Project: Little Bit Big.

[Smffy]

Right, cracking on so might as well share a few snaps... Now that I have the metal parts in its time to really finalise the distro panels going in this thing. To do this i'm back to modelling and to make it easier to get the height of the floor for some really nice straight runs and the main front distro i've cut some bits of wood to size... Now I have immediately changed the measurements since doing it but this is life .

Got wood?

Notice my temp rig, this is currently testing out a 3800x which is fun, still planning to change over to 3950X on release. The matching RAM spreaders look ace no?



Part design:


Render of the output, i'm currently thinking frosted white which can be LED lit - has anyone used this in distros? Hoping that the floor will become like a light box in the build, bit of work involved but i'm a total noob when it comes to LED so HELP .


I'll be getting bits of the distribution mapped out as and when I get time, starting with the floor which should be pretty straight forward all going to plan. Yet to even look at how I might manage to get the routes from the VRM to CPU etc done given the bend radius i'm limited to on the steel but we will get there and then this will all be worth it... I hope

 

[Smffy]

I've made light boxes before - think I used special acrylic which diffused the light. It was more milky white than frosted, but did a nice job of hiding individual LEDs and making it look even.

Maybe a layer of that with a layer of frosted on top? Or some other diffusing layer in there. Depends what texture you want. You could wet sand it to some middle grit rating for a non-glossy finish.

There's also the question of whether frosted will seal nicely against o-rings in fittings. You can certainly get 3mm acrylic with one side frosted and one side not.

All fair points, I also considered the seal on frosted so will have a think about it... It wouldnt be the end of the world to change that and I guess if I managed to find a thin layer underneath it would do the job. It needs probably 5-10mm standoffs at the base anyway. In the mean time I've done some storage mounting on the rear...




Small updates but its amazing to finally have something to start putting parts in!

 

[Smffy]

You can get light/LED diffusion sheets which do a great job of hiding individual LEDs. You could use clear acrylic and run a sheet behind the distro with an led panel to give it a light box effect. Or I think even frosted on the back side would give a similar effect.

Only other option is to drill the distro block and mount individual led’s in the top bottom and sides like Ekwb/mayhems etc do but depending on what you use it can look uneven and show leds without some kind of a shroud.

Its nice to see it again making progress. Those four SSD’s looking good . Will look forward to seeing those distro blocks!

Yeah I’m thinking the thin panel for the light might be the way to go, needs something like 7mm stand-off anyway so a 2mm sheet of that would be fine just screwed in to the base on 5mm spacers.

LED noob like I say, will investigate finishes or ways to combine it... Much work to do but once that’s done it’s it really, loads of steel bends to get right xD