Scratch Build – In Progress Lean and Green - 15-12-14 - as complete as it's going to get

Ah, OK... so, a drill press isn't made for milling and it would probably have destroyed it if you had used it for the entire job?

 

Nah, it's always bin mental. I always look forward to the updates, and another thing learned today. The centering jig for drilling concentric holes in rod. Brilliant!

 

It does look more right upside down, just a shame it wouldn't function as good upside down.
Starting today updates should be coming every day.

That's why I need to get the floor drill press mounted to the floor instead of holding my foot down on the base while drilling lol, that & to buy the right clamps for the drill table before I attempt any milling again, rattles too much & the handles on the cross vice aren't nice easy turn handles, nice & precise for drilling but not fluid for milling so would take more effort than filing.

Tis true really, thank you Attila.
These precision drilling ideas came from AngelOD sharing a tip on how to do straight tapping, found it applies nicely to a couple of other neat drilling tricks also so it was right that I share the ideas that spawned after that tip, heck of a time saving precision booster, will work best on a floor mounted drill press with a cross vice though unless you can make 1 of these out of a very strong material like stainless steel so it doesn't wear away so easily & doubled up the guide thickness for extra straight drilling if just using a normal hand power drill & a clamp, always options for different budgets & some just need thinking of & 1 idea stretches it's family tree to new branches.

The front gaming fan mount is 4 5mm sheets stuck together designed to hug the custom fan, it needs some love to stop it from shaking also had to make all the fans 1mm deeper, the cover support is 3x 3 layers of 5mm sheets stuck together & 3 3mm rods will keep them aligned together & screwed in place on the flat bar that keeps the stand extra rigid.


Not much to show but I can assure I haven't been slacking 1 bit the past week but I have been mostly sat on my bum lol.

Also the akasa venom fans I was disappointed to find out you can't pop the blades off like you can on the apache fans so that makes painting them a bit trickier but still doable so might just keep the stem that hides the wire instead of all 4 & might even get rid of that 1 just keeping the circular bit.

But for now I have many pieces to make & once it's all made I have an epic amount of edge & surface sanding & polishing to do, like the title currently says November is get busy time & I'll kick it off by modding all evening, night & all day tomorrow & update in the evening.

 

Instead of sleeping last night I did this.

Figured out a nice solution to the blade heating up & melting the acrylic when cutting thicker stuff, good old copper flat bar with a tiny slit in the bar, enough to touch both sides & the back of the blade, works brilliant but they can overheat still so I made an extra & found that wasn't enough so made 3 in total so I could cut none stop, awesome.


This is part of the gaming rig front fan mount & is 20mm thick without 8mm round bar.


With 8mm round bar.


The support pieces for the cover join piece.


Loose fit.




Back to the fan mount & got that mill bit out again to mill the slot for the 10mm square bar it mounts to & it went pretty damn nicely, seems to handle acrylic a lot better.


This fan mount piece is complete but I think I went a bit overkill by using 3 brass inserts.






Now I had to mark & file down 3 15mm sections for the support piece in the stands front flat bar, then drill & countersink mount holes & because the right side of the flat bar dips down an extra 1mm I had to file that side down to make it work right.


Turned out perfect, I added brass thread inserts into the acrylic pieces & these are now solid with a nice 1mm space all along where I need it to stick the bent & curved panel there.








I took a break at this point.

 

Awesome work man

 

Heck, the HTPC looks great just by itself! Great progress

 

Damm good. Can't wait to see it finished.

 

This is looking sooo good Wayne, one of the most original designs I think I have ever seen on a PC mod

 

You're ruining my rep balance, Wayne.

 

Cheers Marcos.

I'm a tiny bit worried it'll look far better than the gaming rig thanks Mosquito.

Thanks Pranja, only a few more bits to make for the HTPC now before a huge sanding session but I'll reserve that until I have the gaming rig done also.

Thank you Jeff appreciated mate.

Thanks Mads

The order of extra aluminium is due tomorrow.

Big night of modding ahead again, my body clock goes all over the place in the thick of a project but I'll use my sense & reserve anything noisy for day walking mode when it's more acceptable.

 

How many hours did you spend on this awsome project?

But, I think you can do some effort for the finish aspect of your construction parts.... My turn

 

Too many I don't keep track of it.

Ouch

Joining cover piece.


Bends are the right angles but they aren't sharp enough for how I want them & I think it may have been impossible to do the curves so I'm going to use the bend & curve lines from the design & use a hack saw blade & sharp thin file to thin out the bend & curve points to make it more doable.




4 hours doing this but figured what I need to do to get it right so not a complete waste, reason it took so long is the opposing bends & me needing to figure out an alternative way to do the 2nd bend.

This was a fail update lol.

 

You could also score a crease in the backside of your bends and it will be a much tighter radius (I believe Attila did something like this on one of his cases if you can find it as an example). It looks like one of your bends will be face out and the other face in so maybe that solution doesn't fit your needs asthetically.

