Phobya water-cooled case design thread - FINAL STAGE

@Snowy- Agreed, a comprehensive tool list would be very helpful. Although I don't have much experience with sheet metal design ( I work with 3-5 Axis mills and Swiss turning machines) knowing what will be available will help locate the information I need.


Oh and for all you visual people here is a side by side of the "cases" per the sizes provided.

 

Ok guys,

So good new all round we have sat down with the bosses and the factory and had a good look at your cases.

The good if not great news is the factory should have no issues in making the cases as designed although for the more complicated cases with rounded edges on the shell *may* have to be steel instead of alu as its stronger and bends better.

A short list of machines is:

Laser Cutter
Water Cutter
CNC
Sheet benders

A more indeepth list will be provided shortly if the factory are willing to give us the details.

 

oooh mine is fat-ass


Thank you Nitrix. Good to know.

 

I have the solution, fill your loop with diet cooling fluid

 

hahaha got a link?

 

Guille - yes it is my daughter. She was ~4 months old in the pic IIRC. Turning 1 this Fri.

Nitrix - as trivial as it is, did Phobya have any favourites in the original contender group that haven't made it through here?

 

Yeah that would be nice to know!

 

What would be the target price Phobya has in mind?

I just completed my cost estimate and well i did something nice that cost an arm!

250$ cost for 50unit..... too much for production....but then again what's the target for retail Some company are selling smaller case whit no design for much more

If i (or anybody else) is to end up in the last 3 it would be a shame that one of the people favorite design gets trown away because of the production price.

Thank you again for your help

 

Congratulations to all those through to the final stage! I think that each of you deserve to have your cases built. Your ideas and attention to detail are fantastic.

You wouldn't believe how hectic my life is right now. I'm ashamed to say that I completely missed the voting.

I apologise for my continued lack of recent renders, it's so frustrating! All I can offer you at the moment are some SU exports. The following pics show the construction of some of the main components of PROTEUS.



















This competition couldn't of happened at a worst time for me. I'm so desperate to work on my design, but it's just not possible. I hope that what I've been able to show you helps you to understand the construction methods involved.

Good Luck!

 

So it's basically the same as the in the Lian-Li A05: right-angle plug up front, routed to the back panel. If you look carefully at any of the pics of my design, both plugs have been there all along, at the very bottom of the back panel. The cables are routed through the cable management area behind the motherboard tray, through an opening in the case floor, and terminate at the back panel, between the rear feet and actually below the level of the case floor.



So I have some questions for Phobya and perhaps some others may be able to answer these as well:

1a. I take it molded plastic is out? Just thinking of how to do the front bezel... the alternatives are a thick (10mm) piece of beveled aluminum, or, I suppose, thinner bent aluminum, like they did here. The latter is cheaper no doubt, but I really want the front vents to be angled in, louver-like, so you can't see inside at the back of the PSU. Which brings me to...

1b. How to do the front vents. Using thin material, stamping the louvers or something doesn't seem like it's gong to give nice results. Using thick material, I was thinking if would it be reasonable to machine the vents at a 45 degree angle... like, machining is usually done perpendicular to the surface, right? At 90 degrees... so what about doing it at 45 degrees instead? Maybe this is something one of the guys here can answer.

The result should look something like this. I realize that's a different process - using slats and grooves or something, and maybe that's an option here. It seems to me that just machining the vents would be easiest though.

2. Parts of the front bezel need to be easily removable or open-able, and I was thinking for that either something like these (not even sure what they're called... anyone?), or hinges for a door (how do we feel about doors btw?).


I'll leave it there for now. A recurring thought I keep having is the nature of my role here; I feel like, as the designer, I should be the guy with the vision - determining the aesthetics and some of the functionality, and it shouldn't be up to me to work out the specific engineering details. I mean, I can understand needing to make sure things are generally possible, but specifically possible, you know... that's the engineers job. And I get that this is very much a community of DIY'ers that do pretty much everything themselves, from concept design to engineering to manufacturing, but really for a commercial product I think you need to go a bit further than that. I honestly don't see much in the project logs here that would make sense as a marketable product. Jack of all trades, master of none, as they say. You want people to focus on doing what they're good at to get a good product out of it.

Ideally, the designers have an ongoing dialogue with the engineers. Bounce ideas off each other. I realize that probably doesn't make sense to do at this stage, but nevertheless I feel I have to complain a bit because of my lack of certainty as to the plausibility of certain engineering details has me feeling like I'm proceeding with my design with a bit of a blindfold on.

