Scratch Build – In Progress The case that needs a cool name....

Hopefully those that couldn't see photos before can see them now.

A minor update, I've ordered most of the things I need to complete it now, primarily from:
Specialtech (wc fittings, fans and rads),
E22(wc rigid tubing, electrical connectors, sleeving, combs),
QuietPC (more fans),
C&C Central (various bits).
Watercooling UK (UV Cathodes & misc)
ThePlasticPeople (perspex sheets).
These are all paid suppliers, not sponsors, and I use them all often, all highly recommended.

And a couple of quick photos showing the installed IO panel

I've not finished with the edge of that cutout yet. This area will be completely covered by the outer shell, which will completely enclose the top, front and both sides, only the back of the rear panel will be exposed (to the wall).
The random power supply in the bottom is just a spare I've been using for early testfits, I'll be using the one in my current case, along with all of the other components, for the build, it will be out of sight anyway.

and the motherbord tray (and me!)
(Edit: this photo looks really dark, I'll upload another one later)

Both of these were salvaged from an old case and cut-down and painted black. the motherboard tray stands about 25mm from the back panel on a couple of bolts with multiple nuts, as well as being bolted to the top panel and IO by 3 more bolts.

The plan is to mount the 3.5" and 2.5" drives on the back panel below and to the left side of the MB tray, I'm not sure at this point if that might look odd with the tray standing so far from it so I may end up either using my 4x dock for the 2.5" ssd's and/or mount the 3.5's on a piece of perspex with a standoff similar to the MB.

And yea, there is a bloody big hole in the rear panel in the upper left corner, this was where the sheet broke when cutting and it was going to be the lower-right corner for the mains cable until I decided to use the bottom as the top. It will of course be hidden with the final build but I may make something to cover it.

 

I can see the pictures now. Time to reread the thread now I can see your images.

 

One of the critical steps today, perspex bending

I used some 100mm diameter cardboard tubes to give the curves I wanted at either side of the long sheet, the photos pretty much speak for themselves. This sheet is 2.3m long (6mm clear) so I had to move into the studio for this stage.

Perspex in place, mid-point marked and lined up with the frame below, then tensioned with some cord around the frame to keep it flat.


One of the sides showing the cardboard tube which will hopefully help form a neat curve.


And after, one curve. The clamps are just for markers, there is some wood and a length of cord around the whole thing to hold it square as it cooled again.


The same side and viewpoint as the second photo after bending, it didn't form as neatly as I'd like to the tube, I let gravity do all the bending while I heated the sheet, I suspect I should have heated it in strips as it bent rather than the whole area.

Those with experience bending perspex, can this curve be fixed?

 

Yeah you can reheat it and try to get it to relax to where you want it. But you will always get some curling at the edges. In the past when I did something similar I actually made the piece like an inch wider than needed and then trimmed it down to size after I bent it. That way you don't get the edge deformities. To be honest I think you did pretty good for your first attempt, especially on acrylic that thick. You might want to clamp something heavy to the bottom to add some tension when you heat it up again, that seemed to help me.

 

Sweet, thanks for that, I had a bit of a go at it again after posting and used another piece of tubing to roller it when it was soft, seemed to work quite well but I think it'll be better to let it get there itself so I'll look at ways of adding a kilo or so to the ends and go again.

The edges are going to be sanded round so that may help with any edge deformity, it's also designed to have a significant overhang which gives some scope for trimming if necessary.

 

Another update, another stage.
I'm mostly waiting for some components to arrive right now, most urgently the Black Spray Paint, which seems to take a long time to ship, I really hope I only need one can!, now I think about it I may well need two...

Most of the parts arrived from Specialtech, two out of three orders, the two radiators are here, 2x 4x140mm, unfortunately one of them was missing the box of screws and the normally good specialtech didn't respond to my email so I went to ebay and bought 16x 30mm screws and 16x 35mm screws, just one of many unexpected extra expenses.

