

Bit of tapping .

And countersunk and screwed together .

 

[Hyburnate]

Its looking good!

 

[bugeyewrx]

Its looking good!

Thanks

Little bit of progress today

Running around the curved parts of the formers I need a series of strips of acrylic ( set inside like the base ) to support what ever I use to cover the top and undersides with . When I was truing up the base I made it over length that gave me an off cut the same width as the depth of the base . The idea is to cut thin strips of about 12mm and true them up using the table router landing up with a 10mm square section that is exactly the right length.

To do this I need some jigs ... two reasons , 1 so that I've got something straight to follow with the router and 2 some way of holding the rather small strips so that I don't remove my fingers while doing it

Here's the first jig / holder .

For the second on I need to cut a profile into the aluminium . For some reason I can't remember now I decided that it would be nice if the acrylic strips weren't just square

 

[bugeyewrx]

This mornings progress

Finished the jig with the profile in it and cut the blanks .

Blank held in the jig with a bit of double sided tape .

Lots of routing later

I don't mind admitting that these were a real pain to get right . They were really difficult to get square . The first pass on the non profiled side worked well enough but the problems started on the other side . Because they had a slightly smaller area of the tape to grab on to and I was removing slightly more material the part would move in the jig meaning that they came out a touch out of square . The solution was to turn the router speed up to full and run the part through more slowly . This meant less pressure on the part so it didn't move

Took me a few goes to figure it out :wallbash: ..... squint ones .

How they work with the rest of it .

Next is some wedge shaped bits for the ends .

Got myself a new router bit you'll see why soon .

 

[bugeyewrx]

So wedge shaped bits

First blank in the jig .... I've run it through the band saw already to take some of the excess off .

Being routed .

Finished bit .

You can see it a bit better if I cover it , they are symmetrical to about .5mm just the camera angle .

Where they fit .

The next thing is to figure out how to fix them in place , I can't decide between screwing or glueing them probably land up as a combination of both

 

[Mr. May]

This is looking really good ill be keeping my eye on this

 

[bugeyewrx]

Thanks Mr May

I started today by drilling the holes for the screws that hold the top and bottom of the case together. Yet another jig , should be the last one

Then with all the parts screwed together I tacked the cross pieces in place with some glue .

When the glue had gone off I drilled and tapped for the screws that hold it all together and suddenly the frame was finished

Bottom half

Top half

Assembled

Still some excess glue to clean up but I'll sort that later

So that's the internal frame sorted I need to start making decisions on the external finish . I think the design has got something a bit retro about it so I think the surface materials should go that way too .

Thinking about this for the top and underside of the curved part .

Burr Maple

For the front and back I'm thinking about brushed aluminium . But I can't decide between natural or something dark , not black but a really deep blue ??

Thoughts or suggestions , no acrylic though

 

[Scougar]

Would AND metal? Hmm.. not sure it will work, but give it a go.

I'd fine a decent carbon weave for the top section (nothing awful looking though, would have to be good quality), and then dark brushed metail for the panel.

Love your work on this btw

 

[Kodiak]

This is a fantastic build. Cant wait to see how this progresses.