Scratch Build Project - OBSIDIA-Shiro - UPDATE:Project Completed, finished the laser cut madness

[KryptiK]

The Design
The name OBSDIA-shiro is derived from the volcanic rock - obsidian, which is very hard and sharp (typically black in its colour) and the Japanese word for white - shiro. The design utilities the contrast between these two extremes in colours with the combination of red accents to create an subtle aggressive feel to the case. I tried to bring out beastly qualities through very distinct oblique and straight edges and the resulting shapes that were formed resemble the front and back legs of a 'beast'. The red trusses neatly frame the side panel windows and draw your vision towards the hardware inside.

The layout of the components was inspired by existing cases like the Raven series by Silverstone with the rotated motherboard configuration which allows for improved air cooling capabilities. Also, the front fins were inspired by heatsink designs; thought it would be appropriate to cover the front fans with this concept (would be awesome it they actually had a functional aspect that allowed for heat dissipation - unfortunately made of acrylic)


Background Info
I would like share my Major Design Project build log with the guys and gals of the bit-tech community. For my Design & Technology HSC course I have chosen to design my own scratch built case (aka OSIDIA-Shiro). I'm currently in the process of finishing off the project that I have been working on since the beginning of the year. God knows how long I've been working on the 3D CAD drawings in Solidworks. The design itself has changed dramatically but the overall form and aesthetics have been kept. Finally have a design that I'm satisfied with.

I'll be sure to keep this build log updated to my current progress.

Really should have kept the final design a secret but... the hell with it couldn't wait any longer to show everyone.



The entire chassis is made from several laser cut sheets of 600x300mm acrylic sheets of 6mm and 3mm thicknesses. Held together with IPS Weld-on #3 and a bunch of M3 and M4 bolts. As you can see in the image that a few pieces also need to be bent.


Sponsors
Special Thanks to Lamptron and James Campbell for supporting this project.




The Build Log
Feels like I'm under the pump since the project is officially due on the 27th of August, so I need to have something that's finished and presentable for the markers to look at.
Should of started this thread earlier but was very busy with studying for the trials exams (cough). And its nearing the end of the trial exam schedule so I have time to post this thread and finish building it. One more exam left.
Most of the first few posts are things I did a while back.

Fortunately I have access to a laser cutter at school. First day of laser cutting. Came home with a huge mess of cut parts. Might have lost a few on the way.





This side panel window with magnet mounting holes didn't cut properly You would think that if you had the laser cutter with settings for 6.01mm thickness for acrylic material (6mm thick) that it would cut through. I could feel under the sheet that it cut all the way through.



It needed some light persuasion from a mallet to whack those pieces out. But it resulted with some ugly edges (knew it would happen but had to give it a try anyway). So this needs to be cut again



On the other remaining side window I inserted some 3x10mm neodymium magnets. They apparently have a pull strength of 1.9kg which should be more than adequate for holding the 6mm acrylic panel in place. It took a bit of force to remove it from my ruler.



Here's a peek at the few components together.



So after that incident with the 6mm laser cutter setting, I learned my lesson and used a test piece of 10mm clear acrylic to play around with intensities before I started to cut.
On the right is the perfect setting - giving a clean polished edge while
left was a higher setting - resulting in fusing/melting of the sheet and causing distorted edges

[KryptiK]

Originally Posted by Snowcrash

Cool design, man, and good looking parts too

Would be great if you could show how the parts are joined together and the rest of the little details.

Most of the components are joined with bolts and brackets. Used mostly for joining two 6mm thick parts M4x12mm for structural/support and M3x12mm for the rest. In some areas I choose to glue parts together as it would give the case a cleaner look.

Had to use the big daddy M10 for this other component (I'll show you later)





Tapping holes with M4 thread. It made life a lot easier by tapping all the hole first before gluing the brackets.