You also could do it as separate pieces, have it welded and then smooth out the welds. If you know someone who is good at welding aluminum and you take your time with the finish you would never know the difference.

As to the case... your work continues to impress. Even when there are bits of your design which I don't particularly care for, in the end it always seems to be appealing.

I'm really excited to see where this project ends up. Keep modding away mate!

 

Said that's what I'd do for the 2nd try not really a method I'm keen on but it works nicely so went with it I found it doesn't have to be inside the bend point as long as it's on 1 side it will thin it down enough to produce a sharp bend, wasn't 100% sure of it but it worked nicely.
I did consider doing separate pieces too & making perfect bevels so they join together nicely & just stick to the support piece, would have worked as nice as welding too after filing & sanding to hide the seams but didn't need to try it.
Thanks for help & feedback mate.

PITA piece take 2.
Freshly cut & flattened external edges, scored the lines with scalpel.


Snipped a piece of hack saw blade off, clamped a steel ruler along all the lines & shuffled until they were decently thinned, I went deeper for the actual bends.




Took a 30 min break from the tedious session hehe.


Time to bend & yes indeedy the workshop is a heck of a mess & no, DOF couldn’t do anything about this shot unfortunately, lets focus on hitting that deadline instead lol .


2nd bend & with it being so close to the other one & it being an opposing bend I had to use the bender unconventionally, clamping the piece on the wrong side & then flipping it upside down on the floor & carefully pressing something flat against it.




Main 2 bends done & this is the result I was after, sharp defined bends.




Now the fun part, faint curves, tried many silly ways at first but realised I just couldn't do it in a good way due to the bends, here is 1 of the silly ways I tried.


So I straightened out 1 of the bends & did faint bends on the lines & then re bent the last bend point & the faint bends made too much of a curve so had to tweak them as good as I could, this took far longer than I anticipated but knew it wouldn’t be an easy part.






I'll use button head screws so I can be sure of it fitting how I want it to, I'll just paint the screw heads to match the anodise colour, need more brass inserts though, only got 1 left so I'll leave doing updates until I have something good to show which I hope will be tomorrow & every day after leading up to the 9th of December.

 

Bending with no metal brake ain't easy. I did it with 1 mm. steel plate. Nightmare.

 

I do use a brake, it's a lowest of the low budget one though & very restrictive with what I can do with it so not that great but better than nothing.

Mid session update since I got interrupted, this must be why I prefer modding through the night, can just go at it none stop.

The HDD level covers before bending.


Using that awesome rod centre drilling tool & oh yes it's awesome makes very quick work of precision rod drilling & with using a drill press it should last a long time.




Tapping takes as long as it always has though lol.


Threw some parts together for the fan but still have 2 1mm pieces & the hoop to make & to file some edge off all 4 rod pieces but I got to say it feels nice & solid like this & it slots on the perch perfectly, very happy with it.


HDD cover loose fit but I didn't like how the bending went for the mounting tabs so I'll remake them without the tabs & just make them a perfect height so they hold in on their own when tightening the screws for the level above.






29 Days left arrrrrrrgh lol.

Having fun though now I'm really seeing it coming together more & I have 2 brass inserts which is enough to fix 1 side of the stand cover in place, that's a sweet fit too, loving how this is going & should have another update later on, going to fix the front corner rods in place & remake the HDD cover, that will probably take a fair bunch of hours so I don't know if I'll get to complete the fan today but the HTPC & stand is sooooo close to complete on the initial fabrication side.

 

You are a awsome craftman !

 

Thanks KoSoVaR I keep trying.

1mm Aluminium for the last 2 fan pieces & the new HDD cover, old one wasn't too great with the tabs not working out well.




All panels made for the HTPC 140mm fan, cut the new HDD covers & put them aside for when I do the front corner rods & also cut the 5 140mm & 2 120mm fan ring pieces, to shape them perfect I'll look for a hard round object about 20mm smaller diameter of the needed ring to get that bit of needed over curve, a bit of spring back will be good for it.


Still need to file the inside edges of the rods so they are level to the 2mm panels before I can add the fan motor with blades, I'll just do a loose fit for seeing how the fan looks with the motor & blades in because the fan is going to be JB welded to the anodised piece.




How it currently looks, not bad progress & keep in mind all the scruffiness on edges & surfaces will be cleaned up but later in the project.


I'll have to take apart stealthlow real soon & install the noctua cooler to get hardware measurements so I can design the triple fan mount in case I need to make the fans with extra mount points & possibly design a shroud for the motherboard & maybe the GPU & sound card too, we'll see but I will sure be cutting it fine for completing in time, feels a bit like a mission impossible but I'm giving it a good go.

 

That looks really awesome loving it...and the speed of updates has increased 10 fold

 

You are sick man!
That looks soooo awsome