Scratch Build Création n°3 - 09.05.2013

[Monsieur R.]

Création n°3 - Update 1.
Discovery time
- DJ Bonobo, "Kiara" in Black Sand -

Hello everybody :salut:

I know, I have a very bad habit : never finishing what i begin. This is true for almost everything (except with love, but it does not really matter for what we are doing here). But, good news : 2013 will be a great year, I decided so. It's starting very good : a new job (I'm now a journalist), I finished to build my new desk, I have new motivations, new needs, to put it in a nutshell, I'm a new man. (Yes, really).

Création n°3 aims to embody all that good stuffs. The project was born, as it often does, in the TGV between Paris and Bordeaux (or between Bordeaux and Paris, I can't remember). I really wanted a computer easy to build, easy to assemble, but that is neither trite nor simplistic. In other words, it must have the face and representative of the philosophy that I needed when it comes to computer design. The materials were easy to identify: aluminum, acrylic and bamboo, the same materials that I used to build my desk. The shape was also very easy: having fallen in love with an 500x300mm aluminum plate so I quickly decided that Creation n°3 will be a cube of 300x300x300mm on a 200mm stand (or substantially the same dimensions as a BitFenix Prodigy).

With an immoderate taste for micro-ATX and Germanic (or Scandinavian)design [I know there is no relation], it was necessary that everything is in perfect order. So I needed an intense brainstroming session to determine an architecture allowing me to get a micro-ATX motherboard, an ATX PSU, five HDD, one SSD, a gaming graphic card (even if I don't play) and a complete watercooling setup (with one 240 and one 120 radiators). Additional requirements: hide the maximum cables (it will be difficult), have no visible screws (that is not earned), use only raw materials (i.e. no paint or vinyl or stickers), and for me to finish well handicaps, make it extremely quiet. Anyway, I designed a computer. And I hope it will work.

Unusual digression for once, I laser-cutted my pieces, because I needed maximum precision (and also because I'm tired of being attacked by my neighbor whenever I wanna play with my jigsaw).


1. Creation of the spine

• Originally, this piece was supposed to be machined from a single block of aluminum (by 300x500mm, thickness of 20mm). As it proved too complicated (or too expensive), I had to rethink what I had in my mind. This leds me to the creation of a "sandwich" made of 5mm aluminum + 10mm acrylic + 5mm aluminum (for a total of 20mm ). The idea is to get all the cables in the plexiglass and use the two aluminum plates to hide them. On these two aluminum plates (extremely rigid and solid) the components will be fixed, with MB + GPU + RAM + CPU on the right side, with watercooling setup + SSD + HDDs + PSU on the left side. Note that the left and right are set arbitrarily since Création n° 3 has no front, no back, so neither right nor left.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
  And now it's sandwich time, to check if everything is all right :
  
  
  
  
  
  Cheating with a laser cutter was not such a bad idea
  
  
  
  
  
  

2. Motherboard fitting

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  The holes of the aluminium part seem to be well in front of the MB's holes. I'm reassured, I will not have spent hours making me blind with Sketchup and specifications in vain. Because it's pretty stressful to take all measures and virtualize them in my small brain without having the physical products on hand to confirm. Pfffiou. :rofl:
  
  Final little bonus: the inevitable photo of Corsair Dominator (since it would appear that in workblog this is a mandatory step):
  
  

And voila. Well, it's not so bad at all (you have the right to think otherwise).
But there is much, much ... much more work to do.

Thank you for stopping by, and see you soon

[Monsieur R.]

Thanks a lot for your nice words and for appreciating
I hope everything will turn fine.

As a small teaser, this is the parts I'm working on. They are laser cutted (again), but I made a mistaka of 0,01mm that I will need to file down by hand (again...). Guess what this will be used for :

[Monsieur R.]

Création n°3 - Update 2.
Aluminium memory
- Archive, "Hatchet" in With us until you're dead -

Hello Bit-Tech !

Today is sunday (even if I'm still looking for a little bit of sun today, but... well, it's irelevant). So, today is sunday, and sunday is update day. Tadaam ! It's time to show you a little bit of my progress on Creation n°3 :

Before going further, a little cleaning is required. The pieces already look nice and clean out of the laser cutter, but we are enough careful enough. For degreasing and general cleaning, I use the hard way : gasoline C (since I did not have acetone), small lint-free cloths that I had from when I was playing around with epoxy , nitrile gloves (you can never be too careful) and, of course, a mask to avoid inhaling the fumes.