Some more tapping, this time M3. Probably took all morning that day trying to get all components threaded. Tapping acrylic is a lot more forgiving than alu, I broke a tap while trying to do so when I was prototyping.



Before gluing I thought it would be best to clean the surfaces with isopropyl to remove impurities (since most of the parts were collecting dust around my house). On some edges there was soot left over from the laser cutting process.



Using Weld-on #3 that my friend lent me in a mysterious bottle labeled "glue"
I was difficult trying to get my hands on a syringe with a tip (would have need easier if I were a druggo). Some pharmacies and chemists have needle exchange programs - their the ones to buy em from





Parts that are not joined directly with a bolt-bracket-bolt configuration are like these where I carefully aligned the part 3mm from the edges.







The brackets are composed of two parts that are joined together like so.



Finished gluing the brackets.



Stay tuned going to add more juicy info soon

[KryptiK]

Painting time!

First up, some wet sanding with 600grit. Made a makeshift sanding block with Styrofoam (its great for those curved edges)



Nice and frosty



Took a tip from Bill Owen in his tutorial for spray painting with aerosol cans. Soaking it in warm water, giving the can better flow.









After first few coats and wet sanding.




The parts are quiet fragile, dropped one of them...



Waited for the paint to cure and joined it back together and resprayed. You wont even see the part when its assembled but that little chip is annoying me.



The overall finish is reasonable quality. I'm no professional

[KryptiK]

Oh I might as well show you guys what part of the case was going to look like. My original idea was to make it out of aluminum, which the idea was scrapped because of my lack of skill and accuracy with working with tools



This increases my appreciation even more for Attila's skills in working with alu is phenomenal

So anyways here are so more pics. A very shiny motherboard tray. It's high gloss black acrylic.



Bottom fan grill supports dual 120mm fans (could fit a radiator under there as well) with ports for cable management.



Front 360 rad fan mounting.



A peek at some of the assembly. So many bolts!











and with the side panel window on. Didn't take the protective film off (don't want to scratch it)
The cluster of M3 bolts in the top left on the rear leg is ugly
should have glued that bracket onto the leg instead




This is what a mostly assembled side of the case looks like. The odd looking black parts were glued on while the other parts are bolted together.

[KryptiK]

Here are some images from Solidworks. Btw this was my first time ever using this 3D CAD program, over the past few months I've had some massive improvements. Self taught how to use it (it was surprisingly intuitive to learn, the tools work as I would except them too)









The rotated motherboard tray design was inspired by Silverstone Raven series of cases. noticed that these cases only had one handle on the top which is odd, so I've included two handles so I can actually be carried. My design supports mATX specs and the ability to mount a 360 rad at the front and 240 rad at the bottom. The pump would go in the back, underneath the PSU.

From my Photoview 360 plugin in Solidworks, the photo-realistic renders aren't a true representation of the aesthetics in my opinion. The colours and lighting need to be adjusted





I would love to read your opinions and evaluation on the aesthetics of the project. Right now I'm working on gluing some more parts together, will update soon.

[KryptiK]

Another update!

Today I was mainly gluing brackets to components. The 3mm sheet was bolted to the bracket and the bracket then glued like so. The fan grill panel was aligned to the corner.






This part was kinda fiddly to get the bracket aligned perfectly parallel since it was basically floating around (besides the connection to a parent part).









Since I didn't have any more 6mm white acrylic i used two sheets of 3mm bonded together. Not sure if this part will bend properly with a heat gun.



I'll try some bending tomorrow

[KryptiK]

After all that gluing I really wanted to see what this baby looks like









not bad and so far its going smoothly

fairly sturdy structure even though I haven't added all the cross bracing and its not that heavy either

[KryptiK]

Originally Posted by The_Crapman

bloody hell mate, this is incredible!

Cheers it took quiet a while to get it all together. Lots of planning was done, but I think it needed some more.

