Scratch Build – Complete ⭐ Bean - Small form factor (COMPLETE!) - Final pics

real beautifull tiny and cutee case your hand job on aluminium is just perfect and your electronic job is amazing... it's a pleasure to follow your thread

 

Thank you Kim! Much appreciated.

 

Small update today.
I finished the first acrylic side panel (sandwiched thingy) and installed the led ring.




Here is a quick lighting test I did with blue and red (looks pink because of the white balance on my phone....silly). Ignore the bright spots in the centre of the edge. I focused wrong on my phone camera because I'm an idiot.



Installed


Sanded flush to the aluminium (almost) and plastic removed.



Lighting test done again. Blue, red, and pink/purple. This was all with straight power applied to the board, so its full brightness. I'll have control over that when I install the rgb circuit again.




And finally, I also made some progress on the front panel text. Its at about 90% done now. I need to do some vigorous sanding inside those curves.


More soon!
Neal

 

Geez it's nice to come back to BT after so many yrs and see a good old fashioned hand crafted case mod. Great hand and electronics skills on show here Neal, Cudos mate

 

Thank you so much for your kind words. I try to be as accurate and neat as I can but sometimes things just don't play ball.

Small update again. I had enough aluminium to finish the first side panel, so I cut, drilled and mounted that and sanded it down to be flush with the case and acrylic. The heads of the screws still need to be countersunk a bit more, and the surface obviously looks like shite right now, but here goes.

Et voila...






I'll have some more aluminium in a few days to finish the other panel. Next on the list is to make the second acrylic panel and get the led circle mounted.

More soon.
Chow
Neal

 

Awesome wee case Neal, impressed with your work. As for the cat, that is just a great piece of artwork.

 

Lovely.
I gotta agree with (name too complex-copy/paste may explode). There's been a lot of assembly-only builds lately.

 

Thanks very much . I do try. Cat took forever but its still not done. Loads of sanding and filing to come and one small addition to the name.

Thanks Cheap! Yeah I know what you mean. There have been some awesome builds, but if I'm the one building it, its gotta be done by hand. CNC and lasercut looks amazing, but where's the fun in that?

 

Update time. Getting close now, I feel!

Today I made the mounting bracket for the GPU out of some aluminium angle.






I also mounted the second acrylic and aluminium panels, and second led ring




First hole countersunk


All four done.


I like to make the panels oversize then trim them down so I don't botch it. I ran out of time doing the top.






Aaaand, well......it doesn't look terrible.


Thanks for watching. More tomorrow hopefully. Pretty lights time!!!

 

Good evening boys and girl(s).

I did my first proper lighting test with the one side panel. Couple of things (heat) I wasn't happy with, but here are a few pics of the lighting. Please forgive the appalling quality. Today was a shaky day...











More soon!

 

Awesome Neal.

It's great to see a scratch build from the scratchy scratch of scratchiness starts where you're doing everything bar smelt the metal into sheets.

Come to think of it why didn't you?!? You have however made a rainbow

 

Thanks man! I didn't have an aluminium smelter handy . If you like scratch builds, stick around, because my next one will be trying to make something as close to the Dan a4 sfx as cheaply as possible.

 

She's gonna love you forever for that mate, fair play

Not a CNC'd piece in sight, great workmanship Neal

 

Hello All,

My apologies for the long delay between updates. I’ve had a crappy few months dealing with the home office and immigration problems. I even had to fly to South Africa to apply for a visa to return to the UK.



I have made some decent progress with the case. I have to finish this soon, if I want to get it to my sister for Christmas.



I’ll get right into it.



I sent all the parts off to the anodiser, and got them back looking really nice.







I then began reassembling the chassis as carefully as possible.


























I then started wiring the rgb panels into the case and adding the power button and usb connector.

Polycarb panel with light ring installed








Power button and usb ports aligned






Just a quick look with the side panel on





And a quick lighting test (sides only). Please forgive the crappy phone quality pics.





Well, there is only one thing left to do and that’s the front acrylic panel and lighting for it. I’ll have that done in a couple of days.



Thanks for watching!

Neal

 

Looking forward to seeing the front panel lit up, Neal.

 

sub!

 

daaamn, love the build neil! looks awesome... but then again i do love a good application of rgb

 

So was I! And it was so worth the wait when I eventually got it done.

Thanks man!

Thanks very much

The day has finally arrived when I can call this project complete.

First, let me show you the last couple of things I had to get done.


The front top and bottom rgb boards that will light up the front panel. I used up the last of my 5mm leds here.




Next I had to attach the polycarbonate sheet to the front panel. I used araldite to do that and it worked very well. You’d need a crowbar to get this thing off.


I received the knobs for the three pots, too. I'm happy with these.


I finally got the inside of the "B" and "e" glued to the polycarb. I had to spraypaint these black because they were too small to send for anodising. The inside of the "e" is only about 3mm tall.



After all the connections were done and wiring hidden in the top shelf, there isn't a lot of space left. Keep in mind, all of the cables and plugs have to sit under 19mm high or the lid won't go on.



After using the new black coated stainless screws (expensive!), we have this.



I can now call this project complete. Here are a few pics of the lighting during the day. I will take more tonight in the dark.






See you tonight

 

Some final night pics! Please excuse my horrendous photography (*hangs head in shame*). I tried to minimize the glare by dropping the iso. It was the only way I could get the colours to show up right.

 

Sweet - loving the art work and LED wiring.

It might be worth a try lining the acrylic for the cat from behind with alu foil to try and even up the lighting to the middle.

It's the one thing I learned from my abandoned Chieftec Dragon Mod - acrylic is a bugger to light evenly via LEDs at the edge.