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Scratch Build – In Progress Project Air Cube v2

Discussion in 'Project Logs' started by Waynio, 20 Aug 2009.

  1. Waynio

    Waynio Relaxing

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    This is my current build, started 10 july 09 and is the most effort I have put into a project so far, done a bit on it every single day up to the point of it needing painting.
    I only designed the frame and component layout in google sketchup and made the rest up as I went along

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    I used this countersink bit and 6mm, 10mm m3 bolts with half nuts throughout the case and rivets for the base corners.
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    This had its use later in the project.
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    This had its use throughout the project.
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    Got my aluminium, 4 x 20mm x 3mm x 2m flat bars --- 5 x 1/2" x 1/2" x 1/16" angle bars --- 7 x 500mm x 500mm x 1.5mm sheets --- 4 x 750mm x 500mm x 1mm sheets.
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    Made a rough fence.
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    Marked and got all the bars cut to size with hacksaw.
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    Here is the base loosely fitted together.
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    This is my method for making the bars go flush.
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    Could not go any further without extra squares and a few other bits so had to put on hold for a couple of days.
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    Then made a motherboard tray from a sheet of the 1.5mm
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    The only bit I did not make myself was the pci back piece, The side panels slide in and secure at the bottom.
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    Made an error in design with the bottmom corner joints.
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    And fixed the error :).
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    Put tiny square nuts on the other side of the motherboard tray to help keep the standoffs good.
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    Made the front & back panel to size.
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    Realised I could not bend the 1.5mm panels well so had to re think the top & side panels.
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    Got the back pci back piece area cut out and aligned the tray with old motherboard and gpu installed to get perfect marking holes.
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    Cut out a psu hole and added mounting holes.
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    And here with a couple of stands for the psu.
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    Had a mess around with the drill press to see if I could have a go at making my own mesh.
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    Marked out an area just above the pci slot area for attempting my mesh.
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    Made a cooler with 2 high cfm fans attached to a strip of scrap alu for my dremel as it was getting hot too fast, this helped cool it down tons faster and later adapted it to the grinder.
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    Because the front 3 120mm fans had to be aligned spot on I placed cotton buds into the fan mount holes and put a blob of paint on them and pressed them on to the piece, it works a treat for getting the right marks mounting things.
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    I decided to do fancy grills for the front.
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    Up to this point I had in mind to polish the entire case, but the cut outs were not perfect enough even after filing for me to go with a nice polished finish, so I guttedly cut them out :(.
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    Then got to work on the front extension piece for the optical drives, this is necessary for having space for up to 10 hdd's and a full size psu it took 4 attempts to get it right, on my 3rd or 4th attempt I designed it in sketchup to get proper dimensions.
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    These are angle bar pieces squished to correct angle in a vice and then filed where needed.
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    This glue is fantastic, I tested it on an angle bar piece glued to a scrap piece of sheet alu and went to it the next day yanking on it and even using pliers to try and rip it off, it stayed putt completely.
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    I rested anything I could get hold of that had a bit of weight to keep a bit of pressure on it overnight.
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    Then got it mounted with m3 bolts so it can be removed whenever.
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    The extra cut outs will be handy for something.
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    I got around to making the sides and top to be 1 piece that lifts off for service, I added angle bars to clamp the sides to the top piece and side pieces, there is an angle bar which can be seen and 1 underneath to keep it rigid when it goes on and off.
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    I then rounded the edges.
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    Added a grill and window cut out.
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    And started using an air rotary tool because I got sick of my dremel overheating :).
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    I then started polishing the frame.
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    The case is great how I can just take piece by piece off to work on.
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    This was a life saver for keeping all the nasty stuff away from me.
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    Here is the dremel cooler I adapted to the grinder/polisher.
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    I have since sanded all the exterior panels down to be painted and was scratching my head thinking which one :).
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    Added case feet made from a square tube cut to size and mounted across the width of the front and back, makes it easy to pick up.
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    and here are a few screens of the case running with a lamptron white cathode and akasa apache fans running and is nice and quiet whilst having very good air flow.
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    There was a hair line gap where the light could come through and was easily fixed by placing an angle bar over it, the gap to the left is because I forgot to bolt up the hole.
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    This pic is with the light from my monitor.
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    There, up to date so far on this one :).

    Want to get it painted the next day or 2.
     
  2. Waynio

    Waynio Relaxing

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    Wow I thought it was limited to 25 images.
    I posted again by splitting the post into 6 posts to keep within the guidelines and resized all the images to keep with the guidelines, so moderators please don't let the 3 cases I posted double post, thanks.
     