Anyway, onto what I have achieved...
I had a concern that the front panel, which I was intending to glue to the inner surface of the outer panel would leave a visible line where it's glued once the paint is added inside. However once I actually managed to cut the front sheet it turned out that I'd have to come up with another method anyway, my measuring and cutting wasn't nearly accurate enough, mostly the measuring as the outer sheets curves are not exactly the same 30mm in from the edge as they are at the edge, and after retrimming a few times i just wasn't close enough to glue directly, so I made some 90 degree pieces from offcuts and glued them to both the front sheet and the outer piece, that worked great and will hopefully be visably good enough when I'm done. I will probably run some of that Sikaflex EBT (which is black) into any gaps to aid the adhesion and the visual result.

This is the first view of the outside of the case, still clear but it's the first indication of what it'll look like. You can see some of the pieces glued to the other side of the sheet, they have a contact area of about 20mmx20mm and there are 12 of them in all, I'm hoping it'll be strong enough, if anyone shouts up that it may not be I can still make and add more of them.

I'll probably make a start on some wiring while I wait for paint and some more metal pieces for mounting the rads.

Does anyone know how much coolant a 4x140mm x30mm rad takes? I've got just under 2 litres here and I think I may be pushing my luck.

 

No new photos just yet, I've been working with perspex and aluminium.
I've cut the fan holes and made covers from 3mm perspex, I was going to use two pieces per side but now I've made then I think just one per side will be sleeker.

I've also cut and drilled the fan/rad brackets from aluminium bar.

Next I'll be painting them and / or starting wiring, with photos!

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

 

Another update, and some photos!

Firstly, I did a mockup with some basic components, I added a motherboard (an old broken one, just to get an idea) and the radiators (4x140mmx30mm alphacool all-copper) and fans.

First climpse of how the inside will look.

I've also just done some painting, firstly the radiator brackets


and fitted them to the radiators

After a set of screws being missing from one of the radiators and specialtech ignoring my email about it the replacements from ebay arrived so all the fans and brackets are now fitted to both radiators.

Then this morning I had time to do the first coat of paint on the main shell, after a couple of hours careful masking and sanding last night, I set up my custom spray booth (bathroom!) and needed to break-into my second can of spray paint, I think I'll just have enough for a second coat, if it needs a third I'll just have to order more! (EDIT: Yep, another can required!)


When the painting is done that will be the end of the major fabrication. There will be some brackets to make for the res/pump (combined dual 5.25" drivebay type) and maybe something for the SSD's.

Then it will be electrical, installation then plumbing!

PS. This build now has a name, 'Blackened', partly to do with the number of parts that I've blackened and the primary illumination being UV aka black light, and I'm a metallica fan

 

Started the wiring today

Alot of the wiring will be braided white but as the fan wiring will be largely hidden it's done in black.
There will be 16 fans on these two rads, I have an NZXT Sentry LXE fan controller (desktop variety) which has 5 channels, 4 of which will each run a bank of fans on the rads, I also have some small fans on my RAM and as I don't have the budget to watercool that at the moment they will run on the 5th channel.


Testing the new fan wiring with an external PSU I made.

The outer fans, 1st intake and final exhaust, are Aerocool Lightning 14cm Blue LED fans, 1200RPM = 48CFM at 22dBA.
The inner fans, 2nd intake and penultimate exhaust, are Gelid Silent 14's, 1000rpm = 64.8CFM at 21dBA.

All of the wiring for everything I will be custom making.

 

Post Painting Autopsy

Well I've finished the painting, about 5 cans of paint in the end, so this morning I peeled away the masking and protective covering form my perspex masterpiece, and frowned

In short, it didn't work

To recap the external case is made form clear acrylic, one long piece bent twice to form the top and sides (narrow sides) and another piece fitted under that, recessed, for the main front of the case (traditionally the side). My intention was to paint the inside of the acrylic to make it look black, with an area masked to form a perfectly seamless window.

There was just one flaw with that plan, it was bowclocks

What did work:

1. Painting the inside matt black has given it a great glossy black exterior.
2. The masked window idea looks perfect (maybe a little too large, but perfect).

What didn't work:

1. The tabs used to cement the two sheets together did not set perfectly clear, which they did when I tested, so the paint doesn't come through perfectly black.
2. The black adhesive I used to fill small gaps and provide extra adhesion around the length of that join is a paler black than the paint, leaving a grey line.

Photos:

A large view of the front of the case, the window works well (the board inside is just for test-fitting), the tabs used to cement the pieces together don't work.


