Planning Project Gunner: CNC done, back to the case design (2/19/2016)

Please tell me what you're going to use for the backplane. I've been looking for high density HDD case for a while. I looked at pre-built hot swap 5.25" bay things and the cases they use for large scale CD duplication. Before that even I found individual backplanes but they wanted $35 per backplane, and you needed 1 for each drive!!!!!!!

 

I am going to make my own PCB I downloaded a 3D model of the connector I need from the Molex web site. I was then going to mock it up in Pro Engineer, import it into PSpice (you can download a free version) set the traces and send it out to a PCB maker and have it professionally made; it is surprisingly cheep.

When I finally get it done, (finding the information about connector placement on the hard drive is going to be the hardest thing) it should be easy for me to help you design your own as well. I would just need your hard drive spacing and number of drives

The reason I am setting this up is so I can store all my movies on my computer and stream them to my TV; there is an article on bit-tech somewhere (thought I had book marked it…but didn’t) on how to do it.

 

It's not something I can do right now, college loans, car payments.... But if I do decide too I'll pm you.

 

I did some digging and realized I had the information I needed to define the location of the connector on the back of a hard drive (at least I think it is right), but incase anyone is interested, any information you could possible want for drive form factors and a lot of other design information, including information about designing backplanes, can be found at this link:


ftp://ftp.seagate.com/sff

 

wow this look very nice! how is it going to be made laser cut or punched? steel/alu? if you make it in 3 parts(top, middle,bottom) that should cut the manufacturing cost by a fair bit,the only issu i can see is the size off the rad on the top and bottom corners(look about 15mm?) as thay will need special tooling.and i wouldent worry about difficulty maintaining descent tolerance with all the bends as a good fabricaton shop should be able to work out the blank size before bending........god i wish i had cad/cam skills like you, and yeh good link that!

 

Thanks man It will probably be a combination of water jet, punching, and machining. The top and bottom of the case will be made of 304 stainless steel (either .0751 or .09 inch thick material); the side panels will be made of .19 thick aluminum, probably 5052-H32; and the long fan guard inside will be stainless as well. So, basically the black parts in the model are hard anodized aluminum and the gray parts are stainless steel. Things are still changing, but I think I am starting to reach a stable design/look for the case.

And don’t give my modeling skills to much credit…it is part of what I do for my job. The guys who do this stuff and have taught themselves the software are really impressive, but thank you

I am heading out of town for a few weeks, so I will not be able to work on it, but things will pick back up when I return home.

 

I have done a little work. In an effort to shrink the design I have made a mess of the model , but I think things are starting to come together. I am switching to a four 120 mm fan radiator and giving up on the SR-2 motherboard (by the time I finish building this case it will out of date anyway). After moving all the parts around in the case, I have come up with the layout you can see below in the pictures. I am going to try and mount almost everything to the mother board tray, which includes 2 reservoirs, power supply, 2 pumps, and the mother board. This will allow everything to be pulled out as a unit. I will use the self sealing Koolance quick disconnects for the water lines; have fill ports on the top of the chassis, and a drain port at the bottom.

I need to start looking into raid controller cards; not sure what is out there right now or what is good. If you guys have some recommendations let me know.

 

Still Plugging Along

I spent yesterday working on a design for the hard drive cage door—didn’t like my old one.
I came up with two designs; the first one did not work, but I like the look better. The reason it did not work is because the point of rotation for the handle is in the wrong place; it should be before the point of rotation for the rod. The second design is the one I am going to keep. It is simpler and will function better. It is shown on the hard drive cage.

The reason the design has been going so slow is because I have started to learn how to program Android and it has been eating my lunch.

First desing (the one that doesn't work):



Here is the second design (the one I am keeping):



Here it is on the hard drive cage (not all the components are designed/shown yet):



If you guys have any ideas or thoughts let me know...

 

Loving the idea of those locks, are you going to thread the end of those rods and just screw them into those square 'pull things' ?

 

That is the idea; I might need to prototype one to see how well it works...

 

Sounds great, loving the designs so far

 

Thanks man Hopefully it will all come together in the end...at the rate I am moving it will be another year and a half before I am done

 

for a RAID card I guess it depends on what you want... I've had a 3Ware brand hardware RAID card (8-port SATAII) card for 3 years now, running 24/7 for the most part, and have had NO issues with it what-so-ever. I've had to re-install windows a number of times, and even had to swap motherboards once, but the array was always there and in working order. Have it set up in RAID 5 and it does a splendid job. They got bought by LSI, so the LSI cards should have similar quality from what I've understood. They are a bit on the more expensive side (I paid $600 for mine in 2008) but it's well worth it to me. I've also been looking at brands like HighPoint, and they seem to be ok as well, though I've never bought one.

