Hawaii, I like your cases. Especially HDD-racks look convenient. Are there any pictures of a completed case?
A) Server Tower - 2in1 B) Server Tower - SSI MEB Unfortunately I have only some poor quality pictures taken by mobile phone at the stage of assembly. <more pictures> Both of the case was made for commission and I had no time to take more and/or better pictures.
The missus exiled me for the evening so I had some time to loiter at the CAD-workstations at school. I used overal dimensions of 224 x 474 x 574mm, which brought the weight up to about 3kg. Here the curve radius of the profiles was 20mm. While at it, I also did some rough fem-tests with Cosmosworks. Here are some highly exaggerated pictures: The 500mm long profiles can sustain 80kg of meat sitting on them. A profile like this would probably dip about 3mm downwards. If you poke a corner from the side with a force of 1000N (~100kg) the case will budge about 6mm. This shouldn't be a problem unless you plan on fine tuning your motherboard with a hammer I also tested 1000N coming down on a corner but the frame only moved 0.1mm and the stresses were of no concern.
From a local metal store. To reproduce the pieces seen on the picture You need some aluminum square bar as row material with the size of 10x15mm and 15x30mm (depth is irrelevant in this example) and a milling machine to mill the desirable shape.
@ Javerh: Wow, it's nice to see my design nicely rendered like that. The stress tests are also very useful. I'll post more pic later.
Not to mention the panels will give the frame even more rigidity. Although I wouldn't want to put too much stress on the acrylic. And indeed additional pieces will certainly help.
OK so here's an updated version with a smaller radius (half of what the first one was): A cube with acrylic panels: Section of the cube: Cross-section of profiles with dimensions (in millimetres): Dimensions of screw holes at the end of the profiles (countersunk by 1mm): The corner pieces are the same as before, but with the smaller radius. The 15x15x5mm tabs are still the same.
That looks really nice. Because it's so small, you don't have any problems with rigidity. Is it going to be a HTPC?
This model is just a demonstration. I'm in the process of drawing up a full sized design in the next few days. The idea of this frame though, is that it could be used to make frames for all kinds of cases (HTPCs, servers, SFF cubes etc...). If I can get this stuff made, I can make pretty much anything I want.
Is this aluminium profile your design or is it available in metal/aluminium profile stores? I have looked a bit on aluminium profiles used for windows ,doors etc but could not find something like this.
Thank You Indeed. Talking about SFF and flexibility, here is my latest work in progress conceptual design using a refined version of the square bar based frames. Although the exact details aren't entirely worked out yet the goal is clearly visible. The frame has not only structural purpose but part of the visual design as well (inspired by Silverstone TJ07). From this point of view it's similar to Your design. : DTX-Box (240 x 240 x 300 mm; DTX/mini-DTX/mini-ITX mb; VGA card with 270mm PCB length like ATI HD4870x2 has; CPU cooler with the size of ThermalRight Ultra 120 Extreme; 5x 3.5" HDD; 1x slim slot-in ODD; Flex-ATX PSU; 2x 140mm fan) Oh, I almost forgot to mention that the square tube has the advantage to hide the tubes in a water-cooled setup: <More pictures of my older concepts>
That's what I like about my design, cables an be tidied away so easily. The case will be built for watercooling, so hopefully everything will fit in ok. @Spyrious As far as I know, this is my own design, what I mean is that I can't find anything like this, so I'm looking to get some made for me.
Hawaii, that's a clever way of routing tubing. I've been thinking of using tubing to hide cables but not tubes. How does the tube handle kinking at the door hinge? stuartwood89, good thing your profile doesn't have any cavities. A profile like that can be easily extruded with just a small flat die. The plant where I worked had a minimum order policy of 50kg. That translated to about 200m of profile depending on the type used. Hopefully you can find a company that can offer the amounts you need.
I was kind of expecting some kind of minimum order policy, I hope it's not too much, but I can always make another (few) case(s) if I have to and sell them. EDIT: Just contacted Smiths Profile Services. Will hopefully get a reply soon. The case design is coming along pretty well, but I'm having trouble accurately measuring the motherboard tray and the holes for the back panel (I/O plate and PCI brackets). Can anyone with experience with acrylic scratch builds help me out? Here's some WIP images: Overview (top and side panels taken out for now): Cross-section of motherboard tray. The motherboard itself will sit on a 5mm clear sheet of acrylic, which I will attach to the main case somehow, probably with standoffs: Back panel:
I have the same problem as you. I have no idea on the vertical position of the PCI-brackets. Nevertheless, here's a drawing that shows the PCI-bracket slot distance from the edge of the board. The position of the standoff-holes in the motherboard and therefore motherboard trays, can be found from the ATX specification. Note that the dashed line on the right shows the edge of the motherboard. It does not coincide with the PCI-bracket slits.