Even for aluminium "out of the factory", I think it still really dirty Oo
For the rest, I tinker with my wedges remains of aluminum brackets ... With the return of the great buddy epoxy. : D

And voila ! As it is a slow setting epoxy glue, I put it all in press for the night, hoping not to have bad surprises tomorrow.
After drying for 12 hours :

Now, it is to remove the traces of glue and scratches on aluminum it's time to make a little bit of dry sainding with 60, 120 and 240 paper grit :

I honestly did not know what to expect, but in my humble opinion, this is pretty good. I love the matte finish that gives to the aluminum and the "hand brushed aspect". This contrasts with the "too perfect" aspect of laser cutting.

And if aluminium dust is too dirty, youre shower is your best friend :

And voila !

[Monsieur R.]

Originally Posted by Waynio

This is awesome.

Originally Posted by dreps

amazing

Thanks a lot Wayne & dreps

Originally Posted by Lehani

nice made with those HDD and SSD brackets how are the things going to be put together ? inside a case or like a test bench ?

Originally Posted by Dk_vr

Very impressive indeed.
I love the HDD/SSD bays.
You are going to fix the HDD/SSD with screw to the bays or it will be just plug n play ?

Inside a case : nope.
Like a test bench : nope.
Screws : nope Screws are ugly.

Plug'n play is very close to the final solution, but I won't show it until I've finish everything. For two simple reasons : teasing (that's a good first reason), and because I still haven't decide if I will anodise the aluminium parts... Everything is so tightly adjust that I can't step back and change my mind after. So, let's wait for another update. Stay tunned

[Monsieur R.]

Création n°3 - Interlude 1
- Rebecca & Fiona, "Dance" in Ultra Music -


Hello Bit-Tech

Originally Posted by HybridCore

Awesome!

I wish I could do things like this.

Originally Posted by Editor22

Love those little caddys!

Originally Posted by Elladan

hâte de voir la suite

Originally Posted by avolla

Amazing work so far. Love those hard drive cages. Absolutely stunning. Can't wait to see the progress on this build.

Originally Posted by Furball Zen

Thanks a lot HybridCore, Nate, Elladan, ovolla and Furball Zen

Originally Posted by Muerlin

Questions:

Are there any clamps to be used to keep the cables secure while placing the final plate?
or
Does the routing intentionally take up additional slack to leave a near-taut cable?

As I will show it later in this post, the routing in the acrylic will for some guts for the wires. The aluminium plates on both sides will save me the use of additional clamps.

Originally Posted by Mork

My jaw just dropped to the floor! The design and execution and materials.. and.. and.. everything so far is just awesome! I'm definitely watching this!

Keep us posted and please do finish this build! I have a feeling this will be MoTM worthy.

I don't know if this will deserve a MoTM nomination, but I hope you didn't hurt your feet with your jigsaw Oh, no, it's you jaw. So, I hope you didn't brake you jaw.

Originally Posted by Lehani

those Memory's BLOCKS. can they be watercooled?

I think yes, they can be watercooled. But it would be a shame, the Dominator Platinum are exclusive because of their heatsinks. If you want to watercool Dominator, use classic ones, not Platinum Edition.

By the way, for this update, I'm cheating a little bit because in this is not really an update but more like an "interlude". Indeed, as I'm on vacation now (it must be that it happens from time to time), relatively far from home and workshop, I did not have much time to progress on Création n°3.

Last week I showed you how I made the HDD cages. I will leave them some rest untill I decide if I go anodisation or not with them. The adjustment is so tight that I can't put the HDD in there yet, otherwise I would be unable to remove them. This would be a little bit stupid... Furthermore, a friend pointed that there could be an electrical short-ciruit between the motherboard of the HDD, so I'll have to find a solution before going further.

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The whole "HDD / SDD" will be fixed vertically in an attempt to create a levitation effect. It will be suspended under the reservoir (have to be machined in CNN, either laser or 3D printing, I have not decided yet) and supported by the PSU, which is a Corsair AX760i :

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Yes, this is a real 24 pin ATX ! No double wire, no hole, 24 pins on PSU side and on MB side ! I love it (even if it's a 760 Watt is a total waste of power, considering my needs, and so is the Platinum certification)

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Hum... custom wires ?

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And that's all for now. I hope I will have more time to work on this project newt week-end. See you there

[Monsieur R.]

Création n°3 - Update 3.
"Chi va piano... va piano"
- ediT, "Ants" in Crying over pros for no reason -

Hello Bit-Tech !