Originally Posted by Squigly

You not worried those rare earth magnets are going to inter fear with anything inside the box?? they generally have a pretty large and powerful field

This is the type of magents i'm using
http://aussiemagnets.com.au/product/...2C-100%29.html

True that the field is relatively large (tested it out myself, placed one magnet on its edge and rotated another at a distance around 10cm away and the field is still faintly present). Even though it has a large mag field its exponentially weaker. The HDD's are positioned at least 15cm away; magnets shouldn't interfere with any of electrical components anyway.

[KryptiK]

Originally Posted by Meelobee

Looking great so far, I wish I had access to a lasercutter...oh the possibilities!

Originally Posted by Vetalar

impressive!

Originally Posted by Mizugetsu

This is so awesome

Hehehe thanks guys

Originally Posted by Dave Lister

This is looking awesome dude ! sort of industrial and sporty blended together, love it let's see some more.

Part of the design was inspired by the Audi R8, so i guess that's where the sporty and part comes from. I love its subtle aggressive look.

Originally Posted by aeidau

Keyshot will give you better renders for .SLD files

Looking good mate

I'll give it a try.

Originally Posted by Cheapskate

Neat design. I like the 'stance' it has. We ran into a similar problem laser cutting thicker plexi. It retains heat long enough to melt the seam back together in the tighter cuts.

The water bottle full of solvent bugs me. I was instantly reminded of the "The Young Ones" episode with the homicidal maniac potion in a Coke can.
"I just bet someone will drink that later..."

the solvent looks very dericious and tempting if you want to quench your thirst

[KryptiK]

Update!
Don't have much time to work on the project today. Studying for exam tomorrow morning
Will have a bunch of updates on Monday. Some really neat things are going to be done, so stay tuned.

Attached and bonded the inner cover for the PSU. It was difficult to install those long struts that hold the rectangular panels together as the most of the leg assembly had to be disassembled.



The back legs are raised by a few scrap acrylic pieces, will add the HDD bay in soon.



Still need to glue two more panels to the inner cover. They're on angles so the edges of the panels need to be filed to a point in order for it to fit snugly.



Sneaky peaky at the hard drive caddy (which still hasn't been glued together)

[KryptiK]

Update!

Back for some more modding

Firstly I bought some 10mm diameter alu rods and 20mm tube extrusions.
Got a pretty good discount by Ullrich Aluminum



Only problem rods weren't 10mm diameter, were 12mm
not a big deal, going back to sort it out

[KryptiK]

So I called the fabrication guys at Ullrich when I got there they already had the correct diameter rods cut.

Fitting the rods to the connecting brackets that are glued to the front legs. This greatly increased the strength of the front fan mount area.



Also caused some bowing of the red truss frames. Need to sort that out.



Tired inserting the rods into the HDD cage support, it was an extremely tight fit. Only managed to get to half way through (possibly because I glued two 6mm sheets to make each part, they weren't aligned perfectly - to the 0.01mm)
The accuracy of the laser cutter is 0.001mm, I'm not sure about the tolerance of the extruded rod.
Going to sand those holes so it fits snugly.



Meanwhile, the 20mm tubes also were a very tight fit. Had to do some light sanding.



Only inserted a few fins but you get the jist of it if you saw the CAD drawing.
Reason why the columns aren't touching the ground is it's going to be supported.





They are going to be polished so have that picture in your mind.


Said I was going to do some bending and bending I did.
Was heating it with a heat gun, problem was that it didn't turn out picture perfect.

There is obviously some distortion like the part had shrunk during the heating/cooling.



This is how perfectly the unbent part sits on the leg.



Damn.
I can't rely on skills with electric hand tools


I'll redesign these parts so it doesn't require any bending (probably just gluing)

[KryptiK]

Oh found out that the actually completion date is 27th of August...

Was freaking out that I had to finish in a few days
but now I can pace my self, so will put an update soon on the redesigned bends

[KryptiK]

@Redd13
Vetalar
PabloFunky
Blarte
craigbru
alonso_bistro
dngerdave
alfredshuryan

Thanks guys

Small update.