  3. Waynio

    Waynio Relaxing

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    Primed.
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    Colours I chose, Haze Blue was closest I could get to glacier blue, the matisse blue is going to be used for a quick haze spray.
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    All the paint on the panels are good except for the most prominent one being the front panel, I was stupid and did not take the front extension off when I painted it and do it seperately, oh well something had to go wrong but I'll put up with it, I'm glad I'm not too much of a perfectionist else it would take far too long to do
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    I'll hit it with a couple of coats of clear tomorrow :) and will clean up my current parts and add this little beauty for my main hdd on sunday :) and take some finished pics, then enjoy my new case :).
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  4. Waynio

    Waynio Relaxing

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    Todays update with pics.
    I got up at 7am, the plan was to do the clear coat and then go back to bed, not been getting much sleep the past few days so very tired.

    But it was a pretty nice day so I used virtually 2 cans of clear, let it dry for an hour then put the panels in the sun and enjoyed the nice weather :).

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    I decided to build it back up at about 5pm and managed to get some shots of it in the sun, the polished bits will be cleaned up a bit for the final pics and I bought a touch up pen/brush thing which has primer, colour and clear of the same colour so I can colour the ends which are bare :).

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    I think it looks quite nice and I'm happy with how it turned out, other than the 2 or 3 oversprays I did and the lack of all round smoothness with the paint job.
     
  5. M7ck

    M7ck Ⓜod Ⓜaster

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    I like it! It looks really cool, well done mate.
     
  6. forester joe

    forester joe shhh. can you hear your PC?

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    very cool.
    I like the execution on the DIY Mesh. :thumb:
     
  7. Attila

    Attila still thinking....

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    ^^ What he said. :thumb: I really like the polished alu as well.
    Did you have to get that extension for the grinder separately?
    Does it come in a kit with the cloth wheels?
    Anyway nice work mate. :)
     
  8. St3ph

    St3ph What's a Dremel?

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    Looks awesome :)

    Sad that the fan grills didn't come out as you wanted it...
     
  9. bagman

    bagman Minimodder

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    that is a good invative design i like it. can't wait to see it finished
     
  10. 500mph

    500mph The Right man in the Wrong place

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    I like how you can see the tripods shadow.
    But that color looks really good. Good work so far.
     
  11. Waynio

    Waynio Relaxing

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    :), Thanks for nice comments everyone, appreciated :).

    Got it up and running at last :rock:.
    Much more space than I thought, which means I could get a sata card and add at least 4 more hdd (if I needed lol), I'm going to get a sata card so I can ditch the ide dvd's I hate the bulky ide cable, it is annoying how this gigabyte p45-dq6 motherboard has 4 extra sata ports but can't be used for normal single drives.

    The cable stash area is great, it is holding all the fan wires and the cathode inverter.

    The ac ryan quad fan connectors are good but the leds on them always burn out straight away and give off a puff of smoke so I cut all the leds off :).

    The silver lamptron switches there was a problem, the ring light one was fine but the dot one sounded awful when pressed and seemed faulty, so luckily I was originally going to put black switches with blue ring and blue dot so I put them in to replace them and to be honest they look much better :).

    When I assembled the pc my sound card disapeared and would not pick up in device manager so I uninstalled the drivers and put it in the next pci slot and put the latest drivers on it and is fine now :).

    I have ordered a skythe dual ssd 2.5 to 3.5 mounter and will give me the time to prepare my pc for it.

    Also I thought I would see if there are any vibrations without thick accoustic foam, and there is no need for it, no vibes :).

    On with the up and running pics.

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    Also I think I'm going to need to upgrade photobucket to pro for a short while the bandwidth is being chomped up fast, yesterday I had 3gb left out of 10gb, today 2gb :eeek: lol.

    Oh yes the specs are in case I have not said:
    Enermax galaxy 1000
    Gigabyte P45-DQ6
    Intel Q9650 @ 3.6 for now and when cooler times come 4.2
    8GB DDR2 @ 900mhz 4,5,5,18 1:1 ratio
    BFG GTX 285 OCX 1GB
    Auzentech Prelude X-FI
    OCZ Summit SSD 60GB for main drive
    1.5tb hdd
    2 x 1tb hdd
    1 750gb hdd
    1 500gb hdd
    2 IDE DVD drives.
    Vista 64 sp2 / win 7 pre ordered
     
  12. Waynio

    Waynio Relaxing

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    Yes had to get the spindle seperately and the wheels and polish, something my dad already had for polishing bike bits :D. I did try a polishing liquid and was initially impressed but to use it to a great effect I would have needed to buy a good polishing machine so ended up using my dads, using a course medium and soft wheel with 3 different polishes.
     