Well, whatever. I'm just going to do my best at what I can do and not worry too much about it.

 

I totaly agree whit you Subtec, Designer should do what they are goog at... DESIGN and this is a Design contest.....But as an Engineer i'm kinda obsesed with production detail.

I will try to model you in solidworks a front for your case that would be easy & cost effective in the next few days. Whit your requirements stated above

For the other question i'll try to answer you later

 

Wow, that's very generous of you to do, thank you.


I had some other general concerns/questions, if anyone wants to share their thoughts on these, feel free:


Material and thickness

Seems like most of us are going with aluminum, right? I had pretty much assumed that would be the material of choice, so I went with a material thickness of 1.6mm throughout most of my design. But it was chosen without a lot of research - is this a good thickness? What might be a good trade-off between strength, bend radius, cost, availability, weight, etc?

What about mixing steel in for more strength and/or thinner parts? Good idea or bad? Mixing metals can result in galvanic corrosion under some circumstances... would that be a potential problem here?

How about steel screws stripping threads in the aluminum?



Screw sizes

This might seem noobish, but what sort of screws should I be looking at? M4 machine screws for rads and fan mounts, right? What about other screws, M3 or what?

There's a few places in my design where it might be fairly tight and it'd be useful to know the clearance that the head of the screw needs, i.e., both height and diameter. I can look this up on sites that sell them, but it would be useful to know the exact type of screws to use, or what screws are commonly used or guidelines about clearance or... something. lol. Any help is appreciated.

 

I don't have Time for all question right now but i can tell you i'm costing aluminium at 2.10$/pound out here so it's easy to know your raw material cost. As for thickness i Have a silverstone FT-01 sitting on my desk and the main frame is made out of an extrusion 4.8mm and the side panel are 1mm. I do my motherboard tray and back panel out of 1mm steel for cost (0.4$/pound))and strenght.

Now here is my suggestion for your front opening....it may not exactly as you wish but when you do openings like that you just slice and push the material so from the front view you will always be able to see a thin line across depending on the angle you give it.

Hope this helps you and everybody else

MAchine used : Amada Laser / Punch Combo

Tooling Catalog : You will find some insparation Forming tooling for Punching machine


Front ISO 3/4


front view


Rear Iso View


ZOOM REAR ISO


FRONT ZOOM ISO

 

Nitrix said the shop has "Sheet benders"? I don't know if he meant a punch press, a press break or both? I designed my case so that it could be made without a punch press (no features that require a forming tool) but if that is an option for fabrication I have some features I would like to add to my design.

I suppose these will probably be made across the pond somewhere? I guess I better change my thickness from standard to metric

Edit: @Nitrix- When do we get to see the video you've been working on?

 

Thanks for that. I'm not sure about how that's going to look though... every image I can find on google of louvers done that way show them having a bit of roundness at the edges and corners, like here. It may seem like a minor thing, but to me it it affects the overall impression of the design. I'm looking for sharper, more precise edges. I guess I'd have to see the results using the right material thickness and dimensions to make a proper judgment.


@Roboduck

You said you work with CNC machines, right? I still want to explore that direction for making the bezel. Tell me what you think of using CNC to do this:


That's a cutaway showing approximately the sort of cuts required. This could easily be done using CNC right? 4- or 5-axis, if not 3. I guess a better question is if would be cost-effective to do it. Sure'd be nice if someone from Phobya was around to address stuff like this.

 

Add a radius in the slot corners and it looks doable (circular end mills can't make sharp corners). What is the width of those slots BTW? It would look cool but I'm not sure if it would be very cost effective. That much aluminum is going to get expensive, plus the machine time, plus the secondary operations like polishing and deburing will add to the cost.

Edit: You might be able to water jet those depending on what kind of water jet they have. I believe some can do angled cuts but don't quote me on that.

 

Yeah, I was going to ask about other cutting methods to maybe get sharper corners. That area is 5mm thick aluminum, maybe laser cutting is an option?

This is the lower front part of the bezel, which is a separate piece approx. 190x220mm. The slots as I have them are 5mm wide, 3mm between slots, though that can be adjusted as needed obviously. (edit: the width of the slots is 5mm from the front, but actually ~3.5mm between opposite walls since they're angled)

 

Again that would depend on the laser, most can't cut at an angle like that. You could use a wire EDM machine but I don't think the shop Phobya would be using would have one and it would take a long time to cut.

You could mill angled slots in the back so that you could slide 11 bars in as the fins. That way you would get sharp corners. Does that make sense?

Edit: Here is what I mean