Hi everybody! It's me again, with yet another little project, Tenuis 2. As name suggests, it's design will be derived from original Tenuis, with few differences. Overall design and concept will remain roughly the same, but the most significant changes will be dimensions and general purpose. Tenuis 2 will be only 745mm tall, compared to previous 875mm and only 45mm thick. As you can imagine, 45mm including chassis is not much space for components, that's why Tenuis 2 is based on thin miniITX form factor. As there is no thin ITX montherboard with 16x pci-express expansion slot in existance yet, there will be no dedicated graphics card. GPU power addicts can stop reading here . For the rest, Tenuis 2 is going to be media/htpc or general computing PC. It will still be able to house i7 CPU with up to 16GB of ram, ssd, hdd, blu-ray optical drive and dedicated sound card or TV tuner. As mentioned, general appearance will be very original Tenuis, that means black aluminium and real wood, and it's the wooden part (side panel) that I will start this short project log with. I started with 3mm aluminium base, which I glued walnut panels on. I used high performance expansive PU adhesive. It's sometimes a mess to work with, parts need to be clamped for few hours, but once cured it's extremely effective and reliable. Once all cured, settled and gardened, I sanded down any imperfections and started applying clear satin eco varnish. 7 layers. And here it is finished. It might look like a solid chunk of walut but it's only 8mm thick shell. 5mm walnut boards on top of 3mm aluminium. Next time, the main aluminium part of Tenuis 2...
Thanks guys! Now, let's start with with the other, structurally more important part of the chassis. First I made and prepared first set of parts, 4 of them, for anodizing. These are ''exterior'' parts. The rest of the parts, internal ones, will be spray painted matte black. First and most important part, on which most of other parts will be mounted on. made of 5mm 6000 grade aloy. hand brushed, for some ''personal touch'' Other side of same part. You can see mounting holes for other parts. Not that easy to drill and tap, as they cannot be visible from other side. There are 22 of these mounting holes. Rest of parts for anodizing. Base plate and parts for rear of case. And here are the same parts back from anodising... =)
The first was a beauty, can't wait to see how this turns out. and wow at the tapped holes in the big alu plate, tapping holes that are not drilled all through is a pain, I can imagine doing it with 2mm margin is even worse, good job
hope you have a bunch of bottoming taps! Tapping bottomed holes by hand is a pain the ass, so much clearing chips. But knowing your build standards I'm sure the final results are worth the effort. Truly enjoy your logs man, and your design style is right up my ally. Looking forward to more of this. +rep for being awesome
Is this just going to have the CPU cooler fan in it then if you're working on a 45mm thickness? Or have you used an odd idea like an angled fan to draw more air into it?
Thanks again guys! Yeah, tapping and drilling of those holes I a nightmare. Even if I manage not to drill right trough, I have to go slow or tip of a drill bit or tap will create a small bump on the other side. So I drill first 3mm deep first, then another 1mm with end mill bit and then hand tapping... Unfortunately , it is necessary to do it this way to keep whole design slim a clean. no visible screws, bolts or holes.... lol thanks, but I think Attila is a different beast
Ok, another little update. All the internal parts I made. ... and here the same parts, spray painted, together with the rest of the parts. next time, assembly