  13. Waynio

    Waynio Relaxing

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    I went and bought another OCZ 60gb summit to put in raid0, here is the bench I run earlier, Awesome performance, I'm amazed how much my pc was being held back, Used to get 50MB/S up to 100MB/S with normal hdd's, everything seems instant now. Now I'm broke lol.
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    Here is the temps.
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  14. The_Beast

    The_Beast I like wood ಠ_ಠ

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    It's too big and square for me but it still looks sweet
     
  15. Waynio

    Waynio Relaxing

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    :D, Thank god the forum has a search feature, couldn't find the post to update lol, so here goes a biggish update.

    I redesigned the front panel twice, made it flat, made it a single optical drive hole, added an extra fan for the bottom area which reduced system temps by a further 6c, oh and re-done what I originally wanted, built in fan grills, here's the pictures

    This was pretty much just a prototype.
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    Now, this is where I would turn the prototype layout into an ok panel.

    Got a standard fan grill and drew around the inside of the last wire and used a cd and a saucer as a guide to make a pretty basic pattern and used an exacto blade to cut out the holes.
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    I decided to do the cutting from the rear side as on my original front, the grills I did turned out better on the rear side.

    Cut a new sheet of aluminium to size and added all the mounting holes, put masking tape on the areas I'll be cutting and taped the stencil in place & used a sharpy marker to print it on, for the switch holes I just drilled a hole and used a round file until they fit perfect.
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    I did a little extra trimming with the dremal and then used a range of tiny files to get rid of any roughness and then went over the whole panel with 60 grit sand paper dry, then 240 wet, then 600 wet, here is the outcome.
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    :D, Even I didn't expect this update, was just meant to be with the new panel attatched to the case, but.

    I went to file 2mm edge of excess panel off the top and side of the panel to make it a perfect fit, was going to just install it as is until I got around to buying an airbrush.

    But I forgot about the extra can of paint which I used for a faint haze over the lighter blue and seen it sat on the shelf when I was tidying up along with a can of primer and clear laquer so just thought why the hell not and cleaned the panel of any dust, oil or prints and primed it, then coloured it and then added the clear, all by the notes on the cans, so once it has dried & have it on the case and update a few more final pictures, then I can officially call this case closed & enjoy the refined case & enjoy everyone elses worklogs & look ahead to designing whatever good ideas come to mind in the future.

    I very nearly forgot about the dvd bezel DOH!!!!, but luckily there was just enough paint for it .

    Wanna watch some paint dry lol .
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    There, all up to date now :), I'll get some pictures once the new panel is installed later today :).

    Sorry if the pictures aren't up to scratch, but can't afford a decent camera :sigh:.
     
  16. Waynio

    Waynio Relaxing

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    And here we go, last pictures on this case I believe, borrowed a slightly better camera for these last shots, still a cheapo camera but better than mine woo hoo :D.

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    On this one my new 5870 peeks over :naughty:.
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    Was well worth re attempting the front :thumb:

    And that is all, until my next case :dremel::D:thumb:.
     
  17. imersa

    imersa Parvum Princess

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    Good job!
    GOGO watercooling for the next :)
     
  18. Waynio

    Waynio Relaxing

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    Thanks imersa :) Pretty sure I will, even though water cooling or beyond scares me beause I'm a total n00b to it :hehe:, the guy that done overclocked orange damaged a high end gpu on the project so even pro's get leaks and damage their gear sometimes :eeek:, but even so I would still like to build a case around water cooling, should be a fun challenge :).
     
  19. Waynio

    Waynio Relaxing

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    The grills added a little extra noise because of the restriction, not much but enough to slightly irritate me, must have added a good 5db on top of the plain circles to the case, Tried tollerating the noise difference for a couple of hours and didn't like it much :), too used to it being nice & quiet, so I went & dug out my old zalman zm mfc1 + fan controller and hooked all the front panel & side fans to it & lowered the speed a little and it's now the same noise as it were with plain circles while keeping a good flow of air going through, was considering doing volt mods but figured it be easier and cleaner just to use a fan controller, it's hidden inside the case and can catch some air flow so it shouldn't overheat and fail. Side effect of this is temps have gone up by 3c but thats not bad.

    The spiral type grills are more restrictive than the ones in the middle so I can run the middle ones a bit faster and noise stays the same so it's worked out good :).

    Also managed to fix the top so it now sits flush, thats why I put a painted angle bar there to cover it in earlier pictures, don't have to now so I should post a couple more pictures then that is it worklog complete :thumb:.
     
  20. Waynio

    Waynio Relaxing

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    Definately last pictures now because I fixed the top and to show the fan controller.

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    Jobs a gooden :thumb:.
     

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