Hope that helps a little.

Also, I really like this design so far, and how it's progressed. I've wanted to build a case for my file server for a while now... maybe I'll get around to it one of these days

 

Thank you for replying with that information

I had been looking at Adaptec, but I will take a look at LSI now.

Here are my thoughts and questions about what I want do:

I don’t want to have to run a special operating system

What is the largest hard drive I can use in the raid configuration? Can I use the new 3 TB hard drives? I am asking because, when I set up the computer I have now, (no raid card) I could only put two 1TB hard drives in a raid 0 configuration.

My plan right now, until reality rears its ugly head, is to have two 128 GB SSDs in RAID 0 and have twelve 3 TB hard drives in a nested RAID configuration…RAID 0 and something else (need to read more). Is that possible?

Thanks for the compliment on the design. I started out trying to be cost effective in the design (no CNC work) and now it is more like the sky is the limit…have to see how it plays out

One way are the other it is getting built though. I will have a full set of drawings for the design, so if anybody else wants one I can have a machineshop make it.

The next one I do will be as small as possible, water cooled, and completely sealed (water, air, ...). Access will be through mil-38999 connectors (power, USB, audio,...).

 

Getting close...

I am still working on the design and starting to get close to the end of the design phase. Please let me know what you think or if you have any ideas to improve the layout

 

A little progress

I have been out of town for a while, so I have not had a chance to work on the design, but I did a little work over the weekend and here is what I have:







In the picture above, I have to use washers, which I will make, to hold the Plexiglas in place. I would like to counter sink the Plexiglas window and use flush screws, but I don't have the material thickness I need, so this seemed like a good compromise...not sure if it looks good though--let me know what you think.

Also below in the picture I have included a data sheet for the clinch nuts I am going to use in the side panel that the fasteners will screw into to hold the Plexiglas window in place--not sure if you guys have seen anything like this, but they are good for aluminum sheet metal in areas where you will be removing and installing the screws a lot. Here is a link to their website as well:

http://www.pemnet.com/

 

Have you made any headway on the PCB? Any cost estimates?


BTW keep it up, this is going to be sick WHEN you make it

 

Thanks for the compliment on the design Beast

I have not made any progress on the PCB, I have been putting it off because it is the area I am weakest in. I am going to finish the design mechanically, as far as I can, before I start working on it. Which includes, finishing the internal bracketry for mounting the pumps, the power supply, cable/coolant routing, and tweaking the dimensions of the parts so I don't have dimensions like 3.12578 which will get truncated as apposed to 3.120; it will help reduce any tolerance issues I will have.

I will post the PCB stuff up as soon as I get it done though, and let you know what the estimate is.

 

Sorry! I don't wonder over to the "Modding" section that often, so I only now just noticed this reply...

For what you want to do, (2 SSD in RAID0, and 12 HDD in nested) the answer is mostly yes. It would depend on the card, and it's limitations, but most that I've used will allow for multiple RAIDs on them. My 3ware card is currently set up with my main RAID5 and a RAID1 with the OS (Windows Server 2008 R2) It basically comes down to if the card supports it, but chances are, if you're looking at cards that support 12+ drives, it probably will. You just have to make sure that it will allow bootable arrays.

With my RAID, I can run any OS that has drivers for the controller. The card I have is hardware RAID, so it will hold the RAID, regardless of OS (or whether or not there IS an OS). I've reinstalled OS several times, and the RAID5 has been 100% in tact every time after installing drivers.

I haven't done a ton of research lately, but most cards I've looked at in recent months will support at least 2TB drives. I haven't looked into whether or not they'll support 3TB drives though. Again, most anything you'd be looking at for 12+ drives will likely have a " proven comparability" chart to help with that.

 

Starting Over

So, I got a little kick in the nuts since I last posted any design progress. My girlfriend and I bought some furniture which included a desk and associated cabinetry. The design I had will not fit into the 22x22x12.5 inch space I have to occupy now. It also meant I had to repackage my existing computer into a smaller case. I was finally feeling a little inspired, so I sat down last night and this is the preliminary outside of the case. Also, after Christmas I should be getting a miter saw and a skill saw so I can start building the work benches for my workshop.



The blue line is acrylic which will be sandwiched between two aluminum plates. It is not shown, but I will have a window in the aluminum plates and the acrylic will be backlit so the edge will glow.

Here is a picture of the old design I am trying to adapt to fit into the space as well.