Laser cut some more stuff. Red accents on the rear legs.
hehehe corvette









Also chamfered some the missing panels for the inner cover





It was getting dark... could get any more done for today

[KryptiK]

Originally Posted by KoSoVaR^

we want mooore!

I've been doing a lot in the past few days, so wait no longer. The project is approaching the finishing line and a lot more updates will come.

Some of the holes I've tapped where kinda useless and unnecessary, so they gotta go







Also resized more holes so the alu rods would fit in easier.



Reason for this is to prevent things like this from happening. Should have been a bit more gentler when assembling...
Recut the broken component out of four 3mm sheets and laminated them together with weld-on because I ran out of 6mm sheets to cut from.





Been working on the project everyday, only get a few hours of daylight when I get back home.


Attempting more bending with the heat gun
Hot stuff



First try turned out fairly well



But also had to replicate a mirror of that before it got too dark.
No real bending jig was used, just a 10mm rod and some scrap mdf (the heat resistant gloves saved my hands from being cooked, was doing it w/o them when I first started bending)

[KryptiK]

Oh, also assembled majority of the front fin assembly.
Polished the alu tubes, didn't achieve a mirror finish - kept scuffing when inserting the fins.





Didn't have any more of a particular fin type, so improvised by filing down some spares.

[KryptiK]

Just to let you guys know, the case is finished. Will post lots more info after the 27th of August. Don't have any time to upload and images and write up the log atm since it's been very stressful over the past few days in getting design to a finished state as well as completing a very long written folio accompanying the entire design process.

[KryptiK]

The case can be considered 'finished', (well its functional) but I still want to continue fixing some issues that I encountered along the way and also add a few modifications to the design.

Assembling, you can see how everything fits together basically.






So, continuing with the last update.



The front fin assembly fits together quite nicely, the top cover is detachable which allows for quick removal of the fans.






Finally fixed the HDD cage. It's well balanced and rigid.






Used the leg of a chair that had the right diameter for my bends.







To achieve the closest representation of what I wanted it to look like. I just eyed it off, with lots of trial and error in reheating and shaping.



With everything assembled and a system loaded up (hardware inside is a bit shabby and my psu cables weren't nearly as long as I thought they were). Planning on doing some sleeving in the near future.





Those handles themselves (black component) are only secured to the transparent acrylic component (done this because i thought it would make it easier to position the handles) with the acrylic adhesive bonding at a few points and then bolted to the top panel.

[KryptiK]

Update!
Great news, Lamptron has sponsored this project.



Also, the case was submitted for the HSC and marked by external markers on the 28th of August. Will find out the results in December. Here's a few pics of the setup for presentation.
The project was described as 'Contemporary P.C. Tower Case', could use the project name that I given it for some reason.

You can see some of my crazy prototypes and concepts on the left edge of the image.





The cable braiding on the G9 is a little worst for wear.



I want to give a shout out to Daniel Kennedy - Epic PC Cases, for writing a design evaluation on the project.

Will continue to further update the progress of finishing touches/modification.

[KryptiK]

Thanks for all the support guys

Originally Posted by Angel OD

Congrats on a great build!

Sorry for my ignorance, but what is "HSC" ?

No need to apologize, in NSW - Australia
"The Higher School Certificate (HSC) is the highest award in secondary education in New South Wales. To be eligible for the award, students must complete Years 11 and 12, satisfy HSC course requirements and sit for the statewide HSC examinations."

In the Design and Technology course students must complete a Major Design Project and something that I always wanted to do was design my own case.

Originally Posted by Fuganater

Fantastic work. How much does it weigh?

Not totally sure since I haven't weighed it on scales. I wouldn't consider the case to be 'light weight' but it can be lifted easily (with hardware installed). The handles feel strong and hold the weight quite well.