First of all, I apologize for the lack of updates. I still have three excuses :

• I suffer from a modern disease called... procrastination - Funny excuse.
• I had the bad, bad, bad idea to order some sleeving stuffs from MDPC. The problem is : when it comes to sleeving, my two hands are as usefull as two pans of lead - Technical excuse.
• Last month, I was a victim of burglary. So my computer (in which there were all my photos) was stollen, plus my Wii, plus a lot of electronic and photographic stuffs. In other words, all my base are belong to... someone I would kick if I meet him/her. No computer, no update. Easy. That was for the excuse.

But ! I managed to work a little bit on Création n°3's sleeving and borrowed my roommate's MacBook Pro in order to show write you today's update. There's nothing marvelous and I perfectly know I will never be as good at this as the best of you, but, well, I did it. And sleeving the Corsair AX760i is pretty easy, except the double wire on the 24 pin ATX cable.

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In parallel, I brushed the two main aluminum plate, in order to get the same appearance than the HDD/SDD cages. I have no photos of the sanding, because I wasn't in the mood to do so (because of the burglary), but I took some shot when the work was finished.

BEFORE

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AFTER

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Last thursday, I also ordered six new parts, in aluminium and acrylic, from the laser cutter company. I hope I will get them next week so I can finally move forward quicker and so that the computer takes shape, in real 3D.

Thanks a lot for your attention, and have a nice sunday !

[Monsieur R.]

Création n°3 - Update 4.
Patience is a dish best served... modded
- The XX, "Stars" in The xx -


And so, Bit-Tech. Here we are.
"That's it, are we there yet ?" they asked all.
"Hu. Not really. What did you expect ?"

After a very difficult month (from the modding point of view), after the burglary, after having waited for my acrylic and aluminium laser cuts to come, everything is finally back to normal. I received the long-waited items tuesday and, here in France, we are very lucky to have 5 days off (because of 8th of may and the 9th of may, plus the week-end).
As I showed you in the previous update, I made a little bit of sanding on the parts I had.

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So let's have a look at the order :

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Not that bad. Not that bad, with some cutting errors that can be adjusted with filing and patience.

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Second test :

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Much better. And as we must not stop in so good way, I took the opportunity to file all to prepare, for the first time, Création n° in 3D, just to give me, and especially to YOU an idea of ​​the volumes (yes, "you", because I know the plans for several months ... well, I think I should. I hope.)

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And here we are I should tell that no glue, no screws are needed to hold everything in place. And because I don't want to tease the what will come in the next update(s), I'll let you guess what those aluminium/acrylic arks are made for.

See you soon, and thanks for following me

[Monsieur R.]

Originally Posted by Boorach

Wow. You are really making use of your tools to create a work of art. Drive bay is great, wish I had the ability to make something like this!

Thanks a lot Boorach. And, about abilities, I don't have a lot. I just had time, last year, to play a little bit with Sketchup, and since, I had even more patience to wait for my parts to be laser cutted.

Originally Posted by Asouter

Flippin eck, the acrylic and aluminium look amazing. subbed

Originally Posted by Noob?

Sheer CLASS!

Keepin' an eye on this, thats for sure!

Originally Posted by KoSoVaR^

looks very nice man !

Originally Posted by Evenge

Great work!

Originally Posted by nagyizom

Very impressive so far!

Thanks a lot guys

Originally Posted by chris182

Looks absolutely stunning!

Sorry to hear about the burglary!

Don't worry about the burglary. I just see the good sides : it made a little space on my desk, so I don't have to wonder anymore where I will put my iMac when this project will be close to its end. ^^ And, the very bright side : the insurance bonus was high enough so it will pay me 100% oc Création n°3's costs.

Originally Posted by Azariel

Very nice and very precise!

Will there be any type of fastening on the rear side to prevent them from shearing/sagging?

Well, as far as I know, I'm not a big fan of fastening stuff, or screws, or riveting... I think I will only use epoxy where it will be absolutely necessary, but in the majority of the cases, the pieces are so tightly adjusted that they hold by themselves. Probably I will change my mind, probably don't. All I can say is, before final assembly, I will have to anodize everything. Or not...

Originally Posted by Editor22

I'm in love Monsieur <3 keep up the brilliant work!

Thanks a lot Nate. And thanks a lot for having shared my humble wor on E22's Facebook Page. I have to confess I often visit your webstore, and I often think that your milling skills would help me. But I'll tell you in time.

Originally Posted by biojellywobbles

looks like one of those hoops is for holding a PSU but the others have me stumped. I'm loving watching this mod progress. Keep us guessing

Originally Posted by Meelobee

Looks sweet

My guess for the big bracket is a psu holder too, the others..no idea

And... congratulations ! We have two winners

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I'll show you more on next update. Just can't say where, or when. ^^ And a final clue :

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See you soon, and thanks again for all your nice words and your support