A close-up of one of the tabs and the not-black glue used in the join. The camera flash exaggerates the colour difference but it's visually noticeable when you're about a foot away.


Another view of the case.

So thats the problems, what are the solutions?
The only viable one I can think of is to paint the outside.
I'll have to decide if I want a Matt finish or look into super-glossy paints or a clear shiny top layer, something I've not done before.
It's not an ideal solution as it will somewhat affect the seamless window effect and they way the whole finish looks will be different, I'm far from happy about it but painting will be significantly cheaper than scrapping it and starting again.

I thought it had been going too well lately....

 

Maybe you can try to remove the tabs and fix the paint on the panel and then replace the tabs with something like this;

http://www.parvumsystems.com/category/accessories

You'll end up with some visible screws, but if you countersink them or use some nice looking buttonheads like these: http://www.e22.biz/SC002E2.aspx (in black) it won't look bad at all.

 

I was going for a clean screwless look, now I think about it there might be a way to countersink below the surface and use something to smooth-over the top of the screws. Either way it's an option, if it's practical to remove the tabs, they are cemented on with Tensol 12.

Thanks

 

After some further thought I may try adding more cement to the tabs, if I can get a better join it will blend as intended and I can remove the (not-so) black adhesive and spray into the gap when I respray around the tabs. I'll try that first, if that fails then I'll remove the tabs (if possible), respray the inside area and use some kind of bracket such as the cubes previously mentioned with some countersunk screws, a finish with rows of screws is, I feel, preferable to a finish with an exterior respray.

Of course I welcome any further suggestions (that don't involve hammers or high explosives).

This build has been my hardest ever, and the machines I've been building for clients have been simple and basic lately, I'm looking forward to a nice simple case mod build sometime soon!

 

Got to give you 10/10 for effort and sticking with it

 

Thanks.
This has been my most problematic build ever, I'm not one for quitting but I've wondered several times if continuing is just daft!

Edit: actually a previous rebuild for a client last year was possibly harder, it earned the name 'The B****rd'.

Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk

 

Small update, I'm currently pressing-on with other aspects of the build while I decide and experiment my way towards a decision on the outer shell.
This weekend I got alot of the wiring done

(thats an old scrap motherboard I've been using for testfits as the components that will be fitted are in-use in my current machine)
Main ATX cable in the foreground and GPU power cables in the background.
I've gone through an obscene amount of braiding from E22, almost all of the wiring will be braided with white.

 

This build may be cursed!
I had the inner frame stripped-down and on it's back earlier to apply some carbon fibre vinyl to the inside of the rear panel whilst leaning on one of the main vertical bars that I'd recently drilled to mount the radiators, due to one of the holes being a bit too close to the edge, and my arm leaning on it, the bugger broke through and bent!
It bent back k and with the radiators remounted it seems structurally fine but just one more thing going wrong!

 

I decided to try some carbon fibre vinyl for the outer shell and I have to say, I really like it.
It's just on the outer panels (top and sides) the front (with the window) I've left as-is and I'm hoping that as the tabs that can be seen through the perspex are at the edge which is in shadow from an overhang, combined with the inside being illuminated, will go a long way to concealing them.
If I decide it's not working the vinyl is easy to remove and try something else.

 

Why not use the carbon vinyl on the side to hide the tabs behind it. Like an edge all around the sidepanel with a 'window' in the middle.

The sleeving looks awesome btw

 

I'll give some thought to that, I could either do a 1" strip around the edge or cover the whole panel but for the window, I'm not sure about either but just like the outer shell it can always be removed if I don't like it.
I've already had to sacrifice one of the design features that was a glossy translucent black effect by using the 6mm clear perspex painted on the inside. Another design feature was the seamless window formed by masking and again painting the inside, using vinyl right up to the window would be a more sudden-stop at the window.
I'll see what I have left over and try a strip around the outside, I'll have to use three different pieces but if I like it I'll get a large sheet and cutout a single piece for it.

More thinking required...

& Thanks re the sleeving

EDIT: I've used some spare strips to make a border, it took about 8 pieces and I'll want ti to be a single piece if it's staying like that, I